Thursday Essay: The Trump Doctrine, Defined

“We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.” —Ronald Reagan

What is the Trump Doctrine? My columns and essays in recent weeks have poked at it, hinted at it, but I never pulled it all together in one place — and not even President Donald Trump has fully explained it. So let's do that now while the pieces still fall into place.

The thing with President Donald Trump is that he's never explicitly boiled his vision down to something you can put on a hat like "Make America Great Again," but he's hardly the first world-reshaping president to hold that particular card close to his vest. Maybe that's because there are some things presidents aren't supposed to say out loud.

If Trump learned that by anyone else's example, he might have learned it from the master, and I think you know whose name I'm about to drop.

That's right, baby, it's Ronald Wilson Reagan, the man who won the Cold War without firing a shot — and with four simple words that few people outside his inner circle ever heard him say.

The Reagan Doctrine was easy to distill, even though we didn't find out just how easy until well after he was out of office. 

In public, President Ronald Reagan talked about "peace through strength," labeled the Soviet Union "an evil empire," and went to West Berlin to demand that Communist Party boss Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall!"

Longtime Reagan economic advisor Martin Anderson later revealed that at the beginning of Reagan's first term, he privately summed up his foreign policy to his inner circle: "We win, they lose." He used it again in a 1982 closed-door meeting with members of Congress who somehow didn't leak.

We win, they lose. Four words, held close to the vest, perfectly distilled what was actually a complex doctrine, both layered and self-reinforcing.

The first and most obvious element was unleashing American innovation and productivity through tax cuts and deregulation. While the Soviet command economy sputtered to a stop, America's economy performed in ways that people had given up on during the stagflation and malaise of the '70s. 

And Another Thing: This is one of my favorite bits of '80s trivia, and maybe it's about to become yours. West Germany was the second-richest nation in the world, and from the end of the 1981-82 recession until Reagan left office in January of '89 — just a couple months over six years — Americans built an economy the size of West Germany's postwar "economic miracle," and casually tacked it onto the giant one we already had.

Just as important was accelerating the military buildup begun late in President Jimmy Carter's mercifully brief administration. B1-B bombers, MX missiles, upgraded Abrams tanks, a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle that finally worked, purging drug users, upping training standards, and more.

So when we weren't busy committing near-impossible acts of economic awesomeness, we built up a 600-ship Navy, secretly deployed the world's first stealth strike fighters, and honed our land forces into the sharpest instruments of death and destruction the world had ever seen.

In Moscow, they stood in line for toilet paper, and wondered in their darker moments if their massive military machine — then quagmired in Afghanistan — could perform at all.

But perhaps most important was that Reagan served as the West's sunny salesman for liberty, and just as committed a moral foe of Soviet Communism.

Reagan noted on several occasions that the Soviets "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat," and he wasn't just talking about how the Kremlin dealt with the rest of the world, but how it treated its own people.

Here's perhaps the closest Reagan ever came to publicly announcing his endgame: "What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy… will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."

Reagan said that to the British Parliament in 1982, and I don't need to close my eyes to hear those words in his voice.

And Another Thing: It certainly helped that Reagan had like-minded allies. The UK had Margaret Thatcher, who was Reagan before Reagan was. Also, West Germany's Helmut Kohl, and even Pope John Paul II in Rome. Trump has Bibi Netanyahu, Javier Milei, and (only sometimes) Giorgia Meloni.

Reagan's goal wasn't merely to present the Kremlin with bad choices, but to force the USSR into an impossible dilemma: put their moribund system in direct competition with a renewed and dynamic America, or abandon Communism. The best they could manage was Gorbachev's half-assed attempts at reform — glasnost and perestroika — and the rest really was the ash-heap of history.

Unleash the economy, rebuild the military, relentlessly make the moral case against Communism, and keep doing it until the Russkies crack.

"We win, they lose" was the exact right formulation for the bifurcated Cold War world.

Things are far too messy now for a four-word Trump Doctrine. But in recent weeks, the outline has come into focus.

"Retaking" the Panama Canal and removing Nicolás Maduro put China on notice that the Monroe Doctrine is back. The mainstream media barely notices, but serious foreign policy shops have taken note of Beijing's reduced diplomatic, economic, and even military footprint in our hemisphere. 

Taking Iran's decades-long proxy war against us directly to them is even more beneficial. The Islamic Republic is the primary source of conflict in the Middle East and of terrorism around the world. Ending that regime would greatly reduce the need for a large U.S. military presence in the region and the risk of us getting drawn into yet another conflict. Trump's blockade of Iran's ports also put the world on notice that the petrodollar is now backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Navy. 

How's that BRICS displacement of "dollar hegemony" coming along, Comrade Xi?

As a bonus, moving against Maduro and the Islamic Republic also took away Beijing's primary sources of discount oil. Nifty.

Then there's Indonesia, which on Monday entered a Major Defense Cooperation Partnership with the U.S. Not all the terms are yet public, but an MDCP involves combined military exercises, streamlined access to American weapons, and, in the case of Indonesia, probably military overflights, too. Less than an entangling alliance, it greases the gears for us to fight as allies, should the need arise.

Nearly two-thirds of China’s imports — largely the raw materials that keep its export machine humming — and a whopping 80% of its energy imports pass through Indonesia’s Strait of Malacca.

