Introduction
The foreign policy of Donald Trump’s administration, often described as unpredictable or transactional, defied decades of post-war American consensus. While many analyses focused on the President’s personal style, a deeper structural logic underpinned its core tenets. That logic finds a powerful, if unsettling, theoretical mirror in the work of John J. Mearsheimer, the preeminent proponent of offensive realism. This framework suggests that states, operating in an anarchic international system, are primordially driven to maximize their power for survival. Trump’s “America First” doctrine, with its skepticism of alliances, emphasis on military primacy, and confrontational approach to strategic rivals, was not mere chaos. It was, in essence, a raw and unsentimental application of Mearsheimer’s principles, representing a dramatic shift from liberal internationalism to a starkly realist, zero-sum view of global politics.
Understanding the Landscape: From Liberal Order to Anarchic Arena
For seven decades, U.S. strategy was built on a liberal institutionalist foundation. It championed open trade, defended a web of alliances like NATO, supported multilateral institutions, and promoted democratic values. This system, while serving American interests, assumed a degree of shared interest and rule-based cooperation.
Mearsheimer’s offensive realism provides a different starting point. He argues that the international system lacks a supreme authority (anarchy), that great powers inherently possess offensive military capability, and that states can never be certain of others’ intentions. The rational response is to seek hegemony in one’s region and prevent any peer competitor from achieving the same. Sentiment, ideology, and institutions are secondary to the relentless pursuit of relative power.
The Trump administration implicitly adopted this worldview. It treated the global stage not as a community but as a competitive arena where allies were often “free-riders” and rivals like China were inherently predatory. The goal was not to manage the system but to dominate it unequivocally, ensuring American primacy through unabashed unilateral action.
Theoretical Analysis: Core Tenets in Practice
Three Mearsheimerian concepts were particularly evident:
The Primacy of Military Power: For offensive realists, military strength is the ultimate currency. Trump’s historic increases in defense spending, his push for a “Space Force,” his withdrawal from arms control treaties (INF, Open Skies), and his stated desire for a nuclear modernization “until people come to their senses” all signaled a belief in raw coercive power as the key deterrent. Diplomacy was often an extension of this force, conducted through tariffs (a form of economic coercion) and threats.
Fear of Cheating and Relative Gains: Mearsheimer posits that states are obsessed with relative gains—who benefits more from any interaction. Trump’s relentless focus on trade deficits, his accusations that allies were not paying enough for security, and his view of international agreements as “bad deals” perfectly reflected this. The belief was that partners, even allies, would cheat if given the chance, necessitating a tough, transactional approach to ensure America “won” every exchange.
Offensive Action and Strategic Competition: In an anarchic system, waiting is dangerous. Trump’s foreign policy was proactively offensive, not merely defensive. The trade war with China was a preemptive strike against a perceived rising hegemon. The maximum pressure campaign on Iran sought to collapse a rival regime through overwhelming force. The use of drones and special forces pursued tactical advantages aggressively. This aligned with the realist notion that to ensure security, states must disrupt potential challengers before they grow too strong.
The Role of International Organizations: Instruments, Not Institutions
From a Mearsheimerian view, international organizations are either reflections of great power politics or irrelevant. Trump’s treatment of the UN, WHO, WTO, and NATO was consistent with this. They were not valued as pillars of order but assessed purely on a cost-benefit basis. Withdrawals, funding threats, and contempt for multilateral processes signaled a belief that these bodies constrained American freedom of action without providing tangible security returns. The administration preferred ad-hoc “coalitions of the willing” or bilateral dealings where American power could be applied without dilution.
Case Studies: The Theory in Action
NATO and Alliances: Trump’s infamous threats to abandon NATO unless members increased spending were not mere bluster. They were a direct challenge to the liberal assumption of alliance solidarity. From a realist perspective, NATO is a tool to balance against Russia; if members do not pull their weight, the tool becomes inefficient. Trump applied a Mearsheimerian logic of burden-shifting and explicit reciprocity to an alliance traditionally bound by shared values.
The China Confrontation: The pivot from engagement to confrontation with China is the clearest case. Mearsheimer has long argued that the U.S. must contain China’s rise to prevent it from achieving regional hegemony. Trump’s comprehensive strategy—tariffs, technology bans (Huawei, TikTok), militarization of the Indo-Pacific, and framing the relationship as a civilizational struggle—mirrored this prescription almost exactly. It was a pure power-political contest, stripped of cooperative rhetoric.
The Middle East: The “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran and the brokering of the Abraham Accords followed a realist script. Isolating and weakening Iran served to bolster the power of American allies (Israel, Saudi Arabia) and disrupt a hostile regional power. The Accords, while a diplomatic achievement, were fundamentally a realpolitik realignment against a common foe, prioritizing strategic interests over the longstanding (and stalled) liberal peace process.
Implications and Consequences: A World Reordered
The Mearsheimer-Trump approach had profound consequences:
Alliance Erosion: Trust in American commitments plummeted. Allies began to question U.S. reliability, prompting moves toward strategic autonomy (EU defense initiatives) or closer ties with other powers.
Accelerated Multipolarity: By undermining the post-war order, the strategy inadvertently hastened the emergence of a more fragmented, competitive multipolar world. China and Russia were incentivized to build alternative systems.
The Decline of Norms: The dismissal of international law, arms control, and diplomatic norms created a more permissive environment for aggression and sovereignty violations globally.
Domestic Polarization as Foreign Policy: The “America First” mantra fused domestic populism with foreign policy, treating international engagement as a cultural issue. This further complicated coherent, long-term strategy.
Strategies: Navigating a Mearsheimerian World
For the U.S. and its partners, the legacy of this period demands strategic clarity:
For the U.S.: The choice is between refining this realist approach with more alliance management or attempting a resurrection of liberal internationalism. A hybrid may emerge: a harder-edged realism toward rivals like China and Russia, coupled with reinvestment in democratic alliances as essential tools of competition, not charitable endeavors.
For Allies: Strategies must include hedging—strengthening self-reliance and regional partnerships while managing the U.S. relationship. Binding, or trying to entangle the U.S. in institutional commitments, becomes harder.
For the System: The rules-based order is now a contested order. The task is managing great power competition to prevent conflict while preserving spaces for cooperation on transnational issues like climate and pandemics—a challenge Mearsheimer’s grim theory largely overlooks.
Conclusion and Summary
Donald Trump’s national security strategy represented a revolutionary shift, one that can be coherently understood through the lens of John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism. It replaced the aspirational, institutionalist framework of the post-Cold War era with a focus on military primacy, relative gains, and unapologetic strategic competition. While implemented with a unique personal volatility, its core impulses—treating allies as liability-sharing entities, rivals as existential threats, and the world as an arena for dominance—were deeply rooted in realist thought.
The legacy is a world that looks more like Mearsheimer’s model: more anarchic, more competitive, and less constrained by shared rules. Whether this makes America more secure in the long run is the central debate. It has certainly made the world a more dangerous and unpredictable place, proving that when a great power acts consistently on the belief that international politics is a relentless struggle for power, it often ensures that struggle becomes the prevailing reality. The enduring lesson is that theory, when translated into state policy, ceases to be an academic exercise—it reshapes the very world it claims to describe.
