The Trump Doctrine and Why America (and the World) Need It, Part II

In the first part of this series, I purposefully laid out the strategic foundation of the Trump Doctrine: peace through unyielding strength, strategic sovereignty, and the disciplined use of military force to deter threats and eliminate enemies without trapping America in endless wars. That foundation matters, but it is incomplete without understanding how President Donald J. Trump extends those same principles beyond the political and legislative battlefields.

Modern power is not exercised solely through missiles, troops, or carrier strike groups. In the 21st century, economic leverage, executive authority, diplomacy, and energy dominance are not adjacent to hard power – they are inseparable from it. President Donald Trump understands this because he understands power as it actually operates, not as it is imagined by academics or narrated by cable news panels.

Under the Trump Doctrine, economic and diplomatic tools are not simply instruments of goodwill. They are mechanisms of coercion, deployed deliberately to force decisions, reshape incentives, and compel alignment with American interests. Where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris treated these tools as moral gestures, President Trump treats them as weapons of statecraft.

Strategic sovereignty is the organizing principle of the Trump Doctrine – the United States decides when, where, and how it engages on the world stage based on a hierarchy of interests defined by American security and strength . . . not international approval. The next link in the chainmail that is the Trump Doctrine is applying that same logic into the economic and diplomatic realm.

To apply that logic, there are some non-negotiable things that we must accept:

• American military strength creates deterrence.
• American economic strength creates dependence.
• American diplomatic leverage forces compliance.

For decades, Washington, D.C. operated under the delusion that these domains could be separated – that America could be militarily strong while economically naïve, diplomatically deferential, and institutionally captured. That delusion enriched adversaries, hollowed out American industry, and trained allies to treat United States support as automatic.

Thankfully, President Donald J. Trump rejects that framework entirely.

Under the Trump Doctrine, every lever of American power is aligned toward the same objective: advancing U.S. sovereignty and forcing foreign actors to internalize the cost of opposing American interests. Engagement is no longer treated as a virtue in itself. It is purely conditional, transactional, and unapologetically asymmetrical – because America’s leverage is asymmetrical.

This is not cruelty, it is realism. And as we know, realism is the only true path to peace.

There may be no better policy tool that exposes the divide between President Donald J. Trump and the Democratic foreign policy establishment than tariffs. To Democrats, tariffs are an embarrassment – something to be apologized for, unwound, or blamed on domestic political pressure. To President Trump? Tariffs are what they have always been . . . strategic weapons.

The mythology of “free trade” collapsed long ago. China did not rise by playing by the rules. It rose by cheating – through state subsidies, forced technology transfers, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and industrial espionage. Democrats knew this and did nothing. Worse, they pretended it wasn’t happening because confronting the truth would have required conflict.

President Trump chose conflict – economic conflict – because he understood that the alternative was economic surrender.

Under the Trump Doctrine, tariffs serve three essential purposes. First of all, they impose costs on adversarial behavior. When Beijing cheats, it pays. Secondly, they reshape supply chains which accelerates nearshoring and reshoring while reducing America’s dependence on hostile regimes. Lastly, tariffs restore America’s leverage while reminding the world that access to the American market is a privilege . . . not a right.

Critics call this protectionism. They are wrong. This is strategic reindustrialization, and it flows directly from the Trump Doctrine foundation I articulated in part one: a nation that cannot produce for itself cannot defend itself. President Donald J. Trump is rebuilding the economic foundation of American power precisely, so our military strength does not become hollow.

Interestingly, Democrats love executive authority when it advances progressive aesthetics. They despite it when it enforces accountability. That hypocrisy defines the difference between Joe Biden’s “governance” and President Trump’s leadership.

Executive Order 14161 is a perfect case study in how the Trump Doctrine operates administratively. Biden’s administration treated migration as a humanitarian abstraction – a narrative to be managed, not a system to be controlled. President Trump understands what Democrats refuse to admit: mass migration has been weaponized, and it is inseparable from cartel violence, foreign criminal networks, and national security. EO 14161 does not exist to “simply send a message.” It exists to close doors, disrupt networks, correct inefficiency, and impose cost. It treats terrorists, cartel facilitators, and transnational criminals not as sympathetic figures in a progressive morality play, but as hostile actors attempting to exploit America and generate weakness.

This is strategic sovereignty applied bureaucratically and the message it projects is simple: if you threaten American security, you lose access – to our borders, our economy, and our tolerance.

