By disrupting China’s global initiatives and relying on brute force to achieve its goals, US actions are ultimately self-defeating
Beyond disrupting China’s global initiatives, Washington’s aggressive execution of a revived Monroe Doctrine risks undermining US President Donald Trump’s own stated aim of safeguarding the western hemisphere and Western civilisation.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy warned that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” due to immigration, essentially urging a revival of European nationalism. Echoing similar anxieties at home, US conservatives – through initiatives such as Project 2025 – seek to “make America great again” by reasserting a Christian national identity.
On the international stage, through the Global Civilisation Initiative, China aims to share its domestic experiences, promoting dialogue and mutual respect among the world’s varied civilisations. Notably, this initiative operates as part of a coordinated set of global proposals, alongside the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Governance Initiative. Collectively, these frameworks embody China’s integrated approach to addressing the complex, interconnected challenges facing the international community.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping embarks on global outreach, Trump is retreating to hemispheric control, a key objective of the National Security Strategy. This month, the US set this strategy in motion by targeting Venezuela, a move Washington framed as securing America’s backyard.
In an interconnected world, Trump’s retreat into a geographically defined “sphere of influence” is counterproductive. Global crises – from pandemics to climate change – do not respect national borders. Yet in January, Trump doubled down on this inward turn and withdrew the US from 66 international organisations, including United Nations bodies created to address such challenges.
The more immediate fallout of Trump’s policies has been heightened geopolitical tension. His threat to take over Greenland has left Nato facing the unprecedented prospect of conflict involving one of its own members. China has been cited as a key reason behind US interest in Greenland, reflecting Trump’s desire for full strategic control of the region.
Against this backdrop, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met Xi in Beijing last week to reset the Canada-China relationship, a defiant diplomatic gesture as the western hemisphere enters a period of profound uncertainty. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Carney asserted that the US-led rules-based order was effectively dead.
Indeed, over the past decade, China has made substantial economic inroads across Latin America and the broader developing world. Programmes like the Belt and Road Initiative have delivered significant investments, boosted local infrastructure and seek to help narrow the development gap between the Global South and the Global North.
This shift highlights China’s potential role in addressing the global migration challenge. The persistent northward flow of migrants, driven largely by economic disparity, is a central challenge for Western societies. China’s development-focused approach in the Global South serves to mitigate the root causes. In this light, policies aimed at countering China’s influence in Latin America, like those pursued by Trump, are self-defeating, as they erode the developmental progress needed to achieve the long-term US objective of reducing migration.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Washington has threatened military action against Iran. Despite his self-styled image as a peacemaker, since returning to the White House, Trump has authorised military operations in multiple countries, such as Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria. This pattern of intervention is yet another factor complicating the US migrant issue.
The challenges of immigration are a painful legacy of Western colonial history. In the second half of the 20th century, migrants have been by-products of US military campaigns abroad, including those in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Violence abroad often reverberates domestically, amplifying local ethno-religious tension. US support for the war in Gaza, for instance, has been linked to a documented spike in anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate crimes in the United States.
The tragedy in Gaza has created a stark ideological rift in American discourse, one that extends into the conservative movement itself. Figures like influential commentator host Tucker Carlson have broken ranks to label the conflict inhumane, posing a stark moral question: “If a man commits a crime, do we kill his kids? I don’t care if it’s in Minneapolis or Gaza City. No, we don’t.” He has further described the ongoing violence as un-Christian.
Indeed, events like the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and the continuing harsh crackdown on undocumented migrants are laying bare the nation’s deep-seated fractures.
Washington’s heavy-handed approach has been openly justified by White House adviser Stephen Miller, who asserted that “we live in a world that is governed by force, that is governed by power”. And when asked in an interview about potential checks on his global power, Trump replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. It is the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”
The Trump administration’s reliance on brute force to execute the National Security Strategy has intensified violence and deepened national division. More dangerously, it normalises cruelty and blurs the distinction between right and wrong. This fuels ethical decay, ultimately threatening the very Christian heritage that Trump claims to defend.
The world is witnessing a stark divergence: China is advancing an expansive global vision as the US contracts into a restrictive sphere of influence. Yet Trump’s “might makes right” execution of the Monroe Doctrine makes this realignment perilous. This approach not only disrupts China’s global initiatives but also undermines America’s own professed aims to protect the western hemisphere and the values of Western civilisation.
