The US’s Monroe Doctrine and aggressively assertive diplomatic tactics have not led to lasting success in the global order. Power politics may have given weight to the powerful, as Thucydides once said: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. But history shows that a foreign policy driven by muscular overdrive has reached a dead end, even after securing consolation prizes or tactical wins in power contests. To escape that dead end, the US shifted to readjustments, but they are nothing but blatant contradictions and double standards framed as the “US Way of Pragmatism”.
Trump’s MAGA Fuel
What is actually fuelling this overdrive is Trump’s nationalism fever, dubbed the Make America Great Again or America First policy, whose imprint is gradually visible in its foreign policy version, the “Donroe Doctrine”. But this aggressive pursuit of MAGA is now driving an exhausting overdrive that may be pushing the US to rethink its approach and, more importantly, to adopt double standards in recent years. The first was the US’s attempt to secure a sphere of influence in its backyard by launching a military operation and overthrowing Venezuela’s regime this year.
The action was justified as securing democracy and neutralising a security threat through regime change in Venezuela. Still, regimes in Argentina and Ecuador accused of human rights violations and mafia activities are supported by the US administration, overlooking severe organised crime and corruption in allied nations as long as those governments cooperate with Washington’s broader security goals. After Operation Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve in Latin America, the US realised it could not sustain a continued muscular overdrive in the region, as it could frustrate allies and risk diplomatic isolation. The US aggressively strengthened ties with some Latin American allies, specifically Argentina and Ecuador, by downplaying the internal security and economic crises looming in their nations.
The China Reset
After the US’s muscular overdrive in Vietnam was failing and deeply bogging down the US in an increasingly unpopular war, Nixon was desperate for an honourable exit, and he believed that opening a channel with Beijing could help isolate North Vietnam and pressure them into peace negotiations. To do this, the US had to abandon decades of fierce, public anti-communist rhetoric. President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger executed one of the greatest pragmatic pivots in diplomatic history. They completely bypassed their own anti-communist rhetoric to forge a secret, strategic alliance with Mao Zedong’s China. This bold move isolated the Soviet Union and helped the U.S. extract itself from Vietnam. Most importantly, to exploit the Soviet-Sino split, Nixon hoped to push Moscow into détente by threatening a U.S.-China alliance.
Turning Back Taiwan
In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the U.S. pragmatically traded away its strict ideological support for its long-standing democratic ally, Taiwan. The U.S. formally acknowledged the “One China” position, effectively sidelining Taiwan’s international standing and further strengthening the normalisation of relations with China that began opening in the early 1970s. This marked a subtle departure from the U.S.’s 1950s approach, when the U.S. staunchly supported Taiwan, signing the Sino-American Mutual Defence Treaty (1954) and having Congress pass the Formosa Resolution (1955), which explicitly authorised the U.S. military to defend Taiwan. The U.S. even deployed the 7th Fleet to escort ROC supply ships, preventing a blockade and deterring a full-scale invasion during the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, when the PRC launched a massive artillery bombardment of the Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu islands.
The Taiwan turning back is also seen as a recognition that US muscular overreach has limits. The 1972 shift was directly tied to the limits of American power at the time. Exhausted by the Vietnam War and facing a powerful Soviet Union, the Nixon administration concluded that the U.S. could no longer afford to isolate a major global power like China based purely on ideological alignment.
The Cold War Double Standards
By this time, the US also shifted towards the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, a foreign policy stance articulated by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick in her 1979 essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards” in Commentary magazine. This led to a subtle shift away from the Truman Doctrine of containment and a broad understanding that the US had reached the limits of muscular overreach. Instead of pulling back into isolationism, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine managed the limits of American power by narrowing its moral scope. This very attempt can be argued to have meant that, in the name of pragmatism, the US resorted to double standards, discounting both the earlier doctrinal understanding of the Truman and Carter doctrines, which guided US foreign policy not only to contain communism but also to uphold democratic and human rights.
Through this doctrine, the Reagan administration provided massive military and financial aid to authoritarian regimes in Latin America, such as the El Salvador junta, to pre-empt a Marxist takeover. Similarly, to destabilise the Marxist-leaning Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who overthrew U.S.-backed right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza, the U.S. orchestrated a massive covert operations campaign to fund, arm, and train the Contras, a right-wing guerrilla group, to destabilise the new Sandinista government systematically. The Contras were heavily criticised for civilian massacres and human rights violations but still received support from the US, making the flawed Contras a necessary vehicle for U.S. strategy. Later, the infamous Iran-Contra affair further exposed the US’s double standards. When Congress passed the Boland Amendment, legally banning U.S. funds from going to the Contras, administration officials orchestrated a secret, illegal deal. The U.S. secretly sold advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to the hostile Iranian regime in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, including the CIA’s Station chief of Lebanon. The illicit profits from those Iranian arms sales were then funnelled directly to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Similarly, another infamous case was Chile, where the US backed authoritarian Pinochet, who took power in Chile via a violent, bloody military coup in 1973, overthrowing the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. While the Carter administration had distanced the U.S. from Chile due to Pinochet’s horrific human rights record (including forced disappearances and torture), the Reagan administration reversed course, normalising diplomatic ties and easing economic pressures.
Trump’s Double Standard
Cut to the present: these historical precedents seem to be playing out again in Trump’s second administration, as the US realises the limits of muscular overreach and resorts to desperate resets labelled as pragmatism. These pragmatic actions often amount to double standards for two reasons.
First, aggressive resets sideline core principles; second, they involve covert actions that bypass the US’s own rules and regulations. The recent diesel deal with Russia, while punishing others who trade oil and energy with Russia, is another example of double-standard pragmatism. This is further guided not only by a realisation of limits but also by panic, as US congressional midterm elections are just weeks away. Inflation and the economy have consistently ranked as the top concern for roughly 84% of registered American voters(according to some reports), so to ease diesel pressure, which has spiked to an unprecedented record high of $6.52 per gallon, the US is knocking on Russia’s door for diesel.
Similarly, to keep its allies in the Middle East intact, the U.S. adopted another policy drift, this time for AI Chips. Under a strict national security framework, the U.S. imposed sweeping global restrictions on selling advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to prevent highly sensitive technology from leaking to foreign adversaries. In 2026, the Trump administration bypassed previous restrictions and agreed to allow major sales of high-level AI chips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This pragmatism secured lucrative investment ties and massive Gulf capital for U.S. tech interests. Another case is the Saudi nuclear deal. For years, strict U.S. non-proliferation laws legally barred the export of sensitive nuclear energy technology to nations that refused to sign rigorous oversight agreements (known as the “Gold Standard”). Still, the Trump administration overrode these long-standing red lines to approve a deal transferring nuclear energy technology to Saudi Arabia.
These instances tell us that Trump’s muscular overreach in the Middle East and globally has reached its limit, much like the Vietnam War, which forced the US to adopt contradictory and double-standard policies, departing from its own doctrines. Perhaps the MAGA-driven doctrine has also reached its limit and is gradually setting the tone for a soft departure.
