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President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) is the crudest articulation yet of his authoritarian nationalist project. It promises to smash the so-called rules-based international order Washington has superintended since the end of the Cold War. The U.S., of course, repeatedly violated that order’s stated principles, like sovereignty and self-determination, most recently with the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Despite its hypocrisy, the U.S. had attempted to integrate the world’s states into multilateral economic and political institutions, forge alliances to deter, contain, or overthrow its rivals, and police countries and regions torn apart by its program of free trade globalization. Trump claims that such liberal imperialism overextended the U.S., caused its relative decline, and enabled the rise of its competitors, especially China. His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, declared, “The postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us.”

To restore U.S. power, Trump’s NSS announces a new Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, a so-called Donroe Doctrine. Instead of global hegemony, it aims to carve out an exclusive U.S. sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, install pliant regimes, plunder their resources, and wield state power against migrants. The strategy as a whole has already born bitter fruit; Trump’s ICE agents killed immigrant solidarity activist Renee Good, his special forces carried out a coup in Venezuela, and his administration threatens to annex Greenland. His strategy will bring not “peace through strength,” but class war, brutal scapegoating of the oppressed, and imperial rivalry over the division of global capitalism.

Trump’s strategy is a response to today’s asymmetric multipolar order. While the U.S. remains the dominant imperialist power, it faces a global imperial rival in China, an outsized regional power in Russia, and a host of lesser ones like Iran and Brazil. The U.S., China, and Russia have become more assertive of their interests, spurring military aggression as each stakes claims in their regions.

Russia invaded Ukraine to rebuild its former empire and challenge NATO’s hegemony in Europe. China has projected its power in the Asia-Pacific region, threatening Taiwan and clashing with, among others, Japan, the Philippines, and, behind them all, the U.S. Washington backed Israel to crush Hamas and destroy Iran’s so-called axis of resistance to reassert U.S. dominance over Middle East’s strategic energy reserves, which China relies on to fuel its economy.

In response to these developments, Washington abandoned its grand strategy of superintending global capitalism to confront its great power rivals. The Obama administration started this shift with its Pivot to Asia to contain China and plan to reset relations with Russia, but those both failed. In his first term, Trump introduced a new strategy of illiberal hegemony focused on great power competition with China and Russia, but his regime’s incompetence and divisions prevented its implementation, leaving the U.S. weaker, its allies alienated, and rivals emboldened.

The Biden administration tried to refurbish U.S. imperialism, rebuild Washington’s alliances, and defend the so-called rules-based international order. Biden exploited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to rally its allies together against both Moscow and Beijing. But he undermined this project with his support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which enabled China and Russia to expose Washington’s hypocrisy.

Trump’s new Donroe Doctrine decisively breaks with the grand strategy the U.S. has pursued since the end of the World War II. It retreats from the pursuit of global hegemony to restore U.S. power within its borders, claim exclusive hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and establish “a balance of power” against its imperial rivals. At home, the Trump administration aims to rebuild U.S. domestic manufacturing, particularly in high tech and AI, through a program of protectionist tariffs, tax cuts, incentives for corporate investment, and deregulation. To divide and conquer working class resistance, it scapegoats oppressed groups, in particular migrants. Underscoring its determination to split the multiracial, multinational working class, the NSS declares the “era of mass migration is over.”

Abroad, its main goal is to establish neocolonial dominance in the Western Hemisphere. To enforce this naked imperialist goal, it plans to boost the Pentagon budget, if Trump is to be believed, to $1.5 trillion, which would be used to build a high tech military and shield North America with a new “Golden Dome” capable of intercepting nuclear missiles, giving the U.S. the ability to start a nuclear war without fear of retribution. That will enflame the ongoing nuclear arms race between the U.S., China, and Russia. At the........

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