On Sun, Dec 14, 2025 at 12:03 AM Max Obuszewski <Max-1@comcast.net> wrote:
This detail view shows a t-shirt depicting US
President Donald Trump and the slogan “Yankee go home” worn by a supporter of
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during a rally against US military activity
in the Caribbean, in Caracas on October 30, 2025. (Photo by Federico Parra /
AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s Empire of Hubris and Thuggery
The president’s latest National Security Strategy memorandum
treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of US sovereignty. It is an
ominous document that will—if allowed to stand—come back to haunt the United
States.
Dec 11, 2025
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) recently released by
President Donald Trump presents itself as a blueprint for renewed
American strength. It is dangerously misconceived in four ways.
First, the NSS is anchored in grandiosity: the belief that
the United States enjoys unmatched supremacy in every key
dimension of power. Second, it is based on a starkly Machiavellian view of the
world, treating other nations as instruments to be manipulated for American
advantage. Third, it rests on a naïve nationalism that dismisses international law and
institutions as encumbrances on US sovereignty rather than as frameworks that enhance
US and global security together.
Fourth, it signals a thuggery in Trump’s use of the CIA and
military. Within days of the NSS’s publication, the US brazenly seized a tanker
carrying Venezuelan oil on the high seas—on the flimsy grounds that the vessel had
previously violated US sanctions against
Iran.
The seizure was not a defensive measure to avert an imminent
threat. Nor is it remotely legal to seize vessels on the high seas because of
unilateral US sanctions. Only the UN Security Council has such authority.
Instead, the seizure is an illegal act designed to force regime change in Venezuela. It follows
Trump’s declaration that he has directed the CIA to carry out covert operations
inside Venezuela to destabilize the regime.
American security will not be strengthened by acting like a
bully. It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great
power that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards
international rules ultimately isolates itself.
The NSS, in other words, is not just an exercise in hubris on
paper. It is rapidly being translated into brazen practice.
A Glimmer of Realism, Then a Lurch into Hubris
To be fair, the NSS contains moments of long-overdue realism. It
implicitly concedes that the United States cannot and should not attempt to
dominate the entire world, and it correctly recognizes that some allies have
dragged Washington into costly wars of choice that were not in
America’s true interests. It also steps back—at least rhetorically—from an
all-consuming great-power crusade. The strategy rejects the fantasy that the
United States can or should impose a universal political order.
But the modesty is short-lived. The NSS quickly reasserts that
America possesses the “world’s single largest and most innovative economy,”
“the world’s leading financial system,” and “the world’s most advanced and most
profitable technology sector,” all backed by “the world’s most
powerful and capable military.” These claims serve not simply as patriotic
affirmations, but as a justification for using American dominance to impose
terms on others. Smaller countries, it seems, will bear the brunt of this
hubris, since the US cannot defeat the other great powers, not least because
they are nuclear-armed.
Naked Machiavellianism in Doctrine
The NSS’s grandiosity is welded to a naked Machiavellianism. The
question it asks is not how the United States and other countries can cooperate
for mutual benefit, but how American leverage—over markets, finance,
technology, and security—can be applied to extract maximal concessions from
other countries.
This is most pronounced in the NSS discussion of the Western
Hemisphere section, which declares a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
The United States, the NSS declares, will ensure that Latin America “remains
free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and alliances
and aid will be conditioned on “winding down adversarial outside influence.”
That “influence” clearly refers to Chinese investment, infrastructure, and lending.
The NSS is explicit: US agreements with countries “that depend
on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage” must result
in sole-source contracts for American firms. US policy should “make
every effort to push out foreign companies” that build infrastructure in the
region, and the US should reshape multilateral development institutions, such
as the World Bank, so that they “serve American interests.”
Latin American governments, many of whom trade extensively
with both the United States and China, are effectively being told: you
must deal with us, not China—or face the consequences.
Such a strategy is strategically naive. China is the main
trading partner for most of the world, including many countries in the Western
hemisphere. The US will be unable to compel Latin American nations to expel
Chinese firms, but will gravely damage US diplomacy in the attempt.
