What to Expect From Trump’s Foreign and Military Policies: Old and New Dangers

On the morning of November 6, many of us woke to the reality that what we thought of as our nation was even more corrupt and dangerous than we had realized. Manipulated by oligarchs and frustrated by status quo Democrats, a majority of the U.S. electorate embraced and voted for a fascist, racist, rapist, convicted felon, compulsive liar, insurrectionist, would-be dictator.

Understandably, in the first days after the election of a man who pledged retribution against his enemies, promised the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and who told supporters that this was the last time they would need to vote, discourse and debate focused on a postmortem of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat. Yet, as we debate how best to protect people threatened by deportation and racist attacks, democratic values, culture, and institutions, Donald Trump’s return to power has enormous global ramifications. There are the not so small questions about how to keep the narcissist’s finger off the nuclear button? How best to win cease-fires and just peace negotiations in Gaza and Ukraine? And how to prevent avoidable wars with China, Russia, and North Korea?

Fears abound. Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Xiaoping have Ukraine, Europe, and people across the Indo-Pacific region facing an uncertain future. Trump will not be able to end the Ukraine War within 24 hours as he promised, but under Putin’s escalating attacks, now augmented by fresh if ill-trained North Korean troops and swarms of attack drones, we again face the question of how much of Ukraine he will seize? Will Trump’s expressed doubts about the U.S. commitment to NATO and his threatened tariffs lead to a profound disruption in U.S.-European relations and renewed European commitments to create a fourth military superpower? Will Trump’s embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist Gaza genocide facilitate complete ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank and join attacks on Iran’s nuclear and oil production infrastructures? Will the killing of North Korean forces with U.S. weapons in Kursk reignite the Korean War? And could a Russian victory in Ukraine lead China, in time, to invade or blockade Taiwan?

With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.

In this uncertain time, what do we really know about Trump’s foreign and military commitments, about his acolytes who are jostling for position and influence, and what do we think the tyrant will actually do? An August 2024 Foreign Policy article named contending voices among Trump’s key “national security” advisers along with thumbnail sketches of their backgrounds and policy commitments. The article began with Elbridge Colby, an arrogant hardline deputy assistant secretary of defense in the last Trump administration. Colby is perhaps the “loudest” voice seeking “a complete shift from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China.” Fred Fleitz, once a protégé of the notorious John Bolton, is among the most ideologically right-wing MAGA figures in Trump’s national security orbit. Ric Grenell was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and was closely aligned with neo-fascist European leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Marine Le Pen, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He once threatened to withdraw all U.S. forces from Germany (something that many in the German peace movement would applaud), and as special envoy to the Balkans he was accused of engineering the collapse of the Kosovo government. Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro (the latter just released from prison) are the leading trade war and tariff advocates, with China their number one, but not only, target.

There is a host of other America Firsters who may be visited upon the world, including a raft of nuclear weapons and war planners in the nation’s think tanks who have been competing with one another to publish the most hawkish revisions of U.S. nuclear war planning.

That said, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, may prove to be the most influential of Trump’s foreign and military policy advisers. There is a tradition of senior advisers to presidential aspirants outlining their foreign and military policy commitments in the pages of Foreign Affairs, and this year that honor fell to O’Brien.

In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, O’Brien published an article titled “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy.” Having been tapped, but not yet confirmed, to become either Trump’s next national security adviser or secretary of state, we would do well to take O’Brien’s observations and commitments seriously. Here is a summary of what O’Brien tells us.

First and foremost, O’Brien reports that “Trump adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts.” Trump is given to whims, and his transactional approach to deal making, which makes it impossible to precisely predict what Trump will do. As The New York Times also reported, “He has often said that keeping the world guessing is his ideal foreign policy.”

Even as Trump has denigrated U.S. alliances, O’Brien reminds us that “Trump never canceled or postponed a single deployment to NATO. His pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense made the alliance stronger.”

Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem.

Further O’Brien asserts that “Ameria first is not America alone.” From this perspective, Trump’s threat to “encourage” the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to nations that fail to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP military spending goal can be read as simply a coercive fundraising strategy. Worth noting too is that under pressure from a second Trump administration, 2% could become a very taxing 3%, resulting in still greater reductions in spending on essential social services.

Addressing the Ukraine War, O’Brien pledges that Trump will continue to support lethal aid but insists that it must be paid for by Europeans, while keeping the door open for diplomacy with Russia. Out-manned and out-gunned, European support may enable Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold out against Russian advances for up to a year, but the longer Zelensky holds out with his overly ambitious demands before initiating a cease-fire and returning to peace negotiations, the greater the danger for all Ukrainians. Trump will not have Zelensky’s back, even as conservative Poles warn Trump that Warsaw is next on the Kremlin’s menu.

O’Brien’s answer: NATO will rotate ground and air forces to Poland, and “the alliance will defend all its territory from foreign aggression.”

