In 2012, Xi Jinping promoted the idea of a “new era of great power relations,” a term that had been introduced in China decades earlier, but which took on new meaning given China’s remarkable economic development. It was, early on, a sort of invitation to then U.S. president Barack Obama and a signal of Chinese newfound confidence as a leader in a global order to which it hoped to contribute not only materially but in terms of values and norms. President Obama demurred and his successor, Donald Trump, gave a clearer response in his 2017 National Security Strategy, which spoke of a new era of great power competition. Even so, for several years Xi Jinping promoted the concept of a “new era of great power relations,” and it was dissected and evaluated at length by Chinese scholars and sinologists. In the end, he adjusted to a “new era of international politics.”
In a forthcoming essay, Chen Gang and I explore why Xi Jinping was unable to persuade audiences, domestic and international, to endorse the idea of a “new era of great power relations.” In a striking contrast, U.S. president Donald Trump, with little interest in conceptual elaboration, generated a seemingly endless discussion of how he has brought about changes in the international system, and, despite severe criticism, many political leaders have proven themselves willing to engage with the shifts he has introduced, such as the global tariff-cum-bilateral negotiation scheme he launched without warning in April 2025.
This essay offers a preliminary analysis of the foreign policy of the second Trump administration. While there is so much to address, as with his earlier administration, the current administration has moved quickly and delivered constant rhetorical displays to attract attention. But this mandate features much bolder and more definitive policy moves, as well as a more confident and less leaky administration, which largely acts first and explains later. For reasons of space, I hoped to limit the discussion to the Western Hemisphere, the area identified by the National Security Strategy (NSS) of December 2025 and the National Defense Strategy (NDS) of January 2026 as the most important region for U.S. security. Yet the ongoing military activities in Iran make such a restriction impossible.
Since returning to the presidency in January 2025, Donald Trump publicly considered making Canada the 51st state, suggested possible military tactics to control Greenland, and insisted on U.S. control of the Panama Canal. The United States has deployed its military forces to blow up boats in the Caribbean alleged to be engaged in drug-trafficking, has captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, and has exerted pressure on regional governments to prevent oil shipments to Cuba. In addition to raising tariffs on the entire world, Trump raised additional tariffs in response to actions taken by presidents (Colombian president Gustavo Petro) or supreme courts (in Brazil), endorsed presidential candidates (Honduras), and pushed an IMF support loan to help presidents regarded as fellow travelers (Argentina).
The above represents a considerable change in the scope and intensity of U.S. foreign policy activity in the Western Hemisphere. Many analysts have criticized the Trump administration for pursuing a so-called “sphere of influence” policy, which they see represented in U.S. government efforts to dominate the Western Hemisphere and expressions of interest in withdrawal from other regions (Western Europe, the Middle East, East Asia). Critics worry not only about abandoning allies—such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea—but also about ceding legitimacy to aggressive action by China, Russia, and others in their perceived respective “spheres of influence.”
While Trump’s policies may have such consequences, these are certainly not their goals. Critics confuse “backyard” and “sphere of influence.” A great power may be concerned about activities, including those sponsored by other great powers, in its backyard. But in order for a great power to have a sphere of influence, that sphere must be recognized by other great powers as a geopolitical fact. The Trump administration recognizes only one sphere of influence, that of the United States. It may recognize the security concerns of Russia or China (or Turkey, etc.), but it also sells weapons to neighbors and actively pursues freedom of navigation activities in regions critical to the security of other great powers. The United States is not alone in not recognizing a Chinese or Russian sphere of influence. Many countries, including China, operate in Russia’s “near abroad,” and there is considerable diversity of geopolitical alignment amongst countries bordering and proximate to China. So Trump 2.0 policies do not really seem to be what analysts identify (or fear) as a sphere of influence foreign policy.
That said, the Trump administration expressly aims to recalibrate relations with its allies, with the latter taking more of a leading role in local/regional security concerns and the United States operating as a second level of defense. This is most visible in the U.S. plan for South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines to play more of a role in security within the First Island Chain and the United States more involved in the Second Island Chain. There are risks with such a recalibration, but this is not—at least in terms of strategy—conceding or legitimating spheres of influence.
The criticism of the Trump administration pursuing a sphere of influence foreign policy is part of a broader conceptualization of policies that find parallels in the nineteenth century, especially in the form of great power competition. The Trump administration would no doubt accept this characterization, as it sees foreign policy in realist terms, with states being most prudent when they pursue national interest according to their limited capabilities. More tellingly, the National Security Strategy refers often and positively to the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary, and proposes the development of a “Trump Corollary” (which news agencies have dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”). This hemispheric strategy has been to pressure governments to reduce exposure to Russia, China, and Iran, and conceive new collective efforts in areas of security and migration (primarily or, at least, initially). The various activities mentioned earlier are representative of largely unilateral efforts to these ends, while the Shield of the Americas (or the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition), announced in March 2026, is a multilateral, ongoing cooperative effort.
While there are visible analogs between late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S. policy in Latin America and the current Trump administration strategy in the Western Hemisphere, the most directly resonant comparison is in tactics. That is, moving and then parking an armada in the Caribbean (or other seas) and demanding significant foreign policy concessions seem ripped from history textbook discussions of gunboat diplomacy. That practice, a tactic used first by European countries and then the United States and Japan, involved showing potential naval power outside a port in order to intimidate a polity considered less militarily capable into backing down on a particular case or range of policies. If the presence of the vessels was insufficient, the port might be shelled. Yet, for the most part, gunboat diplomacy was seen as a diplomatic tactic—coercive, but short of war.
