“US Gone Rogue”

Thailand gets it. They understand what Trump is attempting to do globally. I am not surprised by this as I have worked with them on and off for years.

“Trump goes off-script, US gone rogue,”

Bangkok Post

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

It was not supposed to work like this.

“America First” and “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) were supposed to be about an inward turn to repair, replenish and rebuild an externally overstretched and internally weakened country, weighed down by unnecessary global entanglements, unsustainable national debt, and unimpeded mass migration. It seemed for a time that the MAGA movement to prioritise America above and beyond the international system and its constituent parts had found its final prophet in President Donald J Trump. But now, somehow, President Trump has betrayed the movement that has carried him to office by waging a disastrous war on Iran in cooperation with Israel.

Doubling down on his first term in 2017-21, President Trump’s second administration hit the ground running in pursuit of the MAGA agenda to keep out immigrants and exact payback from the international system the US itself constructed 80 years ago. Cracking down on immigrants at home and fencing out those who wanted to enter became policy priorities with fanfare.

It stemmed from a nativist drive that had been percolating in America for decades. Demographic trends showed that, unless they are slowed or stopped, immigrants were on course to become the majority of the population over the descendants of the first white settlers. The first year of the second Trump administration unsurprisingly saw a marked reduction in immigrants’ presence and flow.

Along the way, Mr Trump lashed out at the international system by imposing so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2 last year, known as “Liberation Day”. Essentially, the US weaponised its prosperity and used its position as the largest global export market with trade deficits with most other economies to levy import taxes on all of them. All economies were forced to scramble and negotiate for lower levies. The unilateral punitive tariff regime was globally unpopular, but it was long-sought music to the ears of MAGA adherents.

By November last year, both the Trump social movement and national government came up with a National Security Strategy (NSS) document, reinforced two months later by a National Defence Strategy, which outlined and spelt out how they see the world, America’s role in it, how to proceed and what to do in recalibrating and realising US interests. The overarching focus was the securitisation of the homeland, extended to the immediate neighbourhood of the “Western Hemisphere”. The Indo-Pacific ranked second in geostrategic priorities, and European engagements and security came out third. The Middle East was fourth in importance, with Africa ranking as the fifth and last.

The language of the NSS included the denial of “non-Hemispheric competitors” in the US’s immediate neighbourhood. For the Indo-Pacific, it acknowledged competitive tensions with China, short of outright conflict. In Europe, it called for more inner strength and resources and supported right-wing movements labelled as “patriotic European parties”. In the Middle East, the Trump II administration argued to “shift burdens” and “build peace”.

Specifically, the NSS envisaged the US to focus less on the Middle East as a major source of energy supplies as America’s energy production “ramps up”. Instead of a contested arena for energy, the Middle East “will increasingly become a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas — including nuclear energy, AI, and defence technologies”. From being fourth on the NSS list of regions, the Middle East has catapulted to first.

When the Trump II administration captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on Jan 3 in a daring nighttime raid, it seemed part and parcel of the US strategy to dominate the Western Hemisphere, alongside threats and intimidation to take over Greenland and to retake the Panama Canal, not to mention a targeted regime change in Cuba by blockading and isolating the small island nation.

When President Trump decided to attack Iran jointly with Israel, it was antithetical to MAGA objectives and against what he has stood for all along. Few countries in the Middle East liked Iran because of its revolutionary zeal and sponsorship of proxy militant and terrorist groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Yet many economies around the world did business with the Islamic Republic because they had no deep conflicts with the Iranians. For Thailand, for example, the Persians have been here for more than 400 years, long before the US became a country, as friends, traders, and settlers through marriages with locals.

Instead of bringing down the US national debt of more than US$39 trillion, Mr Trump’s war with Iran will add to it. It is a war that will not make America great but will further deplete its resources and dent its credibility and prestige. By not informing allies and trying to form a coalition among them with international backing (a blatant violation of international law and the United Nations Charter) the Trump II administration has gone rogue. President Trump in 2026 sounds like President George W Bush in 2003, grasping for war justifications that are just not there.

Back then, Washington had argued that the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction with a connection to terrorism, thereby requiring and justifying a pre-emptive attack. Mr Trump is using the same doctrine of “preemption” by attacking Iran first and trying to explain the reasons later. His MAGA creed has somehow morphed into Mr Bush’s then-neoconservatism that propagated regime change and what was known 23 years ago as “democratic globalism”, a misguided and dangerous strategy to turn the tribal and unruly Middle East into democracies.

Mr Trump is supposed to focus on the homeland and the Western Hemisphere, not another imperial over-stretch into the quicksand of another war in the Middle East. How he has gone off the MAGA script as encapsulated in the NSS and NDS will be studied for years. As there is likely to be a comeuppance for what he has done and how the rest of the world is being coerced to put up and pay for it. The greatest irony of the wayward Trump doctrine of homeland focus and Western Hemispheric domination could be that the US president eventually and unwittingly falls on his own sword.