OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Monday, March 24, 2025
People in high places, pompous pundits, diplomats from abroad, and the media keep asking the same question: What the heck is President Trump’s Grand Strategy? Does he have one or even know what he is doing and why?
Advertisement
The answer is a definite YES, to both questions.
Let me spell out concisely in terms anyone, even an eighth grader, can easily understand, what Trump’s Grand Strategy amounts to and implies. I would know as I was a child prodigy in Reagan’s State Department way back in the 1980s when we won the cold war and had a defining Grand Strategy. Yes, I know one when I see one.
In fact, since the term “grand strategy” is interchangeable with the country policy, it is easy to trace back the lineage of our 47th President’s focus on the western hemisphere where our country is located: the Washington and Monroe doctrines, up to the Roosevelt corollary, even including the focus on Asia of presidents McKinley and Taft. Teddy won a Nobel peace prize brokering the peace between Japan and Russia, after all, remember.
The focus on regions other than our own is very much an exception to the traditional U.S. grand strategy/country policy which generally steers clear of foreign entanglements. Since the main threat of unwelcome extracontinental interference no longer comes from Russia, it seems obvious the focus of our attentions should now shift elsewhere.
Grand Strategy after all is a country’s most complex form of planning toward the fulfillment of its long-term objective(s). The formulation and implementation of grand strategy require the identification of a national goal, a thorough assessment of the state’s resources, and, ultimately, the marshaling of those resources in a highly organized manner to achieve the goal.
Although such a grand strategy is concerned with national and inter-state affairs both in times of war and in times of peace, grand strategies historically have been predicated on the existence of an enemy or set of enemies that need to be overcome. To that end, policy makers attempt to develop the best possible way of coordinating military prowess, political leverage, diplomatic ability, and economic might within a cohesive national or grand strategy.
Following these definitions, for Trump, America’s number one enemy is today Communist China. Trump has a single long-term objective to make this nation great again and to defeat the declared Chinese onslaught. The goal is U.S. predominance militarily, economically, culturally, and politically. Trump’s team has assessed where we stand and what we need to do to attain and maintain supremacy. He is not interested in some silly, managed decline, shared polarity, Thucydides traps, or losing on any front. Make no mistake he seeks to win.
As a principled realist in his orientation on international relations, Trump and his inner team, see the sovereign state as the principal actor in international affairs. He is decidedly not a globalist. He believes that national states are rational and act under their own national interests. As such national security and survival are the primary goals of any state. National power and its capabilities for Trump therefore determine relations among all states.
This stance for Trump acts along the entire axis of international affairs. It projects American power and seeks to defend the country, its territory and borders, our long-standing institutions, capitalist economy, and broader constitutional framework. In all things and every way, it puts America first.
How much of this is “Bull-Moose”? I said in 2015 in Forbes when I endorsed Trump, the best way to view Trump is as a recast of Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 at the turn of the 20th century when he developed the call of American economic nationalism. Trump has done the very same thing with a 21st century twist.
Indeed, we are in a replay of Roosevelt vs. Taft (RINO) and Wilson (Globalist), and Trump has won. The RINOs are down and the globalists are out. The nationalist conservatives are firmly entrenched in power and are now calling the shots.
The strongest (rhetorical) argument against America First is that it might seem to invite and promote international conflict. The response has to be that properly understood Trump’s America-First model will diminish conflict because it forces other countries to behave rationally. It also restores overwhelming US power as our Grand Strategy.
For Trump the American miliary must be supreme in every category and in every service, Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and critically, in Space. Trump is reshaping the defense establishment and resetting commitments to project this very lethal power. The defense of the homeland includes totally secure borders, the openness of sealines, a Golden Iron Dome, and the free movement of goods and persons according to US treaties.
A vibrant and growing US market-based economy is the central part of American strength for Trump. The country has been taken advantage of, and he is restoring its prosperity for all Americans in three specific ways.
By lowering tax rates for citizens and companies to an all-time low, he wants to put money back into the hands of economic actors and take it out of the hands of greedy, unelected bureaucrats. He seeks to onshore and reshore U.S. jobs and companies while attracting massive new capital to ensure American competitiveness in critical industries, including advanced manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, and biopharma technology.
This also means the deconstruction of what has been termed the “administrative state”, with significant reduction in force of employees at the federal level and of their excessive and costly regulatory edicts.
He is radically opposed to illegal immigration and is putting a stop to it.
The second dimension is trade and tariffs, where Trump intends to change the current chaotic and biased system with a plan based on “reciprocity”. This will dramatically shift tariffs and make them fair. It will also bring money into the US Treasury. Certain tendencies like dumping, non-tariff barriers, and intellectual property theft, will no longer be tolerated, and very stiff tariffs will be placed on all those who cheat and try to evade the system.
Trump inherited a bad fiscal and monetary situation from Biden and seeks to massively cut U.S. debt and lower inflation.
The third leg in his scheme is U.S. energy dominance which is underway with his theme, “Drill, Baby Drill.
Culturally, Trump has a moderately conservative perspective on social issues which allows for freedom, privacy, the end of DEI and CRT, and respect for religious liberties and policies against gender ideology.
Trumpian grand strategy is summed up perhaps best in the phrase he ran on and now governs on: Greatness. Making America great and projecting that greatness is the essence of every dimension of what Trump and his party design for the nation.
In Trump’s own words, “On top of everything else, our leaders drifted from American principles. They lost sight of America’s destiny. And they lost their belief in American greatness. As a result, our citizens lost something as well. The people lost confidence in their government and, eventually, even lost confidence in their future.”
His Presidency and its Grand Strategy is changing the trajectory of America and the world, bringing the nation back to where it needs to be while ushering in a new Golden Age.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is a scholar-diplomat-strategist who has worked in the US State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and at ambassadorial level in the United Nations Europe. His book Trump’s World spells out in detail Trump’s foreign policy.
Advertisements below
