What the Data Say: Trump’s International Doctrine

By Dr. Wornie Reed

With its Right-Wing Anti-Globalism on top of Trump’s malignant narcissism, which makes him think he is the smartest person in the room despite his ineptness, the world is rapidly becoming less safe.  Trump’s impulsiveness and haphazard operation of what should be a coherent foreign policy is making the world more dangerous.

He is bashing our friends, destabilizing NATO to the apparent delight of Putin, enabling America’s real enemies, and making friends of our enemies.

Even the verbal attack on Greenland and its owner, Denmark, a member of NATO, is weakening this important alliance. NATO is widely considered the most successful defensive military alliance in history. Its achievements span over 75 years, primarily focused on maintaining peace in Europe through collective defense. However, the only time it was called upon to defend a member nation was to assist the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks. Denmark sent troops to Afghanistan and suffered proportionately more military deaths than the United States.

Further, in his speech at Davos last month, Trump followed up on his national security document issued last November by lambasting European immigration, economic, and climate policies. Astoundingly, he argued that Europe’s focus on “radical left” agendas has caused them to falter compared to the U.S. Of course, his administration has signaled a preference for nationalist, right-wing parties in Europe over existing leadership, with Trump officials warning that European policies have led to “civilizational suicide.”

Meanwhile European leaders are rightfully recalibrating their positions.

In his important speech at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed this new world order that Trump was pushing and talked “about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.”

Carney emphasized the end of the rules-based international order and outlined how Canada was adapting by building strategic autonomy while maintaining values like human rights and sovereignty.

The Canadian PM called for middle powers, such as his own, to work together to counter the rise of hard power and the great power rivalry, to build a more cooperative, resilient world.

Donald Trump’s interactions with European leaders are currently marked by tension, especially after his attempts to buy Greenland, prompting EU leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen to push for greater European strategic independence, though some Right-Wing allies like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni try to mediate, while a strategy emerges for Europe to stand firm against Trump’s volatility by threatening countermeasures like tariffs, despite uniting even his critics on the continent. This includes Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz pushing for reduced business regulations in Europe to counter U.S. economic dominance.

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Stephen Miller explains the Trump doctrine: “The USA is Running Venezuela. By definition, that is true. We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”

Pete Buttigieg responds, “That’s Stephen Miller, the most powerful policy voice in the White House. We live in a world where “might makes right” and whoever can beat up somebody else is going to get their way. This flies in the face of the whole point of what we have learned as a country and as a species, especially in the 20th century. One of America’s greatest accomplishments was leading humanity out of that into a world where values and rules matter. At least as much as brute force. And dragging us into the past with that kind of ideological bulls*** will make Americans less safe. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is not worth responding to all or most of the crazy things that Trump officials say. But this one we have to deal with.”

It seems that saving our democracy from people like Stephen Miller and Donald Trump can help save the world.