President Donald Trump’s foreign policy returns to the “Monroe Doctrine,” according to which geopolitics should be approached in a more realistic and less ideological manner. This follows decades during which U.S. foreign policy was trapped in the illusion of “unipolarity” that took shape after the Cold War, based on the mistaken belief that this condition would last forever; that Washington would be able to remake the world through the promotion of democracy and extensive, sustained humanitarian and military intervention.
Trump’s approach, despite the heavy rhetoric that accompanies it, acknowledges what every serious scholar of international relations understands: great powers have legitimate security interests in their near abroad, and attempts to deny this reality generate conflict rather than prevent it.
The End of Liberal Hegemony
The establishment, which has managed a bipartisan foreign policy, has clung to the notion that America must maintain supremacy everywhere, at all times. This maximalist vision has produced a series of costly failures, from Iraq and Libya to the failed attempt to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, which contributed to the catastrophe of the Russia-Ukraine war. The framework of spheres of influence offers an alternative: to recognize that Russia has security interests in Eastern Europe, that China has interests in East Asia, and that America has interests in the Western Hemisphere.
I emphasize: this is conciliation, not appeasement. It is important to understand that a moderate, or cautious, policy toward adversaries is not the same as appeasement; it is not akin, for example, to the dangerous capitulation to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but rather a policy of calculated strategic prudence, and therefore not an expression of weakness. The policy of containment articulated by George F. Kennan is the preferred course: not to attempt to overthrow the Soviet Union; not to conquer it; not to embark on an ideological crusade, but to suffice with containing its expansion until it would eventually weaken from within, as indeed occurred.
The “neoconservative project of global transformation” in American foreign policy, particularly from the 1990s onward, was manifested in efforts to spread democracy, by force if necessary: to topple hostile regimes; to reshape vast regions, such as Iraq, an approach that was especially prominent during the presidency of George W. Bush, as we saw in the Iraq War. This is an activist, ideological, and far more far-reaching approach than Kennan’s containment. It is now clear that the preferable doctrine is the Monroe Doctrine, first declared in 1823 by President James Monroe, who maintained that Europe should not intervene in the Americas and that the United States regards the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence. This is a doctrine of regional influence rather than an attempt to control the entire world. In other words, cautious realism is preferable to global missionary zeal.
The Ukrainian Question
Critics will immediately point to Ukraine, arguing that recognizing spheres of influence means abandoning democracies and consigning them to autocratic neighbors. Yet this claim misconstrues the concept and its implications. Spheres of influence do not negate sovereignty; they acknowledge that geography matters and that great powers will act to prevent hostile military alliances on their borders. Would America tolerate Chinese military bases in Mexico? The question answers itself.
The tragedy of Ukraine stems in part from the West’s refusal to recognize this reality. Promising NATO membership without the means or the will to defend it created the worst of all worlds: provocation without deterrence. A spheres-of-influence framework requires negotiations leading to Ukrainian neutrality; such a policy might have prevented the current bloodshed while preserving Ukrainian independence in the ways that matter most to Ukrainians themselves.
China and the Pacific Balance
In Asia, a spheres-of-influence framework could have provided a basis for stable competition with China. According to this view, Beijing is entitled to dominate its nearby seas; ignoring this reality is simply fantasy. It is important to understand that control of the South China Sea does not necessarily translate into Chinese hegemony over Japan, South Korea, or the broader Pacific region. Such a framework of understandings makes it possible to conduct negotiations grounded in recognition of core interests within which compromises can be reached.
The alternative is to treat every Chinese move as a prelude to global conquest, a posture that inevitably leads to confrontation, serving the interests of neither side and endangering world peace, as a miscalculation could spiral into catastrophe.
The Realist Tradition
Donald Trump’s foreign policy instincts, even if his style is blunt and undiplomatic, belong to a long and respected realist tradition in international relations. That is, an approach that prioritizes national interests, balance of power, and strategic prudence over universal ideology or the “promotion of values.”
Examples of this tradition include George Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796, in which he warned against permanent alliances and deep involvement in European conflicts. He stressed that a young nation should avoid unnecessary entanglements and safeguard its national interest. This is a cornerstone of the American isolationist-realist tradition. Another example is the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century: after Napoleon, the European powers created a mechanism of balance of power and coordination among themselves to prevent major wars. It was a classic model of realism, preserving stability through recognition of spheres of influence and equilibrium of power. So too was Nixon’s opening to China in 1972: Nixon and Kissinger engaged with Communist China to balance the Soviet Union. This did not stem from ideological affinity, but from a cold strategic calculation rooted in balance-of-power logic.
Trump fits within this tradition: less emphasis on “nation-building” or spreading democracy by force, and more on deals, spheres of influence, and national interests, even if he presents this in direct and at times provocative language.
The liberal international project promised perpetual peace through perpetual intervention. It delivered neither peace nor democracy, but instead depleted American power and credibility. The spheres-of-influence approach offers something more modest yet attainable: a world of managed competition among great powers, each secure in its core interests, each restrained from unlimited ambitions.
Challenges and Risks
None of this is without difficulty, since defining spheres of influence is itself controversial. Smaller states fear abandonment. The concept can be abused; Vladimir Putin’s conception of Russia’s sphere of influence bears little resemblance to a reasonable security interest. And America’s allies in Europe and Asia will need to accept that spheres of influence do not necessarily require American withdrawal from commitments that truly matter.
But these are problems to be managed, not reasons to reject the framework altogether. The current alternative, pretending that geography does not matter, that NATO can expand indefinitely, that America can defend every border and guarantee every country, has failed decisively.
Toward a Sustainable Order
Trump’s spheres-of-influence thinking, stripped of its bombast, points toward a sustainable international order: one in which American power is concentrated on core interests rather than scattered across peripheral conflicts; in which diplomacy acknowledges the security concerns of other great powers instead of dismissing them as illegitimate; in which the goal is stability among major powers rather than transformation of the international system.
This will not satisfy those who believe American foreign policy should be an ideological crusade. But it may produce what decades of liberal hegemony failed to deliver: an international order that does not require endless American intervention to sustain it, one that reduces rather than multiplies the risk of great-power war.
The question is not whether spheres of influence exist; they always have. The question is whether we recognize and manage them rationally, or continue to deny reality until it imposes itself upon us catastrophically. Trump, for all his flaws, is at least asking the right questions.
