Trump: "Speak Loudly and Carry a Smaller Stick"

Will Trump's foreign policy wind up being: Isolationism in the Eastern Hemisphere and hegemony in the Western Hemisphere?

From the New York Times:

Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Draw Up Plans for Cuts

The defense secretary has told senior leaders to prepare to trim 8 percent from the budget over each of the next five years, officials said.

Who knows whether this planned 34% cut in the defense budget over the next five years will happen, but it’s interesting to try to imagine how it could be squared with Trump’s second term foreign policy rhetoric, which has seemed much more aggressive than in his first term (Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and Gaza), while seeming much more defeatist in Ukraine.

Different sources offer different estimates on defense and/or military spending as a percentage of GDP. For example, the CIA World Factbook says US military spending recently has been:

United States

3.4% of GDP (2024 est.)
3.2% of GDP (2023)
3.3% of GDP (2022)
3.5% of GDP (2021)
3.6% of GDP (2020)

In contrast, a website called US Government Spending estimates U.S. defense spending in the most recent year as 4.33% of GDP. The shape of its very long graph, however, seems pretty reasonable.

It’s not clear which measures include aid to Ukraine, Israel, Egypt, etc. Granted, the amount of aid given to Israel and Egypt under the Camp David Accords to not go to war with each other was a big number in 1979 but inflation has whittled it down considerably since then.

U.S. military and non-military aid to Ukraine over the three years of its war with Russia is said to be $120 billion so far. U.S. GDP is said to be $25 trillion to $30 trillion in recent years, so aid to Ukraine of about $40 billion per year has amounted to perhaps 0.15% of U.S. GDP over 2022-2024.

Forty billion here, forty billion there, pretty soon you are talking about real money.

In any case, the U.S. likely spends more than the world average on defense, which the CIA says is:

Paywall here:

World

2.3% of GDP (2023 est.)
2.2% of GDP (2022 est.)
2.3% of GDP (2021 est.)
2.4% of GDP (2020 est.)
2.2% of GDP (2019 est.)

Not that many countries are all that enthusiastic anymore about big military expenditures compared to the Cold War era, although they have gone up in this decade. The World Bank’s graph for the world shows:

Note that this graph’s vertical axis runs from 2.0% to 7.0%, so the figure for the last three decades has been pretty low but not minimal.

For instance, the CIA asserts:

Russia

5% of GDP (2023 est.)
4% of GDP (2022 est.)
4% of GDP (2021 est.)
4% of GDP (2020 est.)
3.8% of GDP (2019 est.)

Ukraine

4% of GDP (2021 est.)
4% of GDP (2020 est.)
3.4% of GDP (2019 est.)
3.1% of GDP (2018 est.)
3.1% of GDP (2017 est.)

Note: since Russia's invasion of the country in early 2022, defense spending has increased to more than 25% of GDP according to some estimates

China’s spending level is apparently pretty meh …

China

1.5% of GDP (2023 est.)
1.5% of GDP (2022 est.)
1.5% of GDP (2021 est.)
1.7% of GDP (2020 est.)
1.7% of GDP (2019 est.)

Before the recent unpleasantness beginning October 7, 2023, Israel was likely spending less on the military as a fraction of GDP than Ronald Reagan did:

Israel

4.5% of GDP (2023 est.)
4.5% of GDP (2022 est.)
5% of GDP (2021 est.)
5% of GDP (2020 est.)
5.2% of GDP (2019 est.)

According to the CIA’s estimate, Iran doesn’t seem to be particularly gearing up to fight Israel or to try to conquer the Persian Gulf:

Iran

2.1% of GDP (2023 est.)
2.5% of GDP (2022 est.)
2.3% of GDP (2021 est.)
2.1% of GDP (2020 est.)
2.5% of GDP (2019 est.)

What about European countries? Let’s start with a non-NATO country with an impressive history of making itself appear indigestible:

Switzerland

0.7% of GDP (2023)
0.7% of GDP (2022)
0.7% of GDP (2021)
0.7% of GDP (2020)
0.7% of GDP (2019)

OK, Switzerland built a huge number of fortifications in the 20th Century, so maybe they don’t have to spend much now. But, still …

The CIA Fact Book does not break out NATO spending, but does break out EU spending, which is pretty much the same countries in the Eastern hemisphere, with a few exceptions like Turkey (in NATO, not in EU). The CIA’s listing for the European Union is complex but not high:

European Union

1.9% of GDP (2024 est.)
1.8% of GDP (2023 est.)
1.6% of GDP (2022 est.)
1.6% of GDP (2021 est.)
1.6% of GDP (2020 est.)

