The Trump Inflection: the US National Security Strategy as an exercise in performative defence

The 47th US President is delivering what he told us he would prior to the 2024 US Elections: retribution at home and America First abroad. We are seeing his transactional, zero-sum foreign policy enacted through the blunt instrument of economic tariffs backed with set-piece photo-op diplomacy. The execution of the former has had the predictable, but unexpected to Trump, effect of higher prices at home and a drag on global trade. In terms of the latter, his foreign policy interests have appeared more about seeking prizes than solving problems and, to date, in both cases, the policy has failed. However, this paper will focus primarily not in ending wars in Cambodia, Pakistan or the DRC, but on Trump's abandonment of his traditional NATO allies and fascination with the strong man leadership of Russia and China. To do so, it will unpick elements of the recently announced US National Security Strategy with its return to regionalism and abandonment of the institutions of co-operation that have frameworked the US's relationship with Europe since the Bretton Woods Agreement late in World War 2. The new US National Security Strategy marks a very significant shift from the US's traditional role as the world's policeman to a re-boot for the centuries-old Monroe Doctrine - just in time for the USA's 250th birthday. Two aspects particularly stand out. First, there's a strong element of retrofitting to the strategy with the pivot away from Europe and long-established institutions such as NATO and the EU to the Western Hemisphere. Trump's ambitions for Venezuela, and especially its oil, haven't gone to plan and a Trump corollary to the centuries-old Monroe Doctrine attempts to justify American dominance in its own back yard. While elsewhere, not least with the EU, the strategy is about deal making, this attempts to make a case for coercive power. Elsewhere, what's notable is the overt presentation of the Christian-nativist America First approach to Europe. This strategy does not paint the USA as a reliable ally to its traditional western European partners and comes close to Great Replacement theory language in describing Trump's approach to Europe, and especially the EU. The paper argues this rhetoric is squarely aimed at his MAGA base and drafted by the ideologues among his Project 2025 advisers. It is a very significant shift from America's previous multilateral engagement. Outside of hegemony in the Western hemisphere, the USA today seems to be all about asymmetric transactional deal making. In looking both at his response to Ukraine and a comparison with Venezuela, the paper highlights the performative nature of Trump's defence thinking alongside his inability to see any geopolitical situation through anything other than the prism of how action will reflect directly on him. For Trump, what matters is the optics of action and their impact on the next news cycle and next poll - not on long term resolution of difficult situations. The massive might of the US military is a mere box of toy soldiers to be deployed, or not, based more on the whims of a capricious autocrat than on logic or need. In 2026, we could have 'Trump Unbound', the leader of the most powerful nation on earth leading that nation based on wealth acquisition for the few. This paper will discuss why this is such a dangerous prospect at a dangerous time - but how the levers exist primarily within the US to check what appears unbounded power.