On Monday, Donald Trump started his second term as President of the United States. Without wasting any time, Trump withdrew from a number of America’s international commitments. America said goodbye to the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change. We may not be far from asking: is NATO next?
None of this should come as a surprise. After all, an extreme go-it-alone mentality is central to Trump’s America First foreign policy—during his first term in office, on the campaign trail, and now in the presidential transition to his second term.
But Trump’s undisciplined instincts have now coalesced into something stronger and scarier: the Trump Doctrine. His America First foreign policy now includes brazen calls for territorial expansion. Last week, our colleague Evan Gottesman wrote about the true cost of Trump’s rhetoric about cajoling Denmark into ceding Greenland to the US. The key point was that if we force our allies to hand over territory, then we risk destroying America’s exceptional ability to maintain influence through partnerships rooted in mutual consent and interest. The waves caused by Trump’s Greenland gambit give us a glimpse of the world in Trump’s second term.
During his inaugural address this week, Trump gave us a fuller picture of his intentions, as he doubled down on taking back the Panama Canal. He also returned to outdated notions of American manifest destiny, linking a supposedly coming “golden era” with territorial expansion. “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” he said. “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Usually we think of America First as an isolationist movement, but this is only half true. While Trump’s foreign policy abandons America’s commitments to international institutions, talk of a new manifest destiny ensures we will be more involved in the world than ever. But in perverse ways that hurt our friends and vindicate our enemies.
Cracks in the Old World Order
Under Trump, America First doesn't mean we aren’t playing the game of international relations. It means we just won't follow the rules we agreed upon with our allies nearly eighty years ago.
In 1945, the Allied nations marked the end of the Second World War by establishing a set of institutions where the behavior of nations was guided by a shared set of rules and norms rather than the threat of violence. In cooperation with our allies, the US led the construction of a better world that would attempt, as the historian Max Boot has put it, to “defend and extend the sphere of liberal democracies around the world and to build a world where disputes are resolved peacefully and amicably and not at gunpoint.”
Territorial expansion fundamentally undermines the liberal system. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 are the greatest examples of this challenge to the liberal order.
As Martin Kimani, the Kenyan UN ambassador at the time, noted in his country’s opposition to Russian aggression in 2022, many countries have good reasons to seek different borders, especially in post-colonial Africa. But, in order to avoid unnecessary conflict, his country chose instead to accept the borders that they inherited while seeking cooperation with other countries where possible.
What was true for Kenya after independence was also true for Russia three years ago, and it is still true for the United States under Donald Trump now. Trump, who now openly advocates for territorial expansion, is running roughshod over this shared consensus of how nations ought to behave. He is embracing a certain relativism in international affairs, accepting in principle a division of the world into spheres of influence.
“Beyond stimulating anti-American nationalism in the hemisphere, such a throwback policy would legitimate efforts by China, Russia, and potentially other regional powers to pursue spheres of influence in their own neighborhoods,” writes Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Cost of Just Doing it for the Deal
In response to these criticisms of territorial expansion, Trump’s allies may retort, “Well, he won’t actually annex any countries; it’s all a negotiation ploy.” And to be fair, it is possible Trump won’t carry through on his threats, either because it is just a ploy or perhaps because he lacks the capacity to carry through.
But President Trump is playing with fire. Even if the United States doesn't gain more territory but uses the threat to gain an extra base on Greenland, trade concessions from Denmark, and greater influence over the Panama Canal, Trump will have further normalized bad behavior for authoritarians and wannabe dictators.
The threat of territorial expansion will compel even our allies with a show of raw power.
It is not clear where that conflagration may end or what it means for the liberal international order. But when we dispense with the rules that guide international relations, our destiny is no longer in our own hands.
