Facing unprecedented and existential threats, Europe needs to finally get a grip on what US foreign policy is in the second Trump administration, without resorting to the coping mechanisms of rationalization and trivialization. I argue that US foreign policy is currently determined by “1+5” factors: Trump's personal hubris unchecked by failing institutions and fuelled by his aides, complemented by five ideological tenets which are starting to solidify and might determine US policy in the post-Trump period: (i) worship of fossil fuels, (ii) war on “wokeness”, (iii) mercantilism, (iv) economics first, and (v) destruction of international law. This framework gives ample room for Trump's notorious unpredictability, but also clearly shows that antagonism towards a free, liberal Europe and the quest to eviscerate the EU are at the core of Trumpism. Europe must rapidly shed its revolting defeatism and publicly move towards a robust and consistent strategy of autonomy and deterrence vis-à-vis not only Russia but also the US in the military, economic and technological domains, exploiting Trump's weaknesses. If our leaders start to lead with vision, clarity and determination, our people will accept the significant temporary costs as a very small price to pay for independence, freedom and dignity.
One year into the second Trump presidency, some key takeaways begin to emerge regarding the current US foreign policy. The dangers it poses, in particular to Europe, must now be taken seriously. The central threat is not only its boldness, speed and aggressiveness, which tend to shock and stun, but also the intellectual incapability of our elites to grasp its irrationality and crassness. Two default coping mechanisms are equally inadequate and dangerous: (i) rationalization in terms of supposed hidden long-term US interests and (ii) trivialization of a clownish Trump at the helm of an administration of idiots. Unfortunately, there are no long-term interests involved and history has shown time and time again how catastrophe ensues when a clique of determined lunatics and fanatics, aided by spineless opportunists is left in charge.
The first line of defence against Trumpism is to lift this mental fog by properly understanding it, which is both simple (as everything is out in the open) and difficult (because of the noise, incoherence, baseness and ridicule it deploys). I will try to show that US foreign policy is dictated by what can be summarized as “1+5” factors: Trump's personal hubris complemented with five partly (while not necessarily coherent) ideological tenets. These dogmas are not dominant, but should be taken very seriously as they might survive long after the current administration. This explanatory framework shows that clear-cut predictions are impossible, while still allowing for an assessment of the degree of likelihood of different scenarios. Incidentally, it also shows that the “realist” school of international relations is not well suited to understand Trumpism – in spite of Trump's entourage and sympathetic commentators often claiming to be realists. Objective US interests are nowhere, Trump's whim everywhere. Cool rationality and pragmatism are absent, while dogmatic narrow-mindedness and vengefulness are omnipotent.
It's the “DJT U.S.A.”
In a nutshell, US foreign policy, even more than domestic policy, is a way for Donald Trump to accumulate and exert personal power and instil fear in others. This includes the pursuit of his family's business interests, but goes far beyond that – Trump ultimately views the US as a private company he took control of after winning the elections and that will allow him to achieve unprecedented greatness. A greatness to be recognized not by history books, but immediately – Trump prefers adulation by his contemporaries to history books. This narcissism, this personal obsession with power and prestige – his profile picture on “Truth Social” with his face in colors of the US flag and his self-naming spree is as ridiculous as it is significant – can be realized only by expanding his conception of US power and prestige, through (i) military supremacy (primarily in terms of spectacular special operations), (ii) territory and (iii) natural resources. The country he is at the helm of is identified with him, in his own words, “the DJT REBUILT U.S.A.”:
“[...] The only Nation that China and Russia fear and respect is the DJT REBUILT U.S.A. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT” (Donald Trump, Truth Social, 7 January 2026)
Given that Trump successfully established a system of personal allegiance of nearly the entire Republican party and the administration – through personal ties, blackmail or naked threats – he is also the main US foreign policy driver. We are dealing not with the United States, but really with the “DJT U.S.A.“ – Donald Trump is the primary and determining factor driving the US foreign policy at the moment.
The consequence of this approach is that personal relationships with foreign leaders play an outsize role in US foreign policy. Personalized regimes, which are either autocratic or deficient democracies, can play the associated feudal games of vassalage, gift-giving, posturing or intimidation much better than democracies with strong institutions and will therefore tend to be privileged by the current administration.
Ideology exists
It is difficult to assess whether for Donald Trump something like values exist and what they would consist of. However, while the “DJT foreign policy” is not ideologically structured or determined, it has left space for a number of dogmatic elements to crystallize around the “Make America Great Again” rallying call, with various degrees of involvement of people close to Trump.
