The Trump Doctrine

To describe the foreign policy of a US president as a doctrine, two premises are necessary: that the policy is predictable because it is defined in advance and foreign action is consistent with that conception; and that it endures, because that definition has been correctly adjusted to the risks and the existing order, and foreign action responds to the objectives established to defend the country's interests within that framework. 

The Doctrine of Containment, for example, was conceived in the bipolar order of the Cold War and developed under different presidencies. 

It was defined by Truman, continued by Eisenhower and undermined by Johnson in Vietnam. However, Donald Trump's foreign policy, although it cannot be described as predictable and is still far from surviving as a doctrine, does seem to be predefined and would consist of something like this: strengthening the United States to face the new order of competition between powers and rivalry with China. 

Until the National Security and National Defence Strategies are published, it is not possible to speak rigorously about any doctrine. But the president's intense foreign activity has led to a flood of interpretations about the manual the administration is following in this first year of office. 

For some, Trump is a poker player who bets in each game using a transaction manual to assess the cards and interests of each player. In a game with no allies or enemies, the president has two aces up his sleeve: threats and negotiation. 

For others, Trump's pragmatism hides a realistic vision that seeks to achieve longer-term strategic objectives. And so the tariff pressures on European and Asian allies would respond to a tactic that hides a much more far-reaching strategy, which is to involve the allied middle powers (Atlantic, Asian, Arab and Indian) in global security against rival and enemy third countries. 

Finally, for anti-Trumpists, US foreign policy is an inexplicable series of decisions that make no doctrinal sense, but which, taken together, seek to enrich the tycoon, his family and his entourage at the expense of economically and diplomatically snubbing the rest of the world. 

Whether ally or rival, because neither Trump nor the anti-Trumpists would be able to clearly identify which of the two categories some European countries, Spain itself, Canada, China in some respects or Putin at some point belong to. 

The foreign policy of Donald Trump's first term could be described by some of the metaphors that liken him to a card shark, or the interpretations that defined him as an inexperienced tycoon. 

But the irrelevance of that media-savvy and disruptive president who a few years ago travelled to Asia to meet with the insignificant North Korean dictator has now been transformed into the highly relevant meeting of the American president with the Emperor of Japan and the newly elected Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, after attending the ASEAN Summit and sitting down with Brazilian President Lula da Silva, shortly before negotiating a long-term trade truce with Chinese leaders, and after having circled China on his trip to Cambodia and Thailand to encourage both countries to sign a lasting peace. 

After such a significant and engaging diplomatic tour, it is difficult to describe the US president as a mere poker player. Fans of Chinese culture and its traditional game of Go, which consists of surrounding your opponent and preventing them from surrounding you, may interpret Trump's trip as a strategic move, rather than an open poker hand with moustachioed jokers. 

But anything is possible. Even that the president did not travel to Asia to strengthen bilateral and multilateral relations with countries in a region considered a priority for US foreign policy, but rather to negotiate the construction of the Tokyo Trump Tower with the Emperor. 

This is perhaps how some anti-Trump rivals in democratic allied countries will think, where certain progressive forces continue to consider any advance towards progress or peace as insubstantial if it does not come from the ideological left. 

Even if a ceasefire is achieved in Gaza or a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine is pursued. But the reality today, pending a better definition of US foreign policy in the National Security Strategy and in the official documents generated by the former Pentagon in 2026, is that the US president leads a stronger and more competitive country, in an order defined by competition and rivalry between powers.