Let's talk about Trump's National Security Doctrine and General Butler....
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Well, howdy there, Internet people. It's Belle again. So today, we're going to talk about Trump's national security strategy. The White House quietly released President Donald Trump's new 33-page national security strategy.
What is Donald Trump's National Security Doctrine?
We've gotten a lot of questions about this, asking to break it down. There will be endless videos and articles detailing all of the insults and shade cast on our allies. So, instead of rehashing Trump's outrage of the week, which is probably designed to push the Hegseth scandals off the top of the U.S. foreign policy news cycle, we're going to talk about what the doctrine actually entails. First and foremost, this isn't a U.S. national security document. It's a Trump document. The goal of this is not unified U.S. national interests. It's catering to Trumpian rhetoric at the expense of U.S. security and foreign policy interests. Economic nationalism isn't really even hidden in the document. It's just there.
If this doctrine was fully implemented, Major General Smedley Butler's famous quote would ring even more true today than it did when he said, quote, I spent 33 years and four months in active military service. And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. If fully implemented, wars would be fought over economics and this would probably eventually bring us back to a period of direct colonization and empire building. Overall, it outlines a transactional foreign policy focused on what it calls the protection of core national interests. There are a couple of lines in it that in normal foreign policy language would mean the U.S.
would be involved in less interventionist behavior. But when you're looking at the document as a whole, instead of just a few quotes sprinkled in for the base, it becomes clear that there will likely be more, not less. The problem is that the national interests aren't defined in a way that is recognizable to most people. National interests seem to be defined as things that hurt Trump's feelings. It really looks like foreign policy could be dictated by whatever the culture war pundits get mad about on a weekly basis. Our foreign policy could be directed by the fragile images of men who get really bent out of shape over Hollywood casting decisions. It refocuses American force projection in a twisted version of the Monroe Doctrine.
If this doctrine was followed in the years to come, we'd see another set of banana wars and America's war on drugs would be internationalized. You know, because it was so successful here.
It just outright rejects international organizations and views them with suspicion. It's probably worth reminding everybody that those international organizations are one of the main reasons we didn't have a third world war.
All of this sounds horrible, right? Well, there is a bit of good news from traditional foreign policy experts that holds true.
A quote that is most likely fictional that sums up the world's view of American doctrine. One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.
How does Trump's doctrine redefine U.S. national interests?
The only good news about this doctrine is that it's coming from a guy who gave birth to the terms chicken and waffles foreign policy and the taco trade. It's unlikely that he sticks to it, and given his habit of destroying international affairs agencies, it's unlikely that the parts he does implement remain in any institutional memory beyond this term. Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.
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