Opinion

ROBERT MAGINNIS: Trump’s Ankara remarks reveal a grand strategy hiding in plain sight

Whether one supports President Trump's policies or not, strategists should recognize what is taking shape.

By Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, (ret.) Fox News

Published July 8, 2026 5:00am EDT

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Trump says he was 'testing' NATO allies after Iran operation, says Italy, Germany and France turned him down

President Donald Trump said during a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he was "testing" NATO allies after the U.S. operation against Iran, naming which European countries let him down.

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Seated beside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, President Donald Trump did more than field reporters’ questions. His remarks ranged across Iran, Ukraine, NATO, Turkey, Greenland and China, touching nearly every front of American strategic interest.

To most commentators, the press conference looked like another freewheeling exchange with reporters. To a strategist, it looked like something else entirely: the public emergence of an American grand strategy.

I spent years working on strategy and policy at the national level in the Pentagon. Grand strategies rarely announce themselves in formal National Security Strategy documents; more often, they emerge through repeated decisions and presidential statements that gradually expose an underlying logic, and that logic was unusually visible in Ankara this week.

TRUMP CALLS OUT NATO AHEAD OF SUMMIT, CALLING IT 'RIDICULOUS' FOR US TO PERSIST ON 'ONE SIDED PATH'

Deterrence before diplomacy

The first principle is deterrence before diplomacy. Trump's frustration with NATO allies over the Iran war was unmistakable. He told reporters that "Italy turned us down and Germany turned us down and France turned us down," then asked why the United States should keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars on allies who "are not there for us."

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That was classic Trump, but it was more than a grievance. It revealed how he measures alliances: not by communiqués or polite statements, but by whether allies show up when America acts. In Trump's mind, loyalty is operational, not sentimental.

The broader point is sound: Diplomacy without credible power rarely succeeds. Force restores deterrence, deterrence creates leverage, and leverage creates the conditions for........

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