Democrats recoil from this clarity because it forces decisions. They prefer ambiguity, process, and delay while President Trump prefers, demands, and expects results.

For decades, foreign aid operated essentially as an international welfare program – billions of dollars distributed with minimal conditions, even to governments openly hostile to American interests. The theory was that generosity would buy good will. The reality was that it brought contempt.

Thankfully, President Trump ended that farce. Under the Trump Doctrine, foreign aid must justify itself. It must advance American interests, or it does not flow. Period. Full stop. This is not cruelty, it is accountability.

South Africa provides a clear example. When the ANC government embraced rhetoric and policies openly hostile to Western interests – including antagonism toward the United States – President Trump did not issue a carefully worded statement of concern. He cut support. When South Africa attempted to leverage international platforms while attacking American credibility, the Trump administration withdrew cooperation and applied pressure accordingly.

The foreign policy establishment panicked – because conditionality terrifies systems built on automaticity and immediacy. But President Trump understands something they don’t: aid without condition is not generosity; it is subsidy for bad behavior . . . and it trains both allies and adversaries to believe America can be ignored without consequence.

One of the most corrosive myths in modern American politics is that diplomacy is about being liked. There couldn’t be anything further from the truth. We can once again reference the failed leadership of Joe Biden and see what that mindset generated in a return on investment for the American people: a governing approach that viewed international approval as the ultimate end goal that would be propped up by endless summits, endless communiqués, endless apologies, and no enforcement.

President Trump put a stop to that immediately and, under the Trump Doctrine, implemented an approach to diplomacy that is transactional by design. It is not about tone . . . it is about leverage. International institutions are not sacred; forums are not entitlements; and American participation is conditional – and our absence carries weight.

This is why boycotts, withdrawals, and refusals to legitimize hostile behavior are not tantrums or lapses in judgement. They are tools. When the United States of America declines to show up, declines to fund, or decline to endorse, pressure builds. And pressure forces recalculation. That is diplomacy aligned with deterrence – not diplomacy divorced from reality.

Joe Biden’s foreign policy was built on a lie: that throwing money at the problem without conditions or expectations would generate outcomes favorable to the American people. Ukraine exposes this morally bankrupt approach more clearly than any other issue. Biden believed that endless funding without leverage was virtuous. In reality, it was cowardice disguised as morality.

These are games the Trump administration refuses to play which directly benefits the American people. Under the Trump Doctrine, Ukraine policy is no longer about simply signaling virtue – it is about changing incentives. Aid continues, but artificial restrictions are lifted. Legitimate military targets are no longer taboo. At the same time, President Donald J. Trump has pursued backchannel diplomacy aimed at producing what Democrats never attempted: an end state.

Liberal critics scream “appeasement” because they cannot imagine diplomacy backed by strength. But President Trump understands what Biden never did: wars do not end because one side feels morally affirmed. They end when the cost becomes unbearable.

That is not surrender . . . it is strategy.

Every doctrine rest on material reality and the Trump Doctrine is no different. In this case, that reality is energy. Joe Biden treated American energy production as a moral liability. He shut down domestic production, begged hostile regimes for supply, and handed geopolitical leverage to adversaries – all in service of a climate agenda written by activists who have never governed.

Thankfully, President Donald J. Trump reversed this immediately because he understands that energy dominance is not about ideology . . . it is about power. Nations that control energy control diplomacy while nations that beg for it surrender their autonomy. Under the Trump Doctrine, America will never surrender autonomy again. We will produce, export, and dictate terms.

This is not environmental recklessness as Democrats will surely claim. It is geopolitical realism – and it reinforces every other pillar of American strength.

So far, we have established the Trump Doctrine’s foundation: peace through unyielding strength and strategic sovereignty that is enforced by precision force. We have also proven that the doctrine is not confined to battlefields.

The truth remains that economic leverage, executive authority, diplomacy, aid, and energy are the weapons of modern statecraft, and they should be leveraged to the benefit of the American people. When used correctly, they prevent war. When they are used timidly – as Democrats prefer and we witnessed under Joe Biden – they tempt it.

The final piece of the Trump Doctrine looks at its application geographically and institutionally – specifically the Western Hemisphere, NATO, Europe’s free-rider problem, China’s encroachment, and the end of subsidized dependence. But President Trump has proven to us in this first year of his second term that none of this is possible without leverage . . . and leverage is what the Trump Doctrine unapologetically restores.