Trump has fundamentally changed the approach of the United States in the military-strategic area. Each U.S. government submits a public document that summarizes and expresses the government’s thinking about the country’s role in the world according to the threats it faces. The version presented on December 5 presented a completely different vision than that in place in the last three Democratic administrations (both Obama and Biden). There was no change of this magnitude during Trump’s first term (from 2017 to 2021). In both Bush Jr. administrations the enemy was Islamic terrorism and in the three subsequent Democratic administrations it was China.. Even further back in time, in the 1990s, the current view was that the United States had become the sole superpower after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. What Trump is saying now is not the result of improvisation, but rather the elaboration of his experiences from the past term in office. In it, he claimed China as the main adversary, but at the same time maintained a dialogue-oriented attitude that even reached the dictator of North Korea. But neither the US national strategy document nor the annual conferences of NATO presidents formulated a “Trump doctrine” per se. Now the American president sees himself in a position to impose his own vision.
Trump’s vision was made clear at the penultimate NATO Heads of Government Conference. This military alliance continued to evolve until the idea that the West faced a “quadruple military alliance” between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea was enforced. This vision was based on the cooperation of these four countries in the military industry. It was a vision that Trump did not share but did not directly engage with. At the Munich Conference in 2024 (the most important at the European level), then Senator JD Vance – when he did not appear as a likely candidate for Vice President – expressed that the United States could not manage three wars at the same time, i.e. He also argued that this required a shift in strategic thinking by the United States and, by extension, NATO. It should be noted that two years earlier, in 2021, the withdrawal of the Atlantic Alliance from Afghanistan took place as a result of the defeat of Western forces. It was a very serious blow militarily for NATO, but they avoided accepting it as such. This was the most important military action outside its own geographical scope (the Atlantic Ocean and its respective coasts). Trump’s military thinking was that the United States should send troops abroad only when necessary to defend objectives vital to its interests.
But on a broader strategic level, the Trump administration is changing its view of global threats in the recently presented document. China is portrayed as a rival or competitor, but not as the main military enemy as before. It should be noted that in the days immediately following the document’s circulation, the US President approved the export of microchips to China. Regarding Taiwan, the document reiterates its support for the country’s independence from Beijing, but does not commit to military intervention to achieve it. The concept regarding Europe He is openly critical. There is talk of “decadence” and a lack of will in the military sector. His stance on the war in Ukraine is obviously critical of European support for that country’s positions. It was a huge blow to the allies, who received no response. By the end of the decade, Europe appears to be unable to have a joint or combined military force capable of countering Russia. Although the Old Continent as a whole has a GDP and military expenditure many times higher than Russia, the interconnection of 32 different military systems creates a number of difficulties that are very difficult to resolve in the short term. As for the Arab world, it no longer represents the risk it once did to U.S. interests but is presented as an opportunity in terms of military alliances and investment.S. Asia and especially Southeast Asia are seen in the same direction. The Indo-Pacific is no longer as central as it was in the past and India barely features in the document.
But all of these changes are consistent with a Trump sentiment that has been repeated several times over the last year and before. Since the election campaign, he has been vocally critical of multilateral organizations, which he ratified at the last United Nations General Assembly in September this year. Specifically, he considered this organization to be “useless.” The same thinking is carried over to organizations such as the OECD, the Monetary Fund, the WTO and others. He repeatedly said he would build bilateral ties with major world leaders: Xi, Putin, Modi, Saudi Prince Salman and Erdogan. Depending on circumstances, he could expand that circle to countries like Indonesia. His idea is that the scope for solving problems is not multilateral organizations, but relevant national and regional leaders. In recent weeks, Trump said he had resolved nine wars in his first year in office: the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh; the India-Pakistan incident; that of Serbia and Kosovo and that of Israel with Iran. Also on the list are the countries Thailand and Cambodia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Congo and Rwanda, Sudan and Egypt and Ethiopia. In the last five cases there have been renewed military clashes. In Ukraine’s wars with Russia and Israel’s wars with Hamas, Trump has made progress but has reached limited final conclusions. In both cases, consider solutions that combine military stabilization forces from third countries with investments for reconstruction.
But a few days later, the White House announced this G5. It is based on the fact that the G20, consisting of twenty countries of different geography, ideology and geopolitical interests, is no longer effective in managing global conflicts, as was the case in the 2008 financial crisis. There is also the idea that the G7, consisting of the seven most important economies with a liberal political system, is no longer an adequate instrument of US foreign policy.
It is a new area of international decision-making consisting of five nations: the United States, China, India, Russia and Japan. (The first four are the main nuclear powers at the global level and the fifth has expressed its intention to take this path with its new prime minister.) Geopolitical interests predominantly determine different spheres of influence and perhaps just friction between China and Japan. But in terms of values, each of these five powers is the axis of a different religion: the United States of Christianity, Russia of Orthodox Catholicism, India of Hinduism, Japan of Shintoism and Buddhism, and China, an anti-religious country, has begun to adopt a more tolerant attitude towards religious practices such as Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.
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