How Trump disrupts geopolitics while shouting 'America First'

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on September 5, 2025. Trump on Friday signed an order rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War, saying it sent a "message of victory" to the world.[AFP]

From 1986 when Ronald Reagan was in his second and final term as US president, a new law, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, required that each president produce a new strategy document of how he intended to run the country and with what resources. Reagan intended to roll back the Soviet Union and force the Soviets to seek “negotiated surrender.”

He produced a National Security Strategy document in 1987 that was the first to outline regional policy. Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz had in 1984 called for use of the military in launching “active prevention, preemption and retaliation [and] must be willing to use military force…. We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations,” Schultz said and repeated it in May 2002, “worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond.”

Those who followed Reagan had to deal with the consequences of new forces and a world without the Soviet Union. Reagan’s vice-president, George HW Bush oversaw the actual collapse of the Soviet System by inducing Mikhail Gorbachev to “negotiate surrender” with promises of financial aid and commitments that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not threaten Russia by expanding into Eastern Europe.

He shifted from “containment” to “collective engagement” to confront the next major power threat and use “American power to promote American values abroad.” Bill Clinton, aiming to change Russia, overlooked the Bush commitment and Russian security concerns in his idea of “enlargement.”

He supported NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. Clinton’s 1999 National Security Strategy stated that “NATO enlargement has been a crucial element of US and Allied strategy to build an undivided peaceful Europe.” To Clinton, the US was the “indispensable nation” in globalizing the world in the American image.

In the 21st Century, globalization contradictions emerged in part due to the emergence of terrorism as a determinant in world affairs. Although Clinton had, as of 1998 when Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida bombed American symbols of Power in East Africa, considered terrorism “the dominant threat facing the United States,” it was George W. Bush who had to deal with the reality of global terrorism when Osama’s Al-Qaida destroyed symbols of American power within the United States on September 11, 2001; they destroyed the twin towers in New York as symbols of US global economic might and bombed the Pentagon in Washington DC as symbol of global American military power. Osama’s success in attacking the US became the excuse for launching preemptive attacks.

In his 2002 strategy, George W. Bush called for ‘preemption,’ allowing the US to strike anyone it considered a potential enemy. Condolezza Rice cited Schultz, saying, “if there is a rattlesnake in the yard, you don’t wait for it to strike before acting in self-defense.” Yale’s Charles Hill noted preemption as “an accepted reality in international security since ancient times,” citing Sparta attacking Athens, Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Reagan in Granada. In preparing to strike terrorists, Bush’s preemption strategy “recognized an established reality.”

Preemptive action

A few months later, with Britain’s Tony Blair, Bush took preemptive action by attacking Iraq, arguing it was obtaining uranium from Niger and had weapons of mass destruction. Among the casualties was Secretary of State Colin Powell, who presented inaccurate information at the UN. In March 2006, Bush outlined a strategy of “working to end tyranny” and spreading “democracy” through “if necessary … use of force before attack.” Though a Republican, his logic resembled Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s World War I aim to make the world safe for democracy.

Bush’s successors, Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, were similar to him in many ways. Obama justified the Iraq war while crafting his 2010 national security strategy to safeguard US interests, regardless of other countries’ views.

Vice President Biden focused on out-competing China and “constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia,” which may have misled Ukraine’s President Zelensky into provoking Russia.

In 2022, Russia started a war in which both sides claimed to be right. Zelensky argued Ukraine had the right to join NATO despite Russia’s objections. Russia, invoking the Schultz-Bush logic of preemptive strikes, acted in self-defense. Critics of Biden’s role included former President Trump, who in 2016 narrowly won the presidency amid claims of Russian influence, and in 2020, he alleged a stolen election, convincing many Americans.Trump became the second person, besides Grover Cleveland in 1888, to make a presidential comeback after a four year interlude. He was also the first convict to capture the American presidency and he was angry with the world system that his post-World War II predecessors had created.

In his belief that they had ignored the WASP essence of the United States in their effort to remake the world in the American image, he stressed the ‘America First’ doctrine in overthrowing that post-World War geopolitical mentality.

In his brief term, replacing Biden, Trump disdains his predecessors and, while sharing some approaches, distances himself by shouting “America First” to discredit them. Bush started the Iraqi War as preemptive warfare, though he was not the first. Obama went into Afghanistan and endorsed the Arab Spring, removing Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and ending Muamar Gaddafi in Libya.

Biden, besides encouraging William Ruto to send Kenyan police to Haiti, introduced what Putin sees as “rattlesnakes” in Russia’s yard: Ukraine.

While critical of past presidents, Trump repeated their actions, calling them America First. He persuaded Ruto to provide Kenyan medical data to corporate America for 25 years. His November 2025 National Security Strategy called on US embassies to seek business opportunities: “Every US government official … should help American companies compete.” He also aims for his own ‘Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, similar to Teddy Roosevelt’s, giving the US a right to intervene in Latin America to block European influence.

The Trump Corollary would give the US the right to stop migrations and prevent Western Hemisphere countries from ceding ‘strategic assets’ to powers like China. His National Security Strategy emphasizes controlling the region: “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity, allowing us to assert ourselves confidently where needed.”   

Trump’s National Security Strategy deviated from predecessors, repeatedly criticizing them as weak and incompetent. It claimed the American elite had offloaded defense costs onto the US and dragged the country into conflicts serving others’ interests. Trump boasted that no administration had achieved so dramatic a turnaround in nine months, “putting America First.” This slogan also signaled a return to pre-World War II racial hierarchies. He renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War, emphasized ‘enemies within’ in cities with large populations of color, and considered deploying the military for ‘training.’

Global talents 

The Strategy opposed “radical ideologies that replace competence and merit with favored groups, rendering America unable to defend itself” and criticized international meritocracy for opening the US labor market under the guise of “global talent” that undercuts American workers. Trump was against migrants and sought to export this anti-immigrant stance to Europe.

Trump also claimed Europe was under threat of “erasure” through migration, leading to “loss of identity and self-confidence.” The strategy warned that unless migration of non-Europeans stopped, “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years…certain NATO members will become non-European.” Europe must remain European, regain civilizational confidence, and abandon regulatory overreach. In the US, preventing ‘erasure’ meant deporting migrants, a key America First priority.

The document shows Trump’s bellicosity, reserving America’s right to intervene anywhere, unconstrained by international law. While “the laws of nature and nature’s God” grant countries “separate and equal stations,” that does not prohibit intervention. “For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours,” it declared, “rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible.”

It emphasized that the US would “not allow any nation to threaten our interests” and wants “all countries” to choose whether to live in an American-led world of sovereign states.

Trump’s disdain for international norms is supported by figures like Richard Perle, former Pentagon Policy Board member, who in 2002 remarked on the “death of the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order… the wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.

”Trump considers the UN virtually useless as he uses the Schultz-Bush logic to threaten war on oil rich Nigeria and Venezuela by accusing them of being anti-Christian or of peddling drugs. He is reorganizing the United States internally and disorganizing global geopolitics while shouting “America First.”