Reagan’s 9 Lessons for Trump in Pursuing Peace Through Strength
President-elect Trump ran on a national security platform that promised a return to peace through strength, and within days of his re-election, the world is already responding. Qatar ejects the Hamas leadership while the terrorists beg for peace. After four years of chaos, Mexico says it will finally stop migrants at the U.S. border. China and Russia both make overtures in pursuit of reduced tensions between their states and ours. The European Union pledges to buy natural gas from America instead of from Russia. And this is all happening two months before Trump even takes the oath of office.
It’s clear that the world — friends and foes alike — responds to strong American leadership, and they all know Trump will bring it. Ronald Reagan, the original peace through strength president, also well understood this dynamic. His legacy offers important lessons for the new Trump team to emulate:
- Keep the economy strong. It is the center of gravity and the source of American strength. Trump’s domestic economic agenda seeks to rebuild the U.S. economy through deregulation, tax cuts, and sound money, just as Reagan used the same methods to grow it beyond the point where the Soviet Union could compete.
- Maintain the means to keep the peace. Reagan understood the old adage: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Now as then, the United States must build up its defense industrial infrastructure, increase the size and strength of the Navy to deter Beijing, and modernize its nuclear deterrent. The best way to avoid going to war is to make it too costly for adversaries to contemplate.
- Restore pride in the military. Reagan inherited the “hollow forces” of the post-Vietnam era and left office with the world’s most capable, cohesive, and deadly fighting forces. Trump must likewise rescue the DEI-damaged military, encourage national pride to rebuild enlistment and refocus the services to the sole mission of winning our nation’s wars.
- Use force judiciously but boldly. Reagan, whether liberating Grenada or intercepting the Achille Lauro hijackers, showed what was possible with bold, limited, but decisive, use of force. Trump showed in his first term a similar instinct, destroying the ISIS caliphate and taking out Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani. We can expect to see similar actions in the second term.
- Stand up to Iran. In Reagan’s time as now, the Islamic regime in Tehran is a threat to international peace. When Iran and its proxies threatened international shipping, Reagan responded with the Persian Gulf reflagging operation and sinking Iranian frigates and gunboats. Trump should resurrect the “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran and take direct action against threats to global peace from Iran’s proxies.
- Pursue energy independence. Reagan knew that energy was the key to the U.S.’s economic growth and global security. In Trump’s first term, the United States became the world’s top energy producer and can reclaim that crown in the second term by exploiting both U.S. natural resources and technological superiority in emerging energy innovations.
- Restore public diplomacy. Reagan understood the power of ideas and empowered his friend Charlie Wick to make the U.S. Information Agency a force for spreading the inspiring message of the American dream to a global audience. Trump can likewise restore the corrupt and ineffective U.S. Agency for Global Media to make it a forceful tool for promoting American messages of peace and prosperity.
- Continue the mission against totalitarianism. The most important thing Reagan brought to the White House was his vision of the outcome of the Cold War. As Reagan put it, “We win. They lose.” Today, the United States is in a new Cold War with communist China, and Trump can bring that same clarity of mission, not only to the competition with China but also to every country that seeks to damage U.S. global interests.
- Renew American confidence. Reagan came to power when the United States had been humiliated in war, suffered economic shocks, and Americans were told their best days were behind them. So, too, is it today. As Reagan once did, Trump can rekindle pride in the American mission, certainty in our national strength, and confidence in the country’s future.
Ronald Reagan was an outsider to Washington, derided as too old and too extreme, and yet left office with the United States in its strongest global position since the end of World War II. Donald Trump faces similar challenges and is entering his second term with hard-won lessons from the last eight years. This new term is an opportunity to pivot from a limited national security strategy seeking merely to manage U.S. decline to one that sets the terms of American interests, and then boldly proceeds to pursue them.
Dr. James S. Robbins is dean of academics at the Institute of World Politics and author of the forthcoming book Forging Peace Through Strength: Ronald Reagan and the Cold War.
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