MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It has been a remarkable start to the new year for President Trump, from authorizing an attack on Venezuela in the wee hours last Saturday to threatening a takeover of Greenland. This from a president who openly covets the Nobel Peace Prize and who ran on a campaign promising no U.S. involvement in foreign wars. NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has this report.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: By any measure, President Trump's second term has been far more muscular than his first - launching military strikes and issuing threats from Africa to the Middle East and now Latin America. Here he is on Air Force One just hours after the U.S. raid on Venezuela and the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, contemplating what could be next for Mexico and its drug cartels...
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Mexico has to get their act together because they're pouring through Mexico and we're going to have to do something.
NORTHAM: ...For Iran...
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TRUMP: If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.
NORTHAM: ...And Greenland.
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TRUMP: We need Greenland from a national security situation. It's so strategic.
NORTHAM: Trump also made similar suggestions about Cuba and Colombia. There have been strikes on Yemen, Syria and Nigeria. He's threatened Canada, Panama and others.
STEWART PATRICK: There's no question that in his second term, Donald Trump is entirely unbound and he's eager to throw America's weight around in the world.
NORTHAM: That's Stewart Patrick, a specialist on world order and international cooperation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says Trump is waving aside rules-based international order in his effort to ensure U.S. dominance.
PATRICK: Donald Trump feels zero restraints and is experiencing a great sense of hubris in terms of his interactions with the world. You know, he's in a sense on a sugar high after having (laughter) gotten rid of President Maduro.
NORTHAM: Laurel Rapp, who heads up the U.S. and North America Programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, agrees Trump is demonstrating more muscular foreign policy ambitions in his second term. She sees several major differences from his first term in office.
LAUREL RAPP: The first is geography. Trump is willing to use U.S. military force across the world, from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, and now potentially in Greenland, in Europe.
NORTHAM: Rapp says the second difference is the level of risk involved. The Venezuela operation is a case in point.
RAPP: And the third big difference is that he is willing to not just go after adversaries but also allies - treaty allies.
NORTHAM: Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top aides, lays bare the administration's view on raw power during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
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STEPHEN MILLER: We live in a world - in the real world, Jake - that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed...
JAKE TAPPER: But are you saying that...
MILLER: ...Since the beginning of time.
NORTHAM: But Rapp, who spent 14 years at the State Department, says just because the military can invade a country doesn't mean it'll bring sustained change.
RAPP: When you have insufficient planning, when you have unclear and conflicting objectives, a lack of diplomatic capacity in the country, limited or shifting U.S. attention and unrealistic timelines, these are all recipes for failure.
NORTHAM: Carnegie's Patrick says the administration's embrace of force to advance national interests is enabling great powers in other parts of the world.
PATRICK: Not least China and Russia to actually legitimate their own claims to a sphere of influence in their immediate backyards. So he's providing cover to a number of U.S. adversaries around the world to do the same thing where they are.
NORTHAM: There's always the notion that threats against Greenland, Colombia and other nations are just overheated rhetoric or a negotiating tactic. But Venezuela proves nothing is off the table.
Jackie Northam, NPR News.
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