Is There a Trump Great Game? › American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson
Trump’s strategy prizes preemptive deterrence over drift or isolation, exploiting leverage to sap rivals, steady allies, and avert the cascading conflicts that metastasized under Obama and Biden.
February 26, 2026
Critics of Trump’s second-term foreign policy—the usual Left and some on the neo-isolationist Right—claim it is recklessly herky jerky and guided by no consistent grand strategy.
Yet, in both the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy paper and its second-term update, he clearly disdained ground wars abroad, nation-building, and isolationism.
A better description of U.S. strategy across Trump’s two terms in office might be called Jacksonian or preemptive deterrence.
That is, Trump’s foreign policy neither ignores nor merely reacts to crises.
Instead, it seeks out favorable cost-benefit scenarios to weaken its strategic enemies and bolster its friends.
The aim is to preclude the outbreak of major wars of the sort that were common during the Obama and Biden years.
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https://amgreatness.com/2026/02/26/is-there-a-trump-great-game/
