Not If , But When

Mr.Donald Trump's second and current tenure as the president of the United States began upon his inauguration as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. Since then, his foreign policy has continuously sparked debate and has put global geopolitics in a tailspin. The assessment of his first term was marked by strategic rivalry with China, pressure on European allies, and the dismantling of Barack Obama’s legacy, which not only confirmed the existence of strong ideological foundations but also purely opportunistic and self-generated, if not helter-skelter tendencies. One year after the beginning of the second term, this tension remains at the heart of the American debate. During the campaign, he committed to ending the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, obviously on terms and conditions that consolidate the US’ Global supremacy, strong anchoring in the old, newly acquired and intended expanded sphere of influence with monopoly over greatest reserves of hydrocarbons and precious rare earth elements(REEs); besides ensuring domination of US $ in the world economy, risk free use of global lines of communication as well as cyber and outer spaces.

The second Trump administration does not appear as a mere continuation of the period between 2017 and 2021. While the principles of “America First” still shape major strategic objectives, their implementation evolves with the domestic and international political situation. Drawing on the experience of the first term, the American president wishes to move quicker in realizing his geopolitical vision, marked by doctrine of revanchism like the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The president’s political trajectory since his 2020 defeat feeds his desire to erase the legacy of his predecessors. More than ever, the Trump presidency is committed to a policy of deconstructing US foreign policy as it has been implemented since 1991, or even 1945. 

The zero-sum competition defined Trump’s first term i.e., the belief that political or economic gains for one group inevitably meant losses for another, viewing resources like power, jobs, or wealth as finite, even when win-win outcomes were possible. This mindset fueled support for policies like strict immigration control, progressive taxation/ tariffs, and affirmative actions. Going further, from there, now President Trump seems to accommodate a division of the world into spheres of influence. The priority has been given to the Western Hemisphere, from Greenland to Panama through Canada, illustrates this. In its implementation, Trump’s foreign policy responds to domestic political considerations. Like any other president, he must manage a coalition made up of diverse ideological currents and strive to maintain control over a fragile majority. To this balancing effort are added decisions based on personal, family and donors’ interests, further reinforcing the impression of unpredictability.

Though he was critical of other presidents’ foreign entanglements on the campaign trail, yet President Donald Trump has demonstrated a temperament to use U.S. military force in his second term with a puzzling quest for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy asserts that prior administrations defined U.S. national interests too broadly, leading to over-commitment and over-extension of the U.S. global footprint. It goes on to declare that “the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests”. After returning to office in 2025, Trump approved the expansion of counter-terrorism operations that included bombing targets in Iraq, Nigeria, and Somalia. He also ordered the U.S. military to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, responded to attacks against U.S. service members in Syria, and targeted Houthi militants in Yemen. In early 2026, after months of military buildup in the Caribbean and U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats, the United States bombed Venezuela and captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. Trump has also desired to annex Canada, threatened to launch a military operation in Colombia, suggested the United States could acquire Greenland by force, and sought military options to target the Iranian regime further amid widespread anti-government protests. Trump’s role in Palestine / Gaza in support of Israel and coercive pressure on OIC countries to accept Abraham Accord besides accepting a submissive role in reconstruction of Gaza and reassertion in Afghanistan is also fraught with many visible and invisible perils. In a recently published piece while Making a damage assessment of the President’s first year back in the White House, The ‘New-Yorker’ termed it ‘Donald Trump’s Golden Age of Awful’.

The world at large is watching Trump’s bang-up strategy with awe; some see it as manifestation of the  law of nature where ‘big fish eats the small ones’, while others view US’ unrestrained expansionism and overstretch as the ‘beginning of the the end’ of an empire like the  well established way of ‘rise and fall of all the empires’ as documented in world’s history. While the closest global competitor China has so far shown strategic patience and preferred to respond from the BRICS forum; nevertheless, like the perpetrators of WW-1 and WW-2, will Trump’s recklessness finally lead to the Doomsday WW-3, remains a matter of ‘not if, but when’. For Pakistan, staying in the crease and in the right corner with strategic foresight is an unavoidable exigent.