(Editor’s note: this column was written immediately after Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory. Read Srdja Trifkovic’s disappointed reconsideration of President-Elect Trump’s eventual foreign policy appointments in this Nov. 21 online piece, “All the President’s Neocons.”)

In his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017, Donald Trump outlined a foreign policy strategy based on pragmatically defined interests. “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs” will be made to benefit Americans, he said. 

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.

It seemed a long shot that he would get a second opportunity; now that he has it, let us hope he repeats every word in that paragraph. It is strange that policy analysts and media pundits both in America and in Europe routinely accuse Donald Trump of being unpredictable and erratic regarding foreign affairs. In fact, during this year’s campaign, he has made a series of statements related to the pressing global issues which are fairly clear and reasonable. 

On Gaza, for instance, after speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August, Trump said that the Israeli leader should terminate the war. “It has to get over with fast, but have victory, get your victory, and get it over with,” he said. “It has to stop. The killing has to stop.” 

The question, of course, is what constitutes “victory” for Israel. That may prove a contentious issue, but at least Trump is not waffling about ceasefires and negotiations, which neither side seriously wants at this time. His straightforwardness is likely to be an asset when dealing with an old fox of Netanyahu’s ilk.

More importantly, when we look at Trump’s likely foreign policy team, we encounter an encouraging realist contingent (notably Elbridge Colby, Keith Kellogg, and Fred Fleitz), in addition to a few standard neocons (primarily Robert O’Brien). The first three are sound people with well-developed positions on world affairs. Their influence was evident in Trump’s promise to end the war in Ukraine even before beginning a second term and his subsequent questioning the level of U.S. support to Kiev. During last September’s ABC debate, when asked, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” he replied as a hard-nosed realist: 

I want the war to stop. I want to save lives. It’s the U.S.’ best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.

According to Trump’s inner circle, including officials from his first administration, he wants Ukraine to negotiate based on the current front lines. Ukraine’s NATO membership should be postponed for at least a decade or replaced with the promise of an expedited path to European Union membership. Russia would get the lifting of sanctions in exchange for offering Ukraine some kind of long-term security structure. 

Trump has been attacked for supporting this approach and will continue to be attacked, but his opponents have been unable to chart a viable path to Kiev’s victory. Zelensky’s description of “victory” presented in the U.S. last summer requires NATO membership and using heavy U.S. weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia, both of which Trump is certain to refuse. He will continue to provide support for Ukraine, but with the aim of encouraging a willingness to negotiate rather than insisting on an unconditional victory.

As for NATO itself, during the campaign Trump appeared to dismiss Article 5, which commits the U.S. to defending European allies. “Most politicians have said to that, yes, we will protect you under any circumstances,” he said. “Well, then they’re never paying up. I said, no, no, you have to understand. You don’t pay your bills. You get no protection. It’s very simple.” This is utter heresy to the Beltway establishment, which cherishes its exceptionalist delusions and love of cultural engineering embodied in NATO. 

Trump did not say so outright, but he evidently thinks that without the push by NATO to include Ukraine in its alliance, there would not have been a war in Ukraine. The notion that there are East European dominos doomed to fall to Russia one after another without NATO’s protection ignores the fact that Russia evacuated them long before those countries joined NATO. 

Trump will have a solid ally regarding NATO in Elbridge Colby, who will hold a senior defense post in the Trump administration. Colby favors leaving Europe to its own devices and focusing on the Pacific region. In his opinion, it is there that America faces a long-term threat from China that is far more serious than anything that Russia poses.

Colby has been tireless in making the reasonable point over the years that limited resources make it impossible for the U.S. simultaneously to contain Russia in the West and keep China in check in the East. China is the real would-be hegemon. If Colby becomes the Pentagon’s top dog, it will be a clear signal that Trump’s grand strategy will be focused on a massive pivot eastward, to the region which is becoming the center of global economic gravity.

