CHARBONNEAU – Russia cheers Trump’s plan to control W. Hemisphere

THE KREMLIN welcomed President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), released on Dec. 4, 2025.

It was dismissed by some as an example of more Trump rant but in light of his recent incursion into Venezuela, his strategy has to be taken seriously.

The Kremlin said that the NSS is largely aligned with Russia’s own perceptions. It’s the first time that Moscow has so completely endorsed such a document from its Cold War enemy.

It seems to me that Trump and Russian President Putin have struck a deal to divide up the globe: Trump will take the Americas and Russia will take back the 15 independent countries that fell out of Soviet control in 1991.

At first glance, the strategy looks like the ravings of an unhinged megalomaniac.

That’s what Globe and Mail columnist Konrad Yakabuski thought. He says we shouldn’t take Trump seriously; not when he goes from hawkish to dovish and back again with cheerful abandon. Why should we take him seriously? He says:

“So, all the hyperventilating over Mr. Trump’s latest NSS is overdone. This is much more a MAGA rant than a serious foreign-policy blueprint. Nothing in it should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Trump’s disdain of convention and everything in it should be taken with massive grain of salt.”

Professor Wesley Wark, an expert on national security and intelligence issues, takes Trump’s NSS more seriously:

“It contains a retreat by the United States from global leadership and an abandonment of any principled foreign policy. It fails to address threats posed by authoritarian regimes and castigates Europe as a continent in decline. The Trump strategy presents an explosive mix of policies that give new substance to an unprecedented version of the doctrine of ‘America first.’”

Here’s how Trump’s vision of America differs from Biden’s in 2022,

Biden saw China and Russia as strategic competitors, describing China as the most consequential geopolitical challenge and Russia as an acute threat to peace and stability.

Trump sees China as an economic competitor rather than a military adversary. That view seems to give China licence to do what it wants militarily. I’d be worried if I lived in Taiwan.

And Trump downgrades concern with Russia. This amounts to a policy of “you take what you want and we’ll take what we want.”

Biden emphasized maintenance of a rules-based international order and U.S. leadership in global cooperation on shared challenges. His NSS Included global challenges such as climate change and pandemic preparedness.

Trump emphasizes Western Hemisphere stability in a modernized Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny.

Where the Monroe Doctrine was framed as a defensive foreign policy principle, Manifest Destiny stated that the United States was destined, morally and historically, to expand westward across North America.

Emboldened by his military adventures in Venezuela, Trump has called his plan the “Donroe Doctrine,” and he suggested that he would not stop with Venezuela. Columbia, Cuba and Greenland are targets in his sights.

And Trump added that “you have to do something with Mexico” and its drug cartels.

The Trump Manifest Destiny focuses on his inflated ego, that he is destined to be known as a warrior, deal-maker, President of Peace, and the greatest president that the world has ever seen.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.