www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/opinion/trump-foreign-policy-neo-royalist.html
For decades, the United States has championed a rules-based international order. Mr. Trump has wasted little time taking a wrecking ball to it and was typically blunt in declaring, “I don’t need international law.”
To interpret Mr. Trump’s approach, the administration and pundits have been quick to turn back the clock to 19th-century models of international affairs. The purported Donroe Doctrine (aping the Monroe Doctrine of 1823) aims to secure a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere to counter the influence of Russia and China. We are back to a world, the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, said, that is “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. ”
But what we are seeing is not great-power competition in any traditional sense. Instead of securing the region from narcotrafficking, Mr. Trump went after one autocrat in Venezuela and pardoned a former Honduran president who said he wanted to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” Mr. Trump claims that taking over Greenland is “psychologically needed,” even though the United States already has a military presence on the island and an open invitation to expand its bases. And he has struck deals with great-power rivals that undermine U.S. influence, reportedly promising Vladimir Putin territorial gains in Ukraine and approving Nvidia’s bid to sell its high-end semiconductor chips to China.
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While Mr. Trump boasts that the Venezuela intervention will increase American prosperity, there is actually little promise of national benefit. Instead, the gains appear to be flowing to Mr. Trump and his insiders. Amber Energy, an affiliate of Mr. Singer’s hedge-fund company,won an auction for Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, a few months ago and is now strategically positioned to play a key role in refining and distributing that oil. As a down payment, Mr. Trump announced that up to 50 million barrels would be sold and that “that money will be controlled by me.” The first sale was routed through the company of another megadonor, leading Senator Chris Murphy to conclude, “Trump took Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint and gave it to one of his biggest campaign donors.” Fifty million barrels is a mere two and a half days’ worth of domestic consumption, but it would be well more than what Mr. Trump spent on his 2024 election campaign — a pot of patronage rather than a national investment.
Mr. Trump’s trade policy follows a similar
Law, Power, and Justice 
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