Geopolitics

Comments on this article are especially good - I’ve been struggling to find any consistent through line for the Trump teams foreign stance:

…suspect that former threat assessments faced heavy political pressure to play up the threat as a way of justifying preemptive hawkish action. In the same way Conservatives go into hysterics about cancel culture to justify their own actual attacks on the first amendment—America is histrionic about China as a threat to the global order to justify its 'strike first' policy approach. 

But the Trump Doctrine does not see itself as the World's Secret Police—preemptively suppressing threats to the global order—it sees America as a predator nation, and predators rarely have much to gain by direct conflict with other predators. Our threat analysis is more rational because our aggression is going to be based on more straightforward opportunism.

Emphasis mine, but that tracks imo given the dealing with legacy allies and adversaries, while not being belligerent - yet at least