note 1: the European Defense Fund (EDF) has a budget of approximately $8 billion for 2021-2027; about $2.7 billion is devoted to funding collaborative defense research while about $5.3 billion is allocated for collaborative capability development projects that complement national contributions; the EDF identifies critical defense domains that it will support

note 2: NATO is resourced through the direct and indirect contributions of its members; NATO’s common funds are direct contributions to collective budgets, capabilities and programs, which equate to only 0.3% of total NATO defense spending (approximately $3.3 billion for 2023) to develop capabilities and run NATO, its military commands, capabilities, and infrastructure; NATO's 2014 Defense Investment Pledge called for NATO members to meet the 2% of GDP guideline for defense spending and the 20% of annual defense expenditure on major new equipment by 2024

note 3: average spending for all NATO countries in 2023 was 2.5% of GDP in 2023 and 2.7% of GDP in 2024

I’m a little vague on what the Note 3 implies: is that the average percentage weighting each EU country equally?

Still, Europe is a great continent, the best continent per square mile.

Have you ever been to Europe?

It’s wonderful!

Europe is a great continent compared to Latin America.

Why concede Europe to Russia, a big dumb country?

What about Western Hemisphere countries that Trump’s rhetoric is threatening?

Canada

1.4% of GDP (2024)
1.3% of GDP (2023)
1.2% of GDP (2022)
1.3% of GDP (2021)
1.4% of GDP (2020)

Denmark

2.4% of GDP (2024 est.)
2% of GDP (2023)
1.4% of GDP (2022)
1.3% of GDP (2021)
1.4% of GDP (2020)

Denmark has been pretty generous toward Ukraine, giving $8 billion, about an order of magnitude more than the USA relative to Denmark’s GDP.

As I may have mentioned once or twice over the last two dozen years, I’m an admirer of Denmark.

Panama

1.1% of GDP (2023 est.)
1.2% of GDP (2022 est.)
1.3% of GDP (2021 est.)
1.4% of GDP (2020 est.)
1.2% of GDP (2019 est.)

Mexico

0.6% of GDP (2023 est.)
0.7% of GDP (2022 est.)
0.7% of GDP (2021 est.)
0.6% of GDP (2020 est.)
0.5% of GDP (2019 est.)

So, what’s Trump’s foreign policy plan?

As always, he seems to be running the option play where he might hand off, pitch out, or keep it himself.

Plus, who knows what Trump’s personal relationships might lead to? Last term, Trump found himself getting along well with Mexico’s leftist president AMLO, which led to the successful Remain In Mexico plan that Biden managed to nearly instantly blow up, disastrously for the Democratic party. This term, Trump seems less ideologically congenial with AMLO’s successor.

One problem with that is he’s shifting the Overton window, which tends to be good for domestic policy, but is it wise for foreign policy?

American pre-eminence since the 1940s has been based on the assumption that the USA has all the territory it needs.

The last American additions to territory were a few obscure Pacific islands annexed in the wake of the Big One in 1947. The most valuable and costly in blood American conquest in the Pacific, the Okinawa prefecture, was returned to Japanese sovereignty in 1972.

Seventy-seven years of America not expanding has been pretty good for America and the world.

But now Trump is talking about America expanding. Is that really prudent?

The problem is that Trump’s random assertions, which may well just be negotiation ploys, such as that Wars of Conquest Are Good, incite random Twitter morons to explain at vast length why, when you actually think about it, America’s standpoint should be that Wars of Conquest Are Actually Good. Which leads other morons to assume that beating up our ally Denmark to conquer Greenland to take their rare earths would be a genius plan.

This is all pretty stupid. The only natural resources that are actually valuable are oil/gas and human beings with average IQs over 95.

It’s unlikely that Trump actually would attack Denmark to conquer Greenland and its no doubt vastly valuable rare earth deposits. But lots of MAGA morons are in the meantime likely to assume that assaulting the home country of Hans Christian Andersen, Kierkegaard, and Bohr is a great idea because we’ll get rich off their rare earths. Or something.

But a historical precedent for Trump’s speaking loudly and carrying a smaller stick might be the fairly cheap foreign/defense policy of the three Republican Presidents of the 1920s who pulled back from involvement with Europe, spent only a moderate amount on the military (expanding the Navy while shrinking the Army), and pushed around banana republics around the Gulf of Mexico, which, by the way, Trump has renamed the Gulf of America.

In contrast, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1933, he instituted the Good Neighbor policy in Latin America in large part because he found Latin America boring and depressing in contrast to East Asia, which he was, perhaps, inordinately concerned with due to his many friends who were Protestant missionaries in China, and due to his ordinate concern with Europe because he was concerned with Europe due to Europe, America’s home continent, being awesome.

In contrast, Calvin Coolidge’s grand strategy is hard to reconcile with Trump’s brainstorm of the U.S. taking over the Gaza Strip, though.