Five of them feature prominently in the new
National Security Strategy as well as in concrete actions taken by the US administration. They are only of secondary importance compared to the personalized element of foreign policy and partly inconsistent. Nevertheless, they play an important role already and could very well turn into the legacy of Trumpism, determining US foreign policy for decades to come. I will go through them in order of importance: (i) worship of fossil fuels, (ii) war on “wokeness”, (iii) mercantilism and love of tariffs, (iv) economics first, and (v) destruction of multilateralism and international law.
Worship of fossil fuels
Control over fossil fuels, as already briefly mentioned above, is a key element by which Trump assesses prestige and success of a nation and its leader. But the fixation on fossil fuels, and oil in particular, goes beyond the value given to other mineral resources. The belief appears to be that oil, coal and natural gas are the keys to prosperity and independence and that the case to develop alternatives, for economic reasons or to combat climate change, is not just wrong but a hoax designed to weaken the US and subsidize adversaries. The only accepted complement, being of only marginal relevance, is nuclear energy, while renewables are actively attacked in the entire world.
“Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority. [...] We reject the disastrous 'climate change' and 'Net Zero' ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.“ (2025 National Security Strategy)
To resist this supposed trap, the goal is to massively increase the worldwide production of fossil fuels and, in parallel, to expand US control over it. This leads the US to adopting oil sanctions and blockades as major tools of foreign policy. It is interesting to note that this worship of fossil fuels goes beyond and in some way against the interests US fossil fuel industry, since it focuses primarily on increasing global production and lowering the oil price.
What consequences can we expect from this new US dogma? Certainly further attacks on climate change science and policies worldwide, but also interventions to force dependence on US oil and gas, coercive action including military force in major oil producing countries all over the world. The energy independence of Europe, which is impossible with fossil fuels, will therefore face serious headwinds.
War on wokeness
The fight against another supposedly existential threat for the US and Western culture is the second tenet of Trumpism which has clear consequences for the US foreign policy. Although “wokeness” is somewhat ill-defined, the administration's anti-woke crusade combines four key elements that are relevant here: (i) condemnation of (illegal, sometimes any form of) transnational migration, (ii) fight against transgender and queer rights and (iii) absolute defense of the “freedom of speech” (that is, of the right kind of speech of Trumpists and their allies), sometimes also a broader, more traditional (iv) vilification of a very broad concept of “leftism” or “communism”.
“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
There is a strong tendency to expand the territory of this conspiratorially minded witch-hunt, in particular to Europe, which Trump and his entourage consider to be the poor little brother to be saved from itself or beaten into submission. Essentially, Trump's (and J. D. Vance's) “war on wokeness” is to be fought in Europe and the administration will actively intervene against ideologically non-aligned governments in Europe. The main vectors have already been used: tech companies (social media, AI) meddling in internal politics as well as commercial and military blackmail.
“Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize: [...] Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations [...] and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed
gives cause for great optimism.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
In the very near future, we should therefore expect and prepare for massive US hybrid activities to ensure far-right, “anti-woke” parties to be elected, to undermine the very foundations of the EU (single market, common commercial policy, common foreign and security policy) and to turn individual states into de facto (and potentially de jure) vassals of the US.
Mercantilism and love of tariffs
The third dogma is the most intriguing one, mainly because it seems to have been the one most strongly and consistently held by Trump himself, independently of recent geopolitical considerations. It seems to originate in a very rudimentary understanding of trade deficits, in which exports are viewed as the income of a firm and imports as costs – the side that exports more thus “wins” and the one importing more “loses”.
This form of primitive mercantilism, often made even cruder by taking into account only trade in goods and ignoring the extremely important area of services, is economically wrong in a number of ways, but more importantly it tends to replace the multidimensional assessment of relationships with other countries with a one-dimensional one. Traditionally, allies would cooperate on security, vote together in multilateral organisations, facilitate the mobility of citizens, develop an intense economic relationship and share similar values such as rule of law, democracy or human rights. In Trump's view, this variety of indicators makes place for a single metric: trade and even more narrowly the balance of trade (who exports more?), as opposed to its openness (are there barriers to trade?) or volume (do we trade a lot?).
