The meaning of “America First” is in flux
MAGA will have to confront divisions in its approach to foreign policy
Once people thought Donald Trump was at heart an isolationist or a “restrainer”, a kind of isolationist-lite. Air strikes in the Middle East during his first term could be chalked up to the neoconservatives around him. Then the president returned to office and attacked Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. He is mounting a pressure campaign for Greenland, which he says is “psychologically needed for success”. International-relations theorists now liken him to a 19th-century realist prowling for natural resources. Others see a man who relishes domination, and the unilateral exercise of power for power’s sake.
Mr Trump operates by instinct, not ideology. He is petty and partial to seeing his name on buildings and maps. His yen for Greenland stems partly from the fact that he was passed over for a Nobel peace prize, and partly by his desire to rival Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana. That he might torpedo NATO in the process is second order. Yet for more methodical MAGA thinkers, that is a central project.
Indeed, Mr Trump’s flexibility belies the fact that within the MAGA movement there are cohering ideologies—competing ones—about how America should exercise power in the world. J.D. Vance, his vice-president, is more serious about restraint and more contemptuous of European liberal democracies. Other advisers—Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller—reveal different reflexes still. They are worth scrutinising because they will outlast Mr Trump. Their ideas have a lineage and a future beyond the personalism of the president.
“America First” once meant hawkishness towards China; contempt for multilateral organisations; and disinterest in Ukraine, which can look a lot like Russophilia. These are still tenets. But the ambit has shifted. Now America First also means dominating the western hemisphere by smashing cartels, claiming Greenland’s rare-earth minerals and commandeering Venezuelan oil. This last piece is entirely new. During the campaign Mr Trump was very interested in people from Latin America who crossed the US-Mexico border, but not at all in Latin America itself, notes Julian Waller of George Washington University. In Europe the Trump administration increasingly wants to use its leverage to “reform” (ie, strong-arm) liberal governments to become more MAGA-fied.
Mr Trump says that America First means whatever he decides and his only constraint is his “own morality”. He has convictions: an antipathy to forever wars, nation-building, trade deficits and free-riding allies. But otherwise he is flexible. He wants to turn his back on Ukraine, but he would like to win a peace prize and not be perceived as a loser. He is impulsive: he bombed Islamist militants in Nigeria after watching a segment on Fox News about besieged Christians. His hold on the Republican party means his voters adapt to his inconsistencies.
Anyone searching for a more coherent worldview can look to his advisers. The National Security Strategy (NSS), released in December, articulated their priorities. The document was both their attempt to justify their boss’s instincts and backfill an ideology, while also advancing their own pet causes. It contained two remarkable statements: the Trump Corollary (later dubbed the Donroe Doctrine), which asserts American primacy in the western hemisphere, and a warning about Europe’s “civilisational erasure”.
The Donroe Doctrine had its first success in the ousting of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The faces of that operation were Mr Rubio, the secretary of state, and Mr Miller, a hardline adviser. Mr Rubio is a traditional Republican and a son of Cuban émigrés. His interest in toppling communist dictatorships in the region and seeding democracy there is deep and personal. He calls to mind the hawkish evangelism of a neocon—which he was during his 14 years in the Senate.
Mr Miller’s interest in the western hemisphere is animated by immigration. At home he has masterminded the administration’s deportation machine, with its theatrics and supposed focus on criminals. This helps to explain the Caribbean boat strikes and the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. Indeed the Venezuela campaign marked an “externalisation” of a domestic agenda that brings military might to drug and immigration enforcement, says Jennifer Kavanagh of Defence Priorities, a think-tank. The goal is domination everywhere, including in American cities.
After the release of the NSS some interpreted the Trump administration to be adopting a spheres-of-influence approach. This would involve American preeminence in the western hemisphere while letting China and Russia do as they please in their backyards. That is a misreading, says Patrick Porter, a professor of geopolitics at the University of Birmingham in Britain, since it would imply a mutual carve-up of the globe. In fact, the administration still wants to project power in Europe and check Russian expansionism.
Restrainers have been frustrated. Last year the Trump administration secured a commitment from European countries to spend 5% of GDP on defence, to be achieved with some budget gimmickry. That is not a win, says Ms Kavanagh, a restrainer. Her camp wants America to leave Europe full-stop.
Instead the Trump administration is setting conditions on American protection and suggesting it will walk away from NATO, a foundation of the country’s security strategy since the cold war. Mr Vance delivered them in Munich last year in a speech full of contempt for European governments. He said Europe would need to confront the “enemy within”, by which he meant woke, censorious elites who censor speech, support open borders and refuse to govern in coalition with far-right populists. The NSS revisits these themes. It warns that Europe will be “unrecognisable” in 20 years unless it rights itself. The Trump administration is giving it a shove. After the release of the strategy, the State Department put a visa ban on a former EU commissioner and architect of the Digital Services Act, a European law mandating content moderation by tech firms. MAGA blames it for suppressing its viewpoints.
Mr Vance is the most committed MAGA thinker in the administration. He reflects the intellectual vibes of the new right. Their outlook is often influenced by Catholicism and can be deeply pessimistic and suffused with cultural anxiety. Nathan Pinkoski of the Centre for Renewing America, a new-right think-tank, says strategic rivalry with China crystallised an “identity crisis” among MAGA types. They looked around and saw a West enfeebled by mass migration and wokery. “If we want to be able to contend with our geopolitical rivals, we have to sort out our own problems,” he says. He anticipates a more aggressive use of economic tools against Europeans whenever “we perceive they are drifting away from their civilisational heritage”.
Of course there are contradictions here, which MAGA has yet to clear up. Antagonising Europeans with tariffs, sanctions and visa bans will not help in the great-power contest with China. America cannot walk away from European defence and simultaneously compel Europeans to govern in the MAGA mould. “Burden-shifting and civilisational politics don’t go hand in hand,” says Sumantra Maitra, who advocates the first approach and calls advocates of the second “practically neocons”. He predicts a coming struggle that will “essentially engulf” the MAGA movement. It is easy to understand what Democrats are for, he says. They are internationalists. The other side? Unresolved.
