Why the US, under Trump, wants to make new enemies

2 February 2026

Education and society, Politics and law, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries

The first month of 2026 has seen the threat and use of military force become a prominent factor in US foreign policy. Used to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and to intimidate Greenland and Iran, US President Donald Trump is capitalising on his country's extensive hard power capabilities to achieve his policy objectives and craft the world accordingly.

This assertion of raw power - including being coupled with economic sanctions - is not new to US foreign policy. Instead, it rests on a long-asserted realist understanding of power politics in international relations. Such a perspective centres on Athenian general Thucydides' well-known axiom that the "strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

Essential to such beliefs is that the world is seen as anarchic and unstable, a state that can only be counteracted by countries seeking hegemony. The goal for the US is therefore, according to American political scientist John Mearsheimer, to be "so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system" through a strategy of coercive stability. Any challengers to such dominance are seen as strategic competitors and potential threats, while also serving to justify this strategic outlook.

The UN is missing in action in standing up to ultra populistsSince the end of the Second World War, US foreign power has therefore required a continual need for enemies. This was evident during the Cold War against the Soviet Union and its allies, as underpinned by the bipolar worldview of former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that "those who are not with us are against us". Other targets during that period included the war on drugs in South America, as well as the identification in the 1980s of Japan as an economic threat.

Following the attacks of September 11 2001, then US President George W Bush repeated Dulles' mantra to identify a range of new enemies through the 'Axis of Evil': Iraq, Iran and North Korea. As the 21st century continued, China's dramatic rise to international pre-eminence then made Beijing Washington's primary target.

Underpinning this necessary search for enemies has been the ongoing centrality of military corporations within US politics. This prompted President Dwight D Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address, to warn against the establishment of a 'military-industrial complex'. Its "unwarranted influence" showed how "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist", he said.

[Trump's] behaviour is taking place in an emergent multipolar world that by its very nature is more anarchic, less controllable and more unstable ... the lines between friend and foe are also increasingly blurred, making the search for enemies in many ways easier.

It also heightened US perceptions of a high-threat environment whereby military power was the only solution. In 2021 the US controlled more than 750 military bases in at least 80 countries and in 2024 had a total defence budget of $997 billion, equivalent to 37 percent of total world military spending.

A hyper-realist foreign policy

Earlier in January, Trump declared he didn't need international law. This statement was in line with his actions in 2025 that have actively dismantled the rules-based international order. Such actions have in effect destroyed the US's soft power that the old world order had been based on, which, according to Chile-based philosopher Assistant Professor Sasha Mudd, held "a powerful moral and cultural appeal".

All that now remains is brute force. Confirming the realist mindset of the last 100 years, Trump's chief adviser and ideologue Stephen Miller stated in an interview this month that "We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power … these are the iron laws of the world".

In such a vision, everyone is a potential enemy and therefore of service to a Trumpian form of US diplomacy based on threat and coercion. This mindset is now expanding to target longstanding allies. The US's 2025 National Security Strategy ruptured the alliance with Europe, while EU support of Greenland has resulted in threats of higher US tariffs and conquest by force.

Although in his most recent speech at Davos, Trump appeared to be going back on threats of force and tariffs, if he does pursue his desire for Greenland, the existence of Nato comes into question, as does the United Nations itself. Meanwhile, citizens from 75 countries have now been suspended from entering the US, and more than a third of the world's countries are affected by US economic sanctions.

Such behaviour is taking place in an emergent multipolar world that by its very nature is more anarchic, less controllable and more unstable. In such a world, the lines between friend and foe are also increasingly blurred, making the search for enemies in many ways easier. As such, Trump's hyper-realist approach will only accelerate, with his indiscriminate and ever-changing use of tariffs being perhaps only precursors to military force.

In this context, the influence of the military-industrial complex remains high, with half of the US's discretionary federal budget allocated to the Department of Defense (DoD), now renamed the 'Department of War'. This influence is now coupled with what former US President Biden referred to as the 'tech-industrial complex', which wins tens of billions of defence contracts, and whose AI technologies are increasingly being used in warfare.

Combined with threats to put troops in Venezuela and his list of next targets said to include Cuba, Colombia and Mexico, Trump's 'power in chaos' approach now appears set to continue, if not escalate. In a world governed by threats and force, and in the face of overwhelming US military prowess, the assertion of peaceful collective values is one form of resistance.

For New Zealand, such a focus can aid not only the country's resilience in the face of this mounting instability but offer a pathway away from US dependence towards other like-minded trading partners and allies.