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As the US confronts multipolarity and internal fracture, Trump’s foreign policy oscillates between restraint and escalation. Expert A. Wess Mitchell’s argues the concept of consolidation is Trump’s grand strategy, however delegating European defense and deprioritizing the Middle East may be far harder in practice. Greenland, Iran, and NATO emerge as the major contradictions.
Written by Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions
Trump’s Washington is pursuing so many different things at once that understanding US foreign policy today has become a difficult exercise even for seasoned observers. Trade wars and peace talks, threats and gestures of conciliation, withdrawals and escalations all coexist uneasily in Washington’s messaging.
Into this confusion steps A. Wess Mitchell’s recent article, “The Grand Strategy Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy”. Mitchell, a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, argues that there is a coherent logic behind the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS). According to Mitchell, that logic is “consolidation”: a historically grounded “grand strategy” whereby an overstretched great power accepts short-term “tradeoffs” to rebuild its underlying strength for long-term competition.
The US, he says (as do many experts), is overextended militarily and economically, unable to fight on multiple fronts while simultaneously losing ground to China in industrial and technological capacity. “Consolidation” therefore means narrowing commitments, “delegating” burdens to allies, “shoring up” the Western Hemisphere, “deprioritizing” secondary theaters, and buying time through diplomacy while reindustrializing at home. As a matter of fact, Mitchell argues, this approach is not isolationist but prudential, rooted in the classical logic of aligning “ends” with “means”.
Mitchell thus identifies five “consolidationist” planks: 1. Western hemispheric dominance (“neo-Monroeism”, as I call it), 2. a managed modus vivendi with China, 3. delegating European defense, 4. scaling down Middle Eastern entanglements, and 5. domestic economic rejuvenation.
I shall argue that these fives planks, however (especially the third and the fourth one), face at least three sources of pressures: the defence sector, Big Tech, and Israeli interests.
The problem is not whether “consolidation” makes sense in theory. The real question is whether such a strategy can be pursued by an internally divided, politically fractured, and heavily lobbied superpower under Trump. The context is not only an emerging multipolar world and a declining, overburdened US, but also a country locked in internal conflict, with a fractured “Deep State” and a president openly waging “war” and “purges” against factions of it (to increase his own powers). The point is that “consolidation” presupposes a degree of internal coherence and strategic discipline that Washington increasingly lacks.
In March 2025, I argued that Trump was already under intense pressure from the US defense industry. Despite his “peace through strength” rhetoric, Trump’s sporadic de-escalatory impulses threaten procurement cycles, long-term weapons programs, and the political economy of permanent mobilization. No wonder, then, that every hint of retrenchment is met with counter-pressure for new theaters, new threats, and new justifications for spending. An overextended empire attempting consolidation while its military-industrial base demands expansion is a contradiction blunt enough to undermine the entire project.
Then there is Big Tech. As I noted last year, “deep state”-linked technology giants shape Trump’s global policy in ways that are underreported. From data infrastructure and surveillance to Arctic connectivity and space-based systems, Big Tech’s interests are fundamentally at odds with strategic restraint. The Arctic, and Greenland in particular, illustrate this clearly. Trump’s pressure campaign against Greenland is also a push for digital, logistical, and resource dominance driven, as it is, by tech-sector imperatives. Thus, while Mitchell speaks of “freeing up bandwidth”, Washington is in fact opening a new front with Europe and Russia, at the same time, in the High North.
The so-called “Israeli Lobby” constitutes a third vector of pressure. In June 2025, it was already clear that Trump’s attempts to recalibrate the US-Israeli relationship would meet challenges. Tel Aviv’s relentless push for confrontation with Iran places Washington in a difficult position. Trump’s flirtation with “sidelining” Israel while demanding concessions, including access to Gaza’s resources, clearly exemplify such attempt to appease defense interests and pro-Israel constituencies while asserting dominance. So much for a clean exit from Middle Eastern entanglements.
Then there is the Epstein affair, which adds yet another destabilizing layer. Conspiracy theories aside, its potential for blackmail and elite intrigue should not be underestimated, as I’ve pointed out before.
In a system already pulled in multiple directions, such leverage mechanisms can subtly but decisively shape policy outcomes. “Consolidation” then becomes harder when political survival itself is at stake.
Mitchell’s third plank, delegating European defense to Europeans, now faces its most severe test. Trump’s (Big Tech-driven) overt threats and pressure regarding Greenland have made US-European enmity explicit, potentially undermining NATO itself.
It is hard to see how Washington can keep shifting the burden of, say, Ukraine onto Europe while simultaneously antagonizing it. It is not far-fetched to speculate that the Greenland issue will not only fracture NATO but push Europe closer to Russia again, thereby backfiring strategically. Simply put, delegation requires trust; coercion however erodes it.
The fourth plank, deprioritizing the Middle East, is equally problematic. Trump’s tensions with Iran (driven by Israeli and defense pressures) demonstrate how difficult disengagement will be.
In other words, the incumbent US administration oscillates between restraint and escalation, halted strikes and renewed threats. This may be “consolidation” in theory, but not always in practice. An internally divided US, pulled by allies, lobbies, and industry pressures, struggles to maintain the discipline such a strategy demands.
Mitchell’s analysis is right: consolidation is a sound grand strategy. The challenges lie, from an American perspective, in execution. Trump is, again, being pulled simultaneously by the defense sector, Big Tech, Israeli interests, and internal political intrigue, while trying to appease all actors at once. That may be politically necessary, but it is strategically incoherent. This leads to overreach, while restraint (in other areas) without unity leads to paralysis. The US today exhibits both tendencies at once.
Thus, consolidation may turn into a patchwork of improvisations. Whether this divided superpower can truly consolidate, rather than overextend itself yet again, remains an open question. And, as Mitchell himself puts it, “overstretched systems tend to break.”
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written with all of the superfluous verbiage one expects from social scientists .
so many cliched jargon s and bs .so boring.
we know he’s thrown a spanner in their works ,as the good book says ,”all their plans will come to nought “
really they did it to themselves actually .they set it all up .
interesting that nacaronis gotten the alleged illuminati black eye .wonder who gave him that shiner ?