As President Donald Trump treads the paths of his second term, his foreign policy posture is once again drawing sharp global attention that is less for quiet diplomacy than of blunt language, symbolic gestures and the revival of long-dormant ideas about American power. At the center of this approach, is what Trump has branded the “Donroe Doctrine,” a reworking of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine that shows a renewed US willingness to assert dominance, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
From Latin America to the Arctic and the Middle East, Trump’s statements and actions are sending ripples far beyond presidential palaces, reaching families, local economies, border communities and civil society groups who often bear the first and heaviest consequences of geopolitical confrontation.
Donald Trump’s remarks about Greenland, the Panama Canal and America’s allies have been widely dismissed as bluster. That would be a mistake. What the president-elect gestured weeks before his inauguration, is not random provocation but a deliberate challenge to the assumptions that have underpinned Western diplomacy for decades, which Britain, EU, Asia and the rest part of the world should not ignore.
Speaking in a past news conference, Trump sketched an uncompromising vision of American power. From the unset, he refused to rule out the use of force or economic pressure to secure control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, two assets he cast as vital to the US security and trade. Also with a random pick from the retrospect of his past yearnings, he warned NATO allies that the price of continued American protection would rise sharply, calling for defence spending to increase to 5 per cent of GDP. Even the language of geographical-rebranding was not spared; as Trump suggested renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”; and while he repeatedly referred to Canada as “the 51st state” and its prime minister as a “governor”. Such comments are easy to caricature.
Yet, from the corners, some diplomats and defence officials privately acknowledge that these Trump’s statements in the past, as highlighted in few above, all fit a consistent pattern; which is the assertion of American leverage, the rejection of multilateral restraint and the transactional redefinition of alliances.
On the hand, against the background of Trumps early statements to Britain, NATO, the EU and the world at large, European leaders also pushed back rhetorically. France and Germany insisted that borders must not be removed by force. While France’s foreign minister – Jean-Noël Barrot then warned of a return to “the law of the strongest”. But in all, from that period through now, apart from statements made, Europe did not offer any clarity on how it would respond if Washington chose to apply sustained pressure rather than idle threats.
As for the UK, the implications probably reverberated immediately. In a pointed intervention then, Sebastian Gorka a senior Trump’s adviser, said that any country wishing to be treated as a serious ally of the United States, must demonstrate that commitment in practice. He cited Britain’s refusal to repatriate around 70 Islamic State prisoners and their dependants held overseas, including Shamima Begum, who had been stripped of British citizenship, as evidence of a failure to shoulder responsibilities that Washington expects its partners to carry.
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