Trump's ‘Americas First’ Plan Isn’t All Bad
Levan Ramishvili
Trump's ‘Americas First’ Plan Isn’t All Bad
Affirming US dominance of the Western Hemisphere is smart — but if you ignore the rest of the world, bad things will eventually hit you at home.
By Hal Brands
Donald Trump isn’t even president yet, and he’s already giving US foreign policy a 19th century feel. The president-elect has spent the weeks before his inauguration promoting an epic agenda of territorial expansion in the Western Hemisphere — and threatening to use coercion, even force, to make it a reality.
It’s a mistake to dismiss this as Trumpian bluster or diplomatic trolling: His taunts are a preview of the new continentalism that is likely to color his foreign policy. The smart version of that doctrine could help the US flourish in a fragmenting environment. The destructive variant could hasten the demise of the world order Washington has long labored to protect.
Every president says foreign policy begins at home. Trump may really mean it: His pre-inauguration pronouncements have targeted America’s hemispheric backyard. Trump has threatened Mexico and Canada with tariffs if they don’t stem cross-border flows of drugs and migrants. He has also said, repeatedly, that Canada should become the 51st state and that Washington should annex Greenland and reclaim control of the Panama Canal. Altogether, that’s a set of acquisitions stretching from the tropics to the Arctic Circle.
Each of these ideas has its logic. Drugs and migration are immediate, tangible threats to US security and sovereignty. Chinese influence has been growing around the militarily and economically vital Panama Canal. Greenland occupies a strategic location in a warming, ever-more contested Artic. There is a long, unhappy history of American designs on Canada. Yet what ties Trump’s pronouncements together is that they mark the revival of an older strategic tradition.
Before the US was a global power, it was a regional power. From independence to the early 20th century, the crucial achievements of Washington’s policy involved expanding across the North American continent, elbowing European powers out of Latin America, and consolidating the hemisphere as a bastion of American strength. That rough, sometimes-violent program of national aggrandizement created the regional foundation for America’s eventual global influence: No Monroe Doctrine, no liberal international order. And if continentalism seems like an anachronism, it has become relevant again today.
The need to reconsolidate the Western Hemisphere becomes more pressing as the world becomes more divided. As the US and China undergo a slow-motion economic and trade decoupling, the Western Hemisphere looms larger as a source of lithium, rare-earth minerals and other vital resources — and as a potential home to more geographically secure, geopolitically resilient supply chains.
As Russia and China try to build empires in their own regions, the need to ensure the cohesion of America’s hemisphere grows. In every great-power struggle of the last century, Washington aggressively defended its regional sanctuary: Why should it be any different today?
Indeed, threats to that sanctuary are growing. Transnational challenges are becoming more severe, in the case of migration, or more lethal, in the case of fentanyl. Geopolitical challenges are also resurgent.
Russia has strong intelligence and security ties with some of the region’s most repressive states, such as Cuba and Venezuela. China’s trade and technological ties with Latin America are booming; Beijing has built, or sought to control, critical infrastructure from Argentina to Greenland. It would be foolish for Trump to ignore the Western Hemisphere, since America’s adversaries aren’t.
The problem, as so often with Trump, is more the “how” than the “what.” A bold, positive program for hemispheric integration — centering on closer trade and investment ties and stronger diplomatic and security cooperation — would be a no-brainer. But the president-elect, of course, is leading with outlandish demands and offensive threats.
If Trump actually uses coercion, whether economic or military, in the service of this agenda, he will make the US just another predatory power trying to physically rule its neighborhood, and shred the credibility of American objections when Russia or China do the same thing.
Even if Trump is simply teeing up negotiations for lesser objectives — say, a larger US military presence in Greenland — he is doing so in ways that maximize the diplomatic damage. Call this the “Trump tax” — the penalty the US pays, under his leadership, for modest gains that might have been had at lesser cost.
That’s one danger of the new continentalism. The other is that it will simply serve as an excuse to pull back from the wider world.
Trump is a 19th century statesman in this respect, too. He has never much cared about Taiwan, Ukraine or other front-line partners. He has often threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other alliances that ensure peace and security in other vital regions.
In Trump’s second term, he might make securing the Western Hemisphere a prelude to retrenchment from Eurasian commitments. If so, that supercontinent could fall back into violent chaos that would spell the end of the American order — and, if history is any guide, might eventually imperil the Western Hemisphere itself.
An enlightened, 21st century continentalism might be a useful supplement to American globalism. It would make a lousy, self-defeating substitute.