With the standardization of international law, the collapse of colonialism, the Cold War re-spatialization of politics, and the politics of decolonization, gunboat diplomacy became increasingly viewed as illegitimate and inefficient. The Trump administration’s redeployment of a vast number of naval vessels to the Caribbean to pressure South American governments and the later destruction of boats alleged to be drug trafficking fit within norms and tactics of an earlier era of intense great power competition. The pressure campaign on Cuba, with the aim of producing a change in policy and leadership, if not in regime, follows a similar script. The rendition of Maduro seems to be gunboat diplomacy 2.0. In this case, the naval presence in the Caribbean followed and juxtaposed diplomacy, which was the case in earlier gunboat diplomacy. But the success of the rendition was largely due to an intelligence operation that predated the arrival of the boats. This intelligence and diplomacy, then showing the flag with naval presence, is characteristic of the U.S. war with Iran.
If there are tactical similarities between U.S. operations in Venezuela and Iran, there are nevertheless very important strategic differences. The NSS and NDS make clear that U.S. foreign policy should be narrowly focused on national interest, which means that the United States should prioritize the Western Hemisphere and East Asia, deprioritize the Middle East and Western Europe, practice realism and not worry about types of regimes outside of the Americas and Europe, and avoid “regime change wars.” Up until the February 28 opening of hostilities with Iran, U.S. foreign policy was rather consistent. Pressure was placed on European and East Asian allies for them to ramp up military spending and to invest more in U.S. industry. The Russia-Ukraine war was seen as a European conflict where the United States would increase its role as mediator and play a less automatic role as patron. Critics worried that Trump’s effort to get a deal from China might reduce military sales to Taiwan. In the Middle East, Trump endorsed former ISIS member turned nationalist Syrian president Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who won over the United States in a November 2025 visit, perhaps due to his play on the basketball court with U.S. military officials. Trump also was in the process of reengaging Iran in what seemed to many to be a return to the type of nuclear deal from which he walked away in 2018. Indeed, the military strikes occurred while Oman-led negotiations were allegedly progressing.
Without making a clear case for why the attack on Iran was necessary, Trump has issued a series of demands, culminating in his call for “regime change” and “unconditional surrender,” as well as his threat that “a whole civilization” might “die.” Rather than working with regimes from regions outside of the Western Hemisphere and Europe that are oriented by distinct values, Trump has called upon the Iranian people to democratize their regime. The priority the NSS and NDS give to East Asian security seems challenged as Trump mentioned sending THAAD missiles from South Korea to the Middle East to replenish missiles spent responding to Iranian counterattacks (this has yet to be verified). Moreover, Iran has proven itself more resilient than perhaps Trump imagined. The decapitation of many leaders, which followed earlier rounds of decapitation, has led to neither the emergence of a “Delcy-Rodriguez figure” (a term that we who study Latin America would never have conceived prior to this January), nor a regime collapse, nor a generalized popular rebellion. Rather, Iranian missile strikes have continued, and, most importantly, Iran has shown that in choking off the Strait of Hormuz, it can hit the United States, indirectly, at the gas pump and squeeze U.S. allies who were uninvolved in the planning and decision-making of the U.S. military action but who bear much of the costs.
So why did President Trump authorize the military operation in Iran? His concern about Iran predates his first term in office, yet it is the authorization of the strikes and the deviation from the NSS/NDS strategy that are most surprising. It is likely that the mass protests and government repression convinced him that the regime was unpopular. The rapid slide of the Iran’s rial and the very widely reported drought in Iran, as well as the country’s foundering since Israel’s responses to the October 7 Hamas attacks, suggested that the government was vulnerable. In such a scenario, a very quick, kinetic attack, combined with decapitation, could allow for rapid escalation and then de-escalation with a more pliant Iran. The success of the operation in Venezuela and the pressure campaign in Cuba made it very possible that Trump could reverse the course of the Venezuelan government and possibly bring policy, if not regime change, in Cuba, something that has dogged U.S. presidents for six decades. The opportunity to do the same in Iran, a hostile regime for close to five decades, may have been too difficult to pass up, even if the Trump administration needed to break many of its own rules and principles to do so.
It is too soon to know what the consequences of this military engagement in the Middle East will be, but important questions remain. Is the attack a one-off deviation, or is it an extension of the principles of dominating the Western Hemisphere to a broader theater—perhaps bolstered because of the perceived success of Western Hemisphere operations and relatively muted responses from others—that there is only one, global sphere of influence, and that sphere is America’s? Either question raises further questions. Recent U.S. presidents have tried to respond to a global order in which China and the United States have, relative to twenty years ago, greater and lesser military and economic capabilities, respectively. These presidents have differed in terms of how they have leveraged (and treated) allies, engaged in global trade regimes and international organizations, and deployed military force, but all have tried to respond to a shifting global order as both leader and participant within that order. Trump’s Western Hemisphere policies and strategies prior to the war with Iran offered a consistent, if controversial, approach that seemed to deliberately direct U.S. and global order during an inflection point toward a new nomos. It is harder to evaluate his overall foreign policy strategy since the decision to attack Iran, and harder still given Iran’s resistance and the global consequences. What seems clear is that considerations of great power competition have moved from discussions among security officials to headline-leading speeches of heads of state across the world.
Topics: Reflections & Dialogues • China Initiative
Tony Spanakos is Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. He has been a Fulbright Scholar (2002 Brazil, 2008 Venezuela) and visiting researcher at the East Asia Institute (Singapore 2009, 2017). He is co-editor of Reforming Brazil (Lexington), Conceptualising Comparative Politics (Routledge), and “The Legacy of Hugo Chavez,” a special issue of Latin American Perspectives. His work examines questions in the areas of democratization, the use of concepts, international relations, and political theory, giving particular attention to Latin America, East Asia, and U.S. relations with these regions.