While Russia made a big show that same day of highlighting Indonesia's "growing role" in the BRICS economic zone, War Secretary Pete Hegseth more quietly brought the country under America's military umbrella. 

BRICS looks less like a potential economic rival and more like a laughingstock, and that's no accident. That's because, like the Reagan Doctrine, the economy underpins everything Trump wants to accomplish.

There’s no Trump Doctrine without strong growth and domestic production of strategic resources, from rare earths to bleeding-edge chips. Trump's carrot-and-stick approach of deregulation at home and tariffs abroad is designed to deliver both.

But there's more to it than containing China or making America great again. The Trump Doctrine aims to secure something larger: what some now call Greater North America.

And Another Thing: Maybe an underappreciated part of the Trump Doctrine is that while violence is sometimes required to correct our past failings, Trump prefers to keep it to a minimum. He'll whisk Maduro away in the dead of night, then make accommodations with the surviving regime. Trump will pummel Iran by air and sea, but not involve us in another fruitless nation-building exercise. He'll leverage Indonesia's China fears (and its need for access to our markets) to give the U.S. a potential stranglehold over China's most exposed chokepoint. Trump's messaging often makes him sound reckless, but he acts decisively and efficiently.

I first heard of the Greater North America concept while taping Right Angle with Bill Whittle and Scott Ott on Tuesday, and initially mistook it for some hare-brained attempt at establishing autarky. Autarky is the economic philosophy of loser states like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — both deservedly defunct.

Greater North America isn't that, and it isn't the North American Union, EU-like superstate of conspiracy theories. Instead, GNA is a security and geopolitical framework encompassing everything from Alaska to Cuba, from Greenland to the Panama Canal. Plus Venezuela and assorted bits of South America, just because we can.

As for Mexico... that's just a drug-addled basket case. Not much to do there but secure the border, provide the occasional assist on whacking a drug lord, and pray for the best.

And Another Thing: There are other elements, such as the Abraham Accords, aimed at creating an Israeli-Arab bloc, perhaps now aimed at unifying the region against any resurgence of revolutionary Islamic zeal out of Iran. But I'm trying to stick to the bigger picture.

Trump, according to Hegseth in a speech last week, redrew "the strategic map from Greenland to the Gulf of America – we call this map the Greater North America." Think of GNA as a strategic perimeter for U.S. defense planning, resource security, and countering external influence.

GNA doesn't mean retreating from the world — as if the world's 900-pound nuclear-armed gorilla could even do that. But if I've read Trump correctly, it does "build the wall," to borrow another bit of Trump-speak, around the parts most essential to our security and prosperity. 

And Another Thing: It occurs to me that I didn't think to mention NATO, even in passing. I guess that's what happens when the Germans don't have enough soldiers to put on a proper parade, and the Royal Navy can't sortie so much as a single destroyer to the Persian Gulf. Neither Trump nor I wrote Europe out of the script. They did.

I'm not yet 100% sold on GNA — we'll have to wait and see how events play out in Iran over the next few months, in the Pacific over the next few years, and in our ability to eventually onshore production of strategic materials and components. But whatever you, I, or anyone else thinks, the Trump Doctrine is now clear to anyone willing to see. That's regardless of whether Trump, Hegseth, or Secretary of State Marco Rubio ever spells out every step.

Like Reagan's "We win, they lose," there are things sitting presidents — not even Trump — can't say in public. 

If there's a similar historical vision, it belongs to none other than Thomas Jefferson. Admittedly, Jefferson and Trump could not be more different in more ways than I care to count. But if there is a Trump Doctrine, and if I've read it correctly, the two men may share a common vision for America.

Jefferson often wrote of the United States as an "empire of liberty." His contribution to that empire was, of course, the Louisiana Purchase. With the stroke of his pen and an almost embarrassingly small payment to France, Jefferson nearly doubled the size of the U.S., gave us control of the vital Mississippi River valley, and put us within striking distance of the Pacific Ocean.

Impressive as all that is, Jefferson's final vision was something even grander, a North American empire of liberty including Canada, Cuba, and all points in between.

"But, altho’ with difficulty, [Napoleon] will consent to our receiving Cuba into our union to prevent our aid to Mexico & the other provinces," Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1809. "That would be a price, & I would immediately erect a column on the Southernmost limit of Cuba & inscribe on it a Ne plus ultra as to us in that direction."

"We should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation," Jefferson added, "And I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self-government."

Trump's vision is a bit larger because, well, Trump.

"This is what we did in World War II. We called it the 'quarter sphere defense,' and we will do this again if we're serious about our national security [and] if we prioritize geography," Hegseth explained at a U.S. Southern Command conference in March.

And Another Thing: Canada doesn't actually need to become our 51st state — although Alberta and perhaps Saskatchewan might make welcome additions — but Canada's Third World-like devolution and increasing subservience to Beijing cannot continue. So keep an eye on this space for future (and previously unimaginable) developments.

The Trump Doctrine then is best summarized as containing China, making the U.S. self-sufficient in energy and strategic materials, and reducing our military exposure to the chaotic world beyond Greater North America.

If you forced me to put it the way Reagan might have — while keeping it pure Trump — I’d go with: "We win. Deal with it, losers." That's still messier than Reagan's line, but the world truly is a much messier, more dangerous place than it was in 1980.

The Trump Doctrine is about keeping our little quarter of it tidy and safe.

Last Thursday: Endgame, Iran... or the Start of Something Worse?