On a usually uneventful Thursday night the hazy “America First” foreign policy was rebranded into a catchy axiom. The new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) christened it the “Trump Corollary” to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine. The message is clear: the Trump administration prioritizes the defense of the homeland and its vast periphery spanning the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. Against this backdrop, Trump intends to allocate more resources closer to home calling for increased burden-sharing with allies and partners abroad to offset the American reduced commitment. To reassert preeminence in the Western Hemisphere the U.S. is poised to intervene “through various means” in its bid to prevent collaboration between governments in the Americas and foreign powers. In a manner that serves both his grandiloquent style and the credibility of his strategy, President Trump seeks to weave his vision into the historical fabric of widely acceptable and successful policies of the past to appear as their intellectual continuity at the present. Despite generic similitudes, juxtaposing the different dogmas does not yield the ideological compatibility the President is so keen on invoking.
A new old doctrine
Conceptually, there is nothing novel to the Trumpian tenet of isolationism. On the surface, it is indeed a reiteration of the old Monroe Doctrine recast in the 21st century geopolitical context. Both dogmas diabolize external influence in the Americas deeming it an immediate threat to national security; both call for scaled-down engagement abroad in favor of scaled-up preparedness- and more treasury available- at home. But beneath their common theoretical foundation lie stark differences.
Instead of insulating the Western Hemisphere from the maximalist designs of antagonizing European great powers, the “America First” policy aims to neutralize hybrid threats, pre-empt destabilizing acts, and check political instability in the Americas that endanger not only the safety of the homeland but also the rule of the man who expounded it. Hence, in its operationalization, Trump’s doctrine differs from Monroe’s in its strategic posture: it’s not purely defensive- triggered once a foreign power trespasses on the mental borders of the Western Hemisphere; it can be aggressive- translated into coercive action even when Western Hemisphere actors, be they state or non-state, are not in alignment with the U.S. interests.
In that, Trump’s vision is less close to the original Monroe Doctrine than it is to the latter’s addendum- the “Roosevelt Corollary”. As the poster-child of realism in American foreign policy, Theodore Roosevelt brought to the fore the so-called “gunboat diplomacy” paving the way for American interventionism in South America and the Caribbean. Today’s airstrikes against alleged drug smugglers off the Venezuelan cost and the accompanying threats to topple the Maduro regime are reminiscent of the early 20th century military operations in Panama, Cuba, and Nicaragua. T. Roosevelt based his famous corollary on the logic that weak and corrupt governments in the Western Hemisphere would become the region’s underbelly inviting interference from non-Hemispheric powers. The same argument had been put forth by President Polk to justify his war on Mexico in the 1840s that resulted in the U.S. southward territorial expansion. Trump applies this narrative to his own corollary. From this perspective, the aggressive scope of the professed interventionism is dulled by its defensive justification positing that it’s triggered only to counter a strategic threat.
But Theo Roosevelt did not have a great power competition to manage. Nor did he preside over a set of global institutions affording his nation unprecedented influence. He still had to use sticks to entrench America’s position in the Western Hemisphere protecting the galloping growth of his country’s strength from the Europeans’ unquenched thirst for expansionism. More importantly, despite his interventionism in the Western Hemisphere Roosevelt had steered clear from meddling in the internal affairs of other regions. In a different mood, the “Trump Corollary” pledges “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory” vowing to encourage Trump’s like-minded European parties in their effort to revive a spirit of European nationalism founded upon the “unapologetic celebration” of European nations’ individual character and history. This is clear-cut meddlesomeness into an American ally’s political affairs. The fact that this interference is directed against the unity and coherence of a strong European Union- funneling the winds of divisiveness rather than fostering European collectiveness- makes it even more alarming. It is also contradictory to other parts of Trump’s strategy calling for a self-confident and mighty Europe.
Further, coming back to the comparison with the original Monroe Doctrine, the drivers behind the two dogmas diverge. Rather than dictated by the pressing need to shield the fledgling American nation from the ravaging antagonisms of the (then) more powerful Europeans, who had blank-checked interventionism against liberalism under the banner of stability in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Trump’s isolationism is a choice. Less out of a calculated plan premised upon the belief that this particular foreign policy trajectory will help advance the U.S. national interest in the long-run than out of an instinct for political survival domestically, the Trump administration’s push for an inward turn serves its MAGA mantra.
The foreign/domestic nexus
An “America First” foreign policy is key to Trump’s domestic agenda. For starters, it removes the messianic, neo-liberal mantle of Washington’s conduct abroad that went hand in hand with U.S. domestic politics. No longer bound by an ideologically charged narrative used to serve America’s image as a beacon of democracy, Trump enjoys more flexibility to tilt to authoritarianism at home. The noble cause of carrying the flag of democracy and freedom around the world was rooted in the pursuit of a moralistic, values-based foreign policy. For Trump, these notions are vague, even inimical to American core interests. So is multilateralism embodied in U.S.-led global institutions to safeguard- as previous administrations believed- the American hegemony.
Winning the hearts and the minds of people overseas by advocating for more freedom and pluralism required a similar stance at home, lest the U.S. leadership stepped into the trap of hypocrisy. When Trump switches to a power-based foreign policy embracing isolationism and assertiveness in the Western Hemisphere he simultaneously frees his hands to tighten the grip of his sway at home. By changing America’s foreign policy goals, as well as the means to accomplish them, Trump does not feel the need to hide his despotic proclivities domestically. While meddling in other countries and toppling “disobedient” regimes in the U.S. neighborhood, he can target migration and silence opposition within the country.
The “Trump Corollary” draws its inspiration from past policies that constituted the backbone of the U.S. strategy in critical times. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine and the 1904 “Roosevelt Corollary” have been judged generally successful because they were exactly what Washington’s interests necessitated at the time: an assertive isolationism to shelter America’s gradual development from a middle-rank power to the powerhouse that emerged triumphant out of two catastrophic world wars. It is true that the “Trump Corollary” resembles the conceptual base of its famous predecessors. It lacks, however, their clarity and the foreign policy acumen that designed their implementation. Moreover, the circumstances around, and the motives behind, the enunciation of Trump’s grand scheme differ significantly with those prevailing in the establishment of the older dogmas with which he wants to identify. Espousing a nationalistic “America First” foreign policy abroad to boost his chauvinistic appeal domestically, President Trump endorses an isolationism that contrasts with the one pursued by Monroe or T.Roosevelt, which was calculated on purely geopolitical grounds. More crucially, Trump’s isolationism might no longer serve America. A nation whose internationalism has been the bedrock of its undisputed primacy since the fall of the Soviet Union, has more to lose than to gain from the upending of the very institutions and alliances that have enabled its ascendancy.
Vasilis Petropoulos is a Research Fellow at ELIAMEP’s Security and Foreign Policy Program specializing in great power competition, transatlantic affairs, and Chinese foreign policy. He has held research roles in think tanks and NGOs in the United States and Europe, such as the International Crisis Group in Brussels and Istanbul, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington DC, and the Berghof Foundation in Berlin. He has completed a Master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) focusing on conflict resolution and great power competition at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