“America First diplomacy seeks to rebalance global trade relationships. We have made clear to our allies that America’s current account deficit is unsustainable.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
This simplification, together with the fact that the US structurally has trade deficits not only with China, but also with a number of its traditional allies, which has much do with the US's own hegemonic policies, leads to a paranoid world-view where most other states have been taking advantage of the US – although much of the world would see it exactly the other way around.
Tariffs are meant not only to correct this unfair behaviour by raising revenue off other nations, but are also supposed to be a coercive tool to achieve other foreign policy goals. Since tariffs are supposed to hurt other countries while benefiting the US, a very high level of tariffs could be used to force other countries to give in on other issues. This approach is laid out in the National Security Strategy and was invoked for tariffs against India for buying Russian oil, announced against Iran's trade partners and most recently to blackmail European countries opposing Greenland's annexation.
“The United States will prioritize commercial diplomacy, to strengthen our own economy and industries, using tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
There is, however, also a significant degree of inconsistency in the use of tariffs, as they have been substantially decreased after being hiked during the infamous “liberation day” – in the case of China, but also Brazil without substantial concessions. We can expect more erratic use of tariffs against important trade partners, both as an economic Wunderwaffe and a tool of coercion. So far, it seems that Trump and his administration are not ready to sustain prohibitive levels of tariffs, possibly limited by their worship of the stock market, which takes precedence even on the fetishism of tariffs (I will come to Trump's and therefore the US's fundamental weaknesses more systematically below). This also means that concessions to reduce them should be extremely limited – certainly not giving in to a clearly asymmetric trade agreement breaking WTO rules as the EU did in July.
Economics first
The idea of using tariffs as a broad foreign policy tool is connected to the next ideological assumption – that, in the end, countries will be driven by economic interests and that the US has unique negative and positive leverage in that respect. The positive leverage is based on the idea that the US can provide prosperity through investment and trade. The conflicts Trump claims to have solved all include promises of investment and economic development. The necessary US investment would, however, lead to increased exports to the US (of oil in Venezuela, minerals for Ukraine and DRC, tourists in the case of Gaza), which, according to the mercantilist view, is supposed to be inherently problematic for the US. But this contradiction interestingly is glossed over in these specific cases, where the focus lies on the US being granted specific privileges to benefit from this development.
The two elements of this ideology are that (i) an improved economic outlook can overcome even entrenched conflicts and (ii) the US will benefit from the relevant investments and protection through a form of tribute. While this approach is not exactly equivalent to traditional liberalism, which focuses more on rule of law than on specific deals with the US as the patron, both share the premise that in business interests can trump other – security, cultural, legal – aspects of a conflict. This “economics first” ideology is therefore the most similar to traditional US foreign principles.
“The ultimate objective of the TRIPP is to strengthen the prosperity and security of Armenia and Azerbaijan and further American commerce by expanding regional trade and connectivity as well as create new transit opportunities linking Central Asia and the Caspian to Europe.” (Joint US-Armenia statement, 13 January 2026)
It should be noted that this world-view is subordinate not only to Trump's narcissism, but also to the fossil fuel ideology and the war on wokeness mentioned above. However, it can be relevant when other ideological facts don't matter or work together synergistically. We should expect more simplistic “peace deals” and interventions based on the premise that difficult issues and potential animosities can be solved by rapid investment and the mere promise of prosperity, in particular when territories with natural resources are involved.
Destruction of multilateralism and international law
The fifth and final ideological stance of Trumpist foreign policy is the visceral rejection of multilateralism. It goes far beyond trade, where WTO rules obviously are incompatible with imposing massive and selective tariffs, climate frameworks such as the Paris agreement, which are at odds with the worship of fossil fuels, international criminal justice, towards which the US had always entertained a very problematic relationship, or even humanitarian aid, which is suspected of promoting “wokeness”.
The current administration went so far as to leave dozens of UN and non-UN organisations ranging from counterterrorism to rule of law, piracy or regional cooperation in the Western Balkans. The justification given for this is very broad and amounts to a charge against multilateralism in general:
“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.” (Department of State Press Statement, 7 January 2026)
However, this explanation would still seem to indicate the possibility that multilateral institutions could be valuable in principle, if they were to somehow align with US interests. A more extreme form of this rejection in the administration goes further and discredits “transnationalism” as an “anti-American” attempt to dissolve sovereignty:
“[Our elites] lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
Therefore, it is not just multilateral organisation with executive powers but really all international treaties and customary law that would limit US sovereignty that are considered by this administration as a nuisance that should be quashed. This more fundamental disregard for international law was made clear after the unlawful attack on Venezuela, be it through an internal memo or Stephen Miller's very clear rejection of any international normativity beyond power.
