FWD : Michael Winiarski: Trump's US strategy completely to Putin's liking

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 7, 2025, 6:26:18 AM12/7/25

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Michael Winiarski: Trump's US strategy completely to Putin's liking

Updated yesterday 19:33 Published yesterday 16:54

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Alexander Kazakov/TT

When Trump publishes his new security strategy, Putin and other despots must be jumping for joy. Just listen to what he proposes: Stop NATO expansion. No to “unrealistic” goals for peace in Ukraine. Focus on the American continent. Let Europe fend for itself. Strategic stability with Russia.

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Michael Winiarski

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If there is one thing that critics of Donald Trump have noted, it is his erratic nature and his lack of strategic vision. The most pervasive feature of his thinking has been the slogan “America First,” which can be interpreted in many different ways.

But on Friday night, the White House released a 30-page document called the "National Security Strategy."

The president himself has written the foreword to the strategy, which he calls "a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history."

It is not clear who wrote it after that, but it seems as if the White House was in a hurry to write it up. In parts, the reasoning resembles something a high school student would have cobbled together with the help of an AI chat. For example, the need to explain what the word strategy means: “A ‘strategy’ is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the fundamental relationship between ends and means.”

There are still some basic ideas in the strategy document, but in several cases they express a naked profit interest and a raw desire for power. There are no traces of liberal ideals, where the USA is a democratic example for the world's poor and oppressed. Nor does it have anything to do with Ronald Reagan's speech about "A Shining City on the Hill", i.e. the USA as a moral and libertarian role model.

The Monroe Doctrine is now being supplemented by a kind of Trump Doctrine – the United States reserves the freedom to invade countries and organize coups d'état in Latin America.

The Monroe Doctrine is now being supplemented by a kind of Trump Doctrine – the US reserves the freedom to invade countries and organize coups d'état in Latin America. Photo: Will Olive/TT

On the contrary, a central point in the document is that immigration to the United States – a republic founded on extensive immigration – should be virtually stopped. The outside world is a dark and dangerous place to be kept at a distance. And the preferred world order is not “rules-based”, based on multilateral treaties and conventions, but more akin to the 19th century, where the great powers divided the world into spheres of interest.

The condescending section on Europe appears to have been written by JD Vance, and repeats the vice president's aggressive rhetoric towards the old continent at the security conference in February 2025. At that time, he claimed that Russia was not the threat, but that it came from within Europe.

According to the document, Europe is in a deep crisis and is on the verge of losing its national identities. In a few decades, some NATO countries could even become “non-European,” it says. An implicit warning against non-European immigration, which echoes what Europe’s far-right nationalist parties tend to claim.

The strategy document boasts that “no administration in history” has “achieved such a dramatic turnaround in such a short time” as Trump’s.

JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February.

JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February. Photo: TT

And what has Trump accomplished? Well: “After four years of weakness and extremism (Biden’s presidency, editor’s note), we have brought our country – and the world – back from the brink of disaster and calamity.”

Many others would argue that Trump's America is more unpopular, despised, and feared than it has been in living memory.

“America First” is interpreted as the US’s primary interests in the world being the Western Hemisphere – that is, the entire American continent. The 19th century Monroe Doctrine, where the US claimed the right to intervene in North and South America, is now being supplemented by a kind of Trump Doctrine.

This means that “America First” should not be interpreted as isolationism, but rather that the United States reserves the freedom to invade countries and organize coups d’état against inconvenient governments in Latin America. This issue has become highly topical in connection with the US threat of war against Venezuela.