Thuggery So Brazen Even Close Allies Are Alarmed
The NSS proclaims a doctrine of “sovereignty and respect,” yet
its behavior has already reduced that principle to sovereignty for the US,
vulnerability for the rest. What makes the emerging doctrine even more
extraordinary is that it is now frightening not only small states in Latin
America, but even the United States’ closest allies in Europe.
In a remarkable development, Denmark—one of America’s most
loyal NATO partners—has openly declared the United States a potential
threat to Danish national security. Danish defense planners have stated
publicly that Washington under Trump cannot be assumed to respect the Kingdom
of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, and that a
coercive US attempt to seize the island is a contingency for which Denmark must now
plan.
This is astonishing on several levels. Greenland is already host
to the US Thule Air Base and firmly within the Western security system. Denmark
is not anti-American, nor is it seeking to provoke Washington. It is simply
responding rationally to a world in which the United States has begun to behave
unpredictably—even toward its supposed friends.
That Copenhagen feels compelled to contemplate defensive
measures against Washington speaks volumes. It suggests that the legitimacy of
the US-led security architecture is eroding from within. If even Denmark
believes it must hedge against the United States, the problem is no longer one
of Latin America’s vulnerability. It is a systemic crisis of confidence among
nations that once saw the US as the guarantor of stability but now view it as a
possible or likely aggressor.
In short, the NSS seems to channel the energy previously devoted
to great-power confrontation into bullying of smaller states. If America seems
to be a bit less inclined to launch trillion-dollar wars abroad, it is more
inclined to weaponize sanctions, financial coercion, asset seizures, and theft
on the high seas.
The Missing Pillar: Law, Reciprocity, and Decency
Perhaps the deepest flaw of the NSS is what it omits: a
commitment to international law, reciprocity, and basic decency as foundations
of American security.
The NSS regards global governance structures as obstacles to US
action. It dismisses climate cooperation as “ideology,” and indeed a “hoax”
according to Trump’s recent speech at the UN. It downplays the UN Charter and
envisions international institutions primarily as instruments to be bent toward
American preferences. Yet it is precisely legal frameworks, treaties, and
predictable rules that have historically protected American interests.
The founders of the United States understood this clearly.
Following the American War of Independence, thirteen newly sovereign states
soon adopted a constitution to pool key powers—over taxation, defense, and
diplomacy—not to weaken the states’ sovereignty, but to secure it by creating
the US Federal Government. The post-WWII foreign policy of the United States
government did the same through the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, the
World Trade Organization, and arms-control agreements.
The Trump NSS now reverses that logic. It treats the freedom to
coerce others as the essence of sovereignty. From that perspective, the
Venezuelan tanker seizure and Denmark’s anxieties are manifestations of the new
policy.
Athens, Melos, and Washington
Such hubris will come back to haunt the United States. The
ancient Greek historian Thucydides records that when imperial Athens confronted
the small island of Melos in 416 BC, the Athenians declared that “the strong do
what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Yet Athens’ hubris was also
its undoing. Twelve years later, in 404 BC, Athens fell to Sparta. Athenian arrogance,
overreach, and contempt for smaller states helped galvanize the alliance that
ultimately brought it down.
The 2025 NSS speaks in a similar arrogant register. It is a
doctrine of power over law, coercion over consent, and dominance over
diplomacy. American security will not be strengthened by acting like a bully.
It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great power
that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards international
rules ultimately isolates itself.
America’s national security strategy should be based on wholly
different premises: acceptance of a plural world; recognition that sovereignty
is strengthened, not diminished, through international law; acknowledgment that
global cooperation on climate, health, and technology is indispensable; and
understanding that America’s global influence depends more on persuasion than
coercion.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jeffrey
D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable
Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from
2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development
Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for
Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General,
and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of "A New Foreign Policy:
Beyond American Exceptionalism" (2020). Other books include:
"Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable"
(2017) and "The Age of Sustainable Development," (2015) with Ban
Ki-moon.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment