With Donald Trump, we have entered a new era. Far from being an accident in the history of the United States, he is a product of the earliest days of the star-spangled Republic. He is not a traditional isolationist. He is rather what I call a trilateralist. For him, there are only three continents: Europe, from which he distances himself; Asia, where China is seen as a rival or even hostile power; and the Americas, which he considers his exclusive domain. Similarly, he acknowledges only three major powers: the United States, Russia, and China. The rest is insignificant. From the War of Independence to the end of the 19th century, the United States of America, shielded by two oceans, thrived in splendid isolation. The steamship, far from ending this quasi-insular state, fostered an expansionism whose kickoff was the war against Spain in 1898 and whose final act was the Afghan adventure and its tragic conclusion. After such a debacle, one might have expected a resurgence of the isolationist sentiment that always lies latent within the American population, as was the case after the Vietnam War. Instead, we are witnessing a return to the roots: a retreat, not on a national level, but on a hemispheric one. Thus, from Monroe to Trump, the circle is complete. The OAS, more than NATO, will henceforth be favored as a tool of domination.

Donald Trump, above all a businessman, is not a warmonger. While Ronald Reagan, his predecessor, aimed to restore U.S. military might in response to the Soviet Union's advances in nuclear arms (already a form of "Make America Great Again" in terms of national security), Trump’s primary goals are to restore American industrial power, protect the dollar as the principal instrument of global trade and finance, and meet the expectations of the average American. To achieve this, diplomatic and economic pressure is his preferred weapon. The enemy is no longer Russia, a minor economic player, but China and, secondarily, the BRICS nations. It’s not that he rules out the use of force, but force should not merely express the law of the strongest—it must prevail by showcasing it, through asymmetric means such as those used in Yemen.