By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Peace Through Strength Is Delivering Stability and Security

The Trump administration's foreign policy would restore America's first principles and peace through strength. This stood in contrast to the foreign policies pursued by the Obama and Biden administrations and the approaches advocated by influential Democratic strategists during the 2024 presidential campaign. Broadly speaking, they believe that the United States is in decline, and that this process must be skillfully managed through a variety of steps: unilateral disarmament (via gradual but significant cuts to military spending that harm readiness); apologizing for putative American excesses and misdeeds (as when, in 2022, Ben Rhodes, who had served as a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, wrote that “historians will debate how much America might have instigated” Russian President Vladmir Putin’s aggressive acts, asking whether the United States had been “too triumphalist” in its foreign policy); appeasement (including ransom payments to Iran thinly disguised as humanitarian sanctions relief); and the partial accommodation of the desires of U.S. adversaries (as when, in January 2022, President Joe Biden suggested that Russia would face less significant consequences if it launched only a “minor incursion” into Ukraine instead of a full-scale invasion.

Since Trump took office for the second time in January, the U.S. military has begun a generational rebuilding of its capabilities, turbocharged by an additional $150 billion in spending on top of its regular budget request for fiscal year 2026. Trump persuaded American allies and partners to commit to boosting their defense spending to five percent of GDP and to take on more of the free world’s security burdens. The president has ended the chaos at the southern border. He has been unwavering in his support for Israel without conceding to Hamas and has revived maximum pressure on Iran, including by striking its nuclear enrichment sites. The war in Ukraine is also on the path to resolution, although admittedly at a much slower pace than Trump hoped, owing to Putin’s intransigence. These measures have restored American deterrence and could usher in a new era of stability.

 

Getting Up to Speed

Many critics argue that Trump has weakened the United States’ alliances, but the facts instead show that he has strengthened Washington’s collective security arrangements by generating the urgency needed to get allies to make tangible investments for their own defense. Rather than withdraw from or weaken NATO, as critics warned he would, Trump is leading the biggest European rearmament of the postwar era. And he wasted no time getting this process started. During his first meeting with NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, in March, Trump reiterated his position that allies must spend more on defense or risk having the United States reassess its commitments to the alliance. The response was swift and substantial. In June, NATO allies agreed to raise the group’s defense spending target to five percent of GDP, with 3.5 percent going to core defense capabilities and 1.5 percent to other security and industrial base needs. Germany, long a laggard, now plans to double its defense spending within the next five years.

In September of this year, Trump suggested that the United States could deploy additional rotational forces to Poland, signaling an ironclad resolve against Russian revanchism. Soon after, Warsaw surged 40,000 additional troops to its borders, and France committed to joint air patrols over Poland.

European contributions to Ukraine’s defense have ballooned. According to data collected by the Kiel Institute, which includes the months between January 2022 and August 2025, Europe’s total allocations of aid to Ukraine averaged about $12.2 billion per quarter during the Biden administration and have averaged around $18.8 billion per quarter under Trump. In March and April of this year, Europe allocated about $23.2 billion in military, humanitarian, and financial aid to Ukraine—the highest combined total for any two months since the start of the war. A key component of Europe doing its part has been Trump’s decision to continue providing lethal U.S. arms to Ukraine, but only if that support is financed by European countries. Trump’s vision of burden-sharing has proven not only feasible but also invigorating, strengthening the alliance without costing American taxpayers. Critics who decried Trump’s “bullying” tactics have been silenced by the results: a fairer, more capable NATO that deters aggression from the outset. These steps are not mere European compliance with Washington’s demands; they are driving a renaissance of the alliance.

For the next fiscal year, the Trump administration and Congress are aiming for a historic $1 trillion investment in our military. Together, the more than $150 billion for defense funding included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and the Pentagon’s request for more than $848 billion could represent as much as a 13 percent spending increase over the 2025 fiscal year budget and will prioritize vital capabilities such as drones, AI-driven cyberdefenses, naval shipbuilding to counter China, and defenses against hypersonic missiles. This surge will align U.S. defense priorities with U.S. interests after years of underinvestment, ensuring that the American military remains the world’s preeminent force.

Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon has likewise urged U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific to match NATO’s new commitments and spend five percent or more of GDP on defense to develop their own capabilities. Under pressure from the United States, Taiwan has significantly increased its defense budget for next year and announced its intent to reach the five percent target by 2030, and it is now seeking to purchase billions of dollars of equipment from the United States, including HIMARS rockets and coastal defense missiles. According to spring reporting by the defense news site 19FortyFive, Vietnam has reached an agreement to buy F-16s from the United States, a stunning development for a country with long-standing procurement ties to Russia.

At the strategic level, Trump is not waiting for Congress to lead. Through an executive order, he launched the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, which envisages a layered shield incorporating ground-based interceptors and space-based sensors that echoes the proposed scale of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s. The Pentagon is already moving out on development and planning for the deployment of the program.

Trump knows that deterrence requires more than a good defense. Last year, in these pages, I noted that in a second Trump term, the United States could restart nuclear testing for the first time since 1992 to address Russia’s and China’s growing and modernizing nuclear arsenals. This September, China showcased its nuclear forces, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile, during a military parade that Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watched from VIP seats. In late October, Putin said that Russia had tested a Poseidon nuclear torpedo, which is designed to survive a possible U.S. attack and could wipe out U.S. port cities. It should come as no surprise that Trump is not letting this nuclear saber-rattling by Russia and China go unanswered. In a post on Truth Social in late October, he wrote that the United States would immediately resume nuclear testing on an “equal basis” with the programs of its adversaries. A tested and proven U.S. nuclear force will cause American adversaries to think twice about threatening or using the ultimate weapon.

 

Paths to Peace

In the Middle East, Trump’s record shines brightest in its support for Washington’s historic ally Israel as it seeks to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, and in the restoration of U.S. maximum pressure on Iran. Trump understands that instability throughout the region is a direct consequence of Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies. U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow this summer crippled Tehran’s enrichment capabilities without escalating to full-scale war. Maximum pressure is strangling Tehran financially, starving the regime’s proxies of the money and weapons they rely on to sow chaos. Iran’s leaders are isolated, Hezbollah and Hamas are weakened, and the region is tilting toward stability. Strength, rather than the Biden administration’s paralyzing obsession with “de-escalation,” has compelled adversaries to come to the table.

Trump has also positioned himself as the indispensable global statesman by driving efforts to bring peace to other, often far-flung and long-standing disputes. The president’s biggest tool has been his willingness to impose high tariffs or punitive sanctions on the recalcitrant parties, showing that the United States’ vast economic power can be as useful as its military might in ending sticky conflicts. Last month, the Trump administration orchestrated a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, initiating a plan for peace and rebuilding in Gaza, after repeated failures by the prior administration to secure the release of all the hostages and provide a postwar vision for the region. Earlier this year, Trump urged a cease-fire between India and Pakistan after hostilities broke out over Kashmir; brokered a peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; forced Iran to accept a cease-fire after 12 days of Israeli strikes; helped Cambodia and Thailand reach an unconditional cease-fire at their disputed border; and mediated a landmark agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan that aims to end more than 30 years of conflict. Hopefully, Trump will be able to add another peacemaking success, this time in Ukraine, where Russia has not yet recalibrated to Trump’s resolve.

 

Close to Home

In the Western Hemisphere, the most critical geopolitical space for defense of the United States, Trump has overseen a surge in law enforcement and troops to secure the previously open U.S. southern border and threatened massive tariffs on Mexico and Canada to incentivize them to crack down on drug smugglers on their side of the line. Trump’s strikes on suspected drug trafficking ships in the Caribbean are literally sinking the drug trade rooted in Venezuela, which is plagued by cartel violence. The president’s interest in acquiring Greenland has driven Denmark to deploy the largest number of ground, air, and naval assets there since the Cold War, boosting the allied presence in previously unpatrolled territory and putting Russia and China on notice that the United States and its allies do not intend to lose the race for the Arctic. And in reaction to Trump’s ire over Chinese meddling in the Panama Canal, Panama is reasserting its sovereignty and letting the Chinese know that it is time for their port management companies to go home. All of these steps have meant less fentanyl killing young Americans, less human trafficking, less Russian dominance in the Arctic, less Chinese influence in the hemisphere, and a safer American homeland.

A strong United States, backed by partners that want to share the burden of the defense of freedom, will prevail against the autocrats, tyrants, communists, and terrorists wishing to do Americans and their friends harm. A stronger country will allow Americans to find opportunities to bring an end to conflicts around the world that were otherwise thought to be insurmountable.

 

 

For updates click hompage here