Contrary to the ostensible U.S. tradition of valuing human rights, and with little regard for the company the United States keeps, O’Brien advises that “the administration undermines its own putative mission when it questions the democratic bona fides of conservative elected leaders in countries allied with the United States.” For example: Jair Bolsonaro (formerly of Brazil), Orban (Hungary), Netanyahu (Israel) and Andrzej Duda (Poland.) By this same logic, Vladimir Putin can point to his election as Russia’s president, even if it came by way of assassinations and rigged national polls. And Xi Xiaoping can point to his apparent, if enforced, national popularity.

Consistent with all of Trump’s foreign and military advisers, President Joe Biden’s national security strategy, and congressional China hawks, is O’Brien’s warning that China is “a formidable military and economic adversary.” Xi, O’Brien believes, “is China’s most dangerous leader since the murderous Mao Zedong. And China has yet to be held to account for the Covid-19 pandemic.” It is “pablum,” O’Brien states “to believe that China is not truly an adversary.” Therefore, the United States should “focus its Pacific diplomacy on allies such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea... [and] traditional partners such as Singapore and emerging ones such as Indonesia and Vietnam.” Washington, O’Brien urges should also “seek to decouple its economy from China’s” with a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and tougher export controls on technology. Since the publication of O’Brien’s article, Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 200%, which would punish U.S. consumers far more than China’s economy.

Bolstering these alliances, which may be tested by “America First” arrogance, values, and financial burden-sharing demands, O’Brien argues that the Navy should move an aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and move the “entire Marine Corps to the Pacific” (later clarified to be operational troops, not administrative forces). The Navy should increase its ambitions to creating a 355-ship fleet, adding more stealthy nuclear armed Virginia class submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Congress should fund all 100 planned B-21s, as well as 256 strategic bombers he believes are needed to continue containing China. With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.

Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak.

Not to be forgotten is Trump’s urging of Netanyahu to finish the job in Gaza. So too the Trump family ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and Trump’s hatred of Iran that led to his sabotaging the JCPOA nuclear deal with Teheran. O’Brien writes that in the Middle East, the U.S. should exert “maximum pressure” on Iran. “The truest source of the Palestine-Israel conflict” he argues is not the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, but Iran. He informs us that the Trump administration will “[b]ack Israel to eliminate Hamas, not pressure Israel to return to negotiations for a long-term solution.” Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem. But as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken learned, this agenda has its contradictions. The vast majority of the Arabian people identify with and support Palestinian resistance to the genocide. And the Saudi monarchy believes that it could be overthrown if it officially recognizes Israel before credible processes are in place for a two-state solution to the century-old conflict.

If there was little discussion about foreign and military policies during the election campaign, there was even less said about their nuclear dimensions. The reality is that we are facing the greatest danger of nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Leading the way has been the Kremlin’s nuclear saber rattling and its reduction of its threshold for nuclear weapons use. The past few weeks have seen back-to-back U.S. and Russian nuclear war games and a demonstration North Korean ICBM missile test. The U.S., its allies, China, and Russia are continuing provocative and confrontational military exercises in the South and East China Seas and around Taiwan in which an accident or miscalculation could easily escalate to the unthinkable. If this weren’t sufficient reason for concern, all of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems—the U.S. at a cost of $1.7 trillion. And militarist forces in Iran, Japan, and South Korea are all pressing for their nations to become nuclear powers.

The Trump response? Pour more oil on the fire. O’Brien says that the U.S. should be “test[Ing] new nuclear weapons for reliability... in the real world” and resuming “production of uranium 235 and plutonium 239.” O’Brien also reminds readers that we came much closer to nuclear war during Trump’s 2017 Fire and Fury Korean threats than most people understand.

And then there is the climate emergency. Trump will further endanger this and future generations by again withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, burning fossil fuel regulations, and defunding green energy initiatives. This will further isolate the United States from the civilized world while it will ironically provide a powerful boost to China’s soft power diplomacy.

Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak: He could order revision of the U.S. nuclear weapons and war doctrine by ordering a No First Use doctrine. He could halt weapons deliveries to Israel unless Netanyahu agrees to cease-fires and negotiations for Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He could insist that Ukraine revise the legitimate but unachievable demands it makes of Russia before reengaging in cease-fire and peace negotiations. A neutral Ukraine with credible international security guarantees and putting resolution of the territorial disputes on the diplomatic shelf for future resolution remains possible. And like President George H.W. Bush did with the Soviets at the end of the last Cold War, he could take limited unilateral actions like reducing the almost daily provocative military exercises in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and in relation to North Korea to engender common security reciprocal actions.

Of course, Donald Trump and his minions could reverse any such initiatives, but the geopolitical landscape would be transformed, with heavy political and diplomatic lifting required to put Trump’s foreign and military ambitions back on track.

In this new time, we will need to be thoughtful, and much more strategic—thinking more critically about our assumptions and campaigning—and we must keep our eyes on the proverbial prize as we create new ways to defend people, the climate, and democratic values and culture.