What can we expect for multilateralism? Multilateral organisations in which the US still participates will either be left, vassalised or replaced with ad hoc mechanisms with absolute Trump domination, such as the “Board of Peace”, which includes Sun King like powers for Trump even beyond his term as a President. The EU being the most “transnational” of international organisations as well as the one identified with being at odds with the previously described “war on wokeness” will certainly continue to be ruthlessly attacked by the US administration, with clear intentions of weakening and, ideally destroying it, to ensure full US control over Europe.
To conclude, it is interesting to note that this very radical rejection of multilateralism actually draws on a long and bipartisan tradition in US foreign policy. It clearly has its roots in American exceptionalism, which gives the US – and only the US – the prerogative to set norms and to transgress them. Trump and his entourage have decided to break the multilateral veneer that sought to minimize the number for transgressions by assuming that the legal order itself serves no purpose or is actually counter-productive. Since the US will not be subject to any international norm, the norms themselves can be discarded.
Monroe? More veneer than doctrine
The attentive reader might have noticed that I did not give particular importance to the Trump administration's repeated declared endorsement of the Monroe Doctrine:
“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American
security interests.” (2025 National Security Strategy)
I would argue that the content of the Monroe Doctrine matters much less than giving a veneer of intellectuality to the administration and, even more importantly, being able to coin the horrible “Trump Corollary” (or even worse: “Donroe Doctrine”) as a part of Trump's narcissistic obsession. The focus on the “Hemisphere” is no deeply thought out geopolitical concept, but simply the (indeed correct) understanding that it is practically easier to coerce, invade and possibly annex territories that are close by.
It does therefore not constitute an additional core element of Trumpism and certainly should not be misunderstood as a geographic limitation of Trump's imperial ambition to the Americas, as was already repeatedly demonstrated. The fact that Trump is particularly weak when it comes to Russia and China is, in my view, not due to a “Hemispheric” approach, but to more structural limits of Trumpist foreign policy, which I will come to now.
Fundamental limits
At this stage, one should ask: are there any limits to Trump's ambitions? Apparently not, as the institutions and Trump's entourage leave him entirely unconstrained to pursue his megalomaniac ambitions – and even seem to flatter him into pushing them further and further. The US foreign policy machine currently puts all its means in the service of one goal: making the entire world submit to Trump. However, I would argue that limits in US foreign policy do exist. They arise from weaknesses within Trump's personality that have proven to limit his risk-taking: (i) war, (ii) nuclear posturing and (iii) stock markets. “Trump Always Chickens Out” is definitely incorrect, but “Trump Predictably Chickens Out” so far appears fairly appropriate.
Trump, in spite of his bellicist rhetoric and his extensive use of military force, has been unwilling to start a major war and ended one by de facto capitulating. It is not really important whether this is because he doesn't understand, maybe even despises people ready to sacrifice their own lives for their country, while he dodged the draft, or because having generals in command of complex military operations, and taking the credit for it, is insufferable to him. In any case, I would expect him to stick to military stunts that he can grasp and easily sell as individual achievements. I suspect that this instinctual rejection of larger conflict was central to Trump backing down from military action against Iran in spite of explicitly calling for demonstrators to overthrow the government and promising military help – a despicable, cruel and vile betrayal, even by Trump's standards.
Related to this fear of war is his typical restraint, sometimes even to the point of obsequiousness, when faced with experienced, equally ruthless autocratic political figures. Xi and Putin wield the nuclear threat with far more credibility and authority than he does. They are obsessed with historical greatness, which for them includes their nation's ability to sacrifice, while Trump's obsession is limited to flattery in the present. The somewhat vertiginous nuclear calculation is one that he probably simply cannot comprehend and that puts the US at a massive disadvantage compared to other nuclear powers credibly willing to use their deterrent. Trump, and thus the US, is strong with the weak and weak with the strong, tramples those who follow rules and cows to those who trample them with enough brutality.
Thirdly, the US stock market seems to be the most tangible measure of Trump's success and glory. The US is Trump's firm and its profit are indicated by the Dow Jones and S&P 500. As briefly mentioned, the major selloff in the wake of “liberation day” seems to have led him to substantially walk back on those tariffs. Provoking a negative shock on the US stock markets – which is something the EU can do in many different ways – could prove a potent deterrent for future confrontations.
