The criticism of President Donald Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine, and his administration’s broader foreign policy beyond that, rest on a comforting assumption that American influence is best preserved through reassurance, process, and the careful avoidance of friction.

That assumption has not survived contact with a world in which rivals test boundaries, friends hedge, and hostile regimes price in Western hesitation. In that environment, a clearer definition of interests is not imperial nostalgia. It is strategic housekeeping.

The Monroe Doctrine, at its core, is a warning against rival great powers converting the Western Hemisphere into a staging ground for coercion and subversion. The modern version is not about conquest. It is about denying adversaries easy leverage close to home while restoring credible deterrence abroad.

Critics often point out that the early doctrine relied on British power. That is historically true, but it does not weaken the logic of the doctrine. It strengthens it. The lesson is that doctrine without capacity is theatre, and capacity without doctrine is drift. A superpower that cannot define what it will and will not tolerate invites miscalculation. Miscalculation is the fastest route to conflict.

Bullying

Trump’s foreign policy approach is frequently described via a slur as bullying. It is more akin to a renewed willingness to bring hard power forward fast in order to give impetus to negotiations. The Western world made a miscalculation via the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded an “end of history” in which Western liberal ideals had prevailed, the final threat to those ideals had collapsed, and that such ideals would spread universally, negating the need for hard power diplomacy.

A long phase of American caution, endless negotiation cycles, and values language unbacked by enforcement grew from this, which did not generate stability. It generated a perception that the United States (US), and the broader West, could be pressured, delayed, and compartmentalised – a perception of weakness. That encourages adversaries because the expected cost of challenging US hegemony is low and the ensuing inaction causes allies to develop doubts because the expected protection is not in evidence.

Respect in international politics is not affection. It is not soft approval measured in editorial pages. It is the belief that a state will act when it says it will act, and that it has the domestic will to sustain its choices. A foreign policy that is legible and backed by capacity tends to reduce risk because it narrows uncertainty. That is why a firmer American posture can win respect from foes and allies alike.

That logic applies to the ending of recent conflicts in the Middle East and Europe.

Peace is rarely produced by goodwill alone. It is produced by deterrence, by credible consequences, and by a clear sense that the strongest actor will not outsource its strategy to endless process. When armed groups and revisionist states believe the leading power will enforce red lines, the space for escalation narrows. When they believe the leading power is exhausted or conflicted, the space widens.

A posture that reduces ambiguity and raises the expected cost of aggression can move conflicts toward negotiation precisely because it changes the incentives on the battlefield and in the back rooms.

Energy

Energy policy sits at the centre of this American effort to reassert its status as a true global superpower. Critics of America’s foreign policy have treated the administration’s energy policies, especially where these extend beyond the borders of the US, as crude materialism. In reality, those policies have been a precondition for the restoration of US national power and for securing its social stability.

A modern economy is built on reliable and affordable energy. When green ideology causes energy to become scarce, prices rise, inflation rises, and political cohesion breaks down. Europe is a case in point as even the Germans now admit. When energy is abundant, the opposite tends to occur.

The same principle of preconditions applies to the domestic battle over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Western liberal principles rest on the ideal of the primacy of the individual – equal citizenship, equal treatment under law, freedom of conscience, merit, and the right of individuals to be judged as individuals. When public institutions and large firms embed identity hierarchies, compelled speech, and political litmus tests into hiring and promotion, they weaken the legitimacy of those institutions as well as the competitiveness of America’s economy. China, Russia, and Iran wisely did not follow the Western drive into DEI for precisely those reasons.

Combating DEI was therefore a core strategic necessity for the US to secure its institutions and the competitiveness of its economy and military. A society that returns to merit, equality before the law, and freedom of speech strengthens its internal cohesion. And internal cohesion is the foundation of external strength. Allies and adversaries watch domestic coherence. They do not need to like a leader to respect a country that looks capable of acting.

Weakness

The further weakness in the critique of American foreign policy rests on its attachment to a fading model of order. It assumes the United States can remain globally dominant by playing to a set of rules it may not enforce while paying the costs of alliance maintenance without enforcing the obligations that make alliances credible. It assumes America can absorb trade imbalances, security freeloading, and hostile economic practices indefinitely without hard bargaining. It assumes diplomacy works best when it is endless and consequence-free. Those assumptions map poorly onto the emerging balance of power.

A more realistic model is that influence must be maintained, not presumed. It requires clarity of interest, credible force, industrial capacity, energy security, and internal legitimacy. It also requires an ability to say no, to impose costs, and to demand reciprocal commitment from allies.

That is not a retreat from leadership. It is leadership stripped of illusion.

Trump’s style is abrasive, equivalent to hurling a grenade into the boardroom before starting talks, but style matters less than strategy. The strategic direction is coherent and in many key respects correct. Define the hemisphere, deter rivals, rebuild energy strength, reassert liberal equality at home, and force adversaries and allies to deal with the US as a serious actor rather than an anxious manager.

In practice this is how durable orders are built, not through sentiment, but through credible power guided by clear principles.