To further develop, defend, and eventually apply Trump’s plans on Ukraine, there’s the duet of Fred Fleitz and Keith Kellogg, who drafted the plan for ending the war in Ukraine outlined above. The proposal marks the most detailed preview yet of what a Trump White House’s Ukraine policy could look like if Fleitz and Kellogg joined the administration.

An old Trump stalwart, Stephen Miller, is likely to be put in charge of immigration. He knows what is being done to America by the enemy within and what needs to be done to stop it. “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller told The New York Times. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.” Mass deportations and “vast holding facilities” to detain those awaiting deportation will be introduced. “I don’t care what the hell happens in this world,” Miller said in a podcast interview earlier this year. “If President Trump gets reelected, the border’s going to be sealed, the military will be deployed, the National Guard will be activated, and the illegals are going home.” 

To be effective, such measures need to be accompanied by a PR campaign conducted by Trump himself, with his open and resolute rejection of the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited, developed, and defended them for generations; that they can and should belong instead to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment.

Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth and so far last national security advisor, is arguably the most problematic member of the inner circle. He participated in the July-August issue of Foreign Affairs, which made the neocon foreign policy case. His article, “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy,” is poorly reasoned and deeply flawed. It is effectively a neoconservative wish list cloaked as a Trumpist manifesto. Let us hope that it is not an accurate summary of what Trump 2024 actually believes and intends to do.

In Trump’s second term, America will go back to being scary, O’Brien wrote. It will return the competition with China to the level of ideology and cherish no illusions about cooperation with Beijing. It will reapply utmost pressure on Iran and refrain from any effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will boost arms deliveries to Ukraine in order to force Russia to negotiate on America’s terms. At the same time, it will pressure Europeans to foot the bill and accept Ukraine into the European Union immediately; it will refrain from using rhetoric against NATO and America’s allies. It will boost both nuclear and conventional arsenals.

The tone and substance of the article reflects the fact that O’Brien is one of the few conventional Republicans to have served and survived under Trump while not making himself odious to the foreign policy establishment. He is an opportunist who accepted Biden’s 2020 victory as legitimate but remained at his post in the turbulent final weeks of Trump’s tenure. In his blueprint, there is no significant divergence from the strategic thought—if one can call it that—of the neoconservative-neoliberal duopoly that has shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades.

In O’Brien’s interpretation, the Reaganite notion of “peace through strength” means that America must flex its muscles to re-establish its credibility. Of course, this has been the standard mantra in Republican foreign policy circles for a long time. But O’Brien’s “strength” means proactive imposition of America’s will, not merely the ability to deter and defeat aggression.

O’Brien rejects the notion of cooperative competition with Beijing. He believes that America can and should coerce the People’s Republic into accepting a modus vivendi strictly on Washington’s terms. Some of his proposed measures are eccentric, to put it mildly, such as deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Indo-Pacific, or arming Vietnam as lavishly as Israel. 

O’Brien’s suggestions are in some respects the exact opposite of Colby’s geopolitical design. Boosting arms deliveries to Ukraine to intensify pressure on Russia while at the same time pivoting to China and subjecting it to de facto dictates is not a strategy—it is a death wish.

Soon after he started his first term, almost eight years ago, it had become clear that Trump’s idiosyncratic approach to decision-making lacked consistency and discipline. He started facing concerted obstacles from the upholders of old bipartisan orthodoxy within his own early team. Let us hope that he has learned from his mistakes (Pence, Tillerson, McMaster, Mattis, Bolton, et al.) and that he will weed out potential neoconservative Trojan horses like O’Brien from candidacy for senior positions.

Whatever happens in the foreign sphere, the process of moral and cultural erosion of the American nation will continue unless Trump becomes an open culture warrior. Still perfectly safe across the ocean from external threats, America has begun ruining itself through cultural self-destruction. If this decline is not checked, even the most brilliant geostrategic ploy in the Middle East or in the South China Sea will not save us. It is in the American interest that Trump uses the greatest comeback in our political history to turn the Empire back into the Republic. ◆