Europe's outlook
“We have entered a new era.“ This sentence has been written and uttered countless times in the last few years, certainly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the second election of Donald Trump. But merely stating something does not require fully believing or understanding it; unfortunately the majority of commentators and politicians making such statements have not actually grasped how different this new era really is. Even after immediate, direct and repeated US threats against Greenland and Denmark supported by renewed tariff blackmail, most of our leaders cling on to the nefarious code words of submission: “dialogue” for “flattery”, “de-escalation” for “inaction”, and “calm” for “waiting it out”.
We no longer have the luxury of procrastinating, of not understanding or pretending not to understand that, in foreign policy terms, the US is effectively led by a personality cult with an aggressive, imperial outlook on the world, which could morph into an authoritarian regime built on the rejection of international law in general and the EU in particular, seeking to impose its “anti-woke“ crusade to European media and sabotaging European export industries and energy sovereignty.
As much as it seems to pain European elites, they must realize that “Trump whispering” is futile and that US is not just not an ally, that it is not a mere competitor or adversary either, but an existential threat to European sovereignty – very much equivalent to that of Russia and working in tandem with it to destroy our open, universalistic and rules-based societies. I hope as much as anyone that this will change at some point, but given the ideological solidification of Trumpism in the Republican party, there is no good reason to bet on this happening in the next few decades.
What should the EU and Europe then do? Something very simple: assess its interests and all its options and tools within this new reality. We should therefore not ask: “What can't we do without the US?” but: “What can we do without and against the US?” If we conclude that European nations currently cannot defend their sovereignty alone, they should not capitulate, but try to radically change their societies to be able to achieve that goal. Prosperity is not what is at stake right now, but liberty. Appeasement for short-term economic gains will only lead to servitude and long-term moral and economic ruin. If going through a few years of moderate restrictions is what it takes to rebuild our resilience, restore our pride and regain our independence, we should pay this price. Europe is not weak. With the necessary determination, we can successfully defend against the Trump administration.
Europe needs to procure its military equipment from non-US sources, not in five or ten years, but in the next six months; it needs to start reverse engineering and adapting existing stocks of US weapons to be able to use them without US involvement. Europe needs to more than double its military expenditure and the size of its armies, not in five years, but in the next twelve months. Europe needs to provide sufficient military support for Ukraine and potential security guarantees alone, as the US successfully seeks to blackmail Europe with support Ukraine while not providing any meaningful assistance anymore. Europe needs to rid itself of the US “nuclear umbrella” that is rapidly turning into a gun pointed at its head and build a nuclear deterrent based on British and French weapons. Europe needs to put an end to permanent US troop presence on its soil and replace them with European troops. Europe needs to immediately and permanently station sizeable contingents of troops in Greenland.
Europe needs to build alternative payment and software systems, possibly disregarding US intellectual property, within six months. Europe needs to prohibit companies from following anti-European sanctions immediately. Europe needs to prepare sanctions against US companies supporting any aggression or coercion against an EU member state, including, but not limited to tech companies. Europe needs to be ready to stop buying US oil and natural gas next winter. European football teams should publicly announce they will boycott the World Cup 2026 if threats against Greenland and the EU do not stop. Europe needs to establish and strengthen partnerships based on values or transactional (economic, security) benefits around the world. Europe needs to immediately double its research funds to attract the innumerable scientists looking for refuge from an increasingly authoritarian and anti-rational US.
The goal is not escalation, it is deterrence, setting red lines before it is too late. By historical standards, none of this is very difficult – we are still at an early stage, where deterrence is relatively cheap. Previous generations have lived through incomparably more hardship defending their freedom against extraordinarily more clear-minded, brutal and well-organized foes. Our leaders just need to remember how to lead with vision, clarity and determination and stop being led by party politics, by polls, by business lobbies and most importantly by fear. History will not judge them kindly if they don't. To show that there is hope, I'll finish with two powerful and courageously honest quotes which could serve as a blueprint for all our elites. I just hope that, in the endless storm of Trumpian confusion, the sweetly poisonous mental fog doesn't set on Brussels and Europe again.
“So we chose to be lenient. But now, so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect. Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now, you're going to lose your dignity. And that's probably the most precious thing you can have in a democracy. It's your dignity.” (Bart de Wever, 20 January 2026)
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. [...] The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.” (Mark Carney, 20 January 2026)