Very often we think that Donald Trump is "crazy" and that his actions are unpredictable and disconcerting, or even delirious, chaotic and irrational. But these labels do not help to see a fairly coherent pattern behind increasingly aggressive interventions: weakening rivals indirectly and ensuring relative gains for the United States. We are facing proxy geopoliticsproxy.This idea is a reinterpretation of the concept of "proxy wars" that became popular during the Cold War, when major powers provided military, economic, or political support to allied governments in distant conflicts (in Korea or Vietnam, for example). This way they harmed the enemy while avoiding a direct confrontation between powers with nuclear weapons.We could say that proxy geopolitics is the compass of Trump's foreign policy, both in contexts of peace and war. Through interventions in third countries, it essentially seeks to weaken rival powers and gain an advantage in economic, energy, or military matters. This is how explicit the US national security strategy, published last November, is: "We must prevent other actors from achieving global dominance [...]. This implies working with partners to counter ambitions that endanger our interests." It's not about winning, but about defeating others.The eight peace agreements that Trump boasts of having achieved have not stopped violence nor brought stability. But this was not the objective. Many of these agreements seek to limit the influence of other major powers. For example, in the agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Trump secures the exploitation of mineral reserves in a region that was mostly dominated by Chinese companies; while in the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, US contractors will develop railway lines, gas, and oil for a century, limiting the influence of Russia and China in the Caucasus.
Trump's desire to annex Greenland is not understood merely as a whim of grandeur, nor even as an attempt to inconvenience European allies, whom he sees as impoverished and dependent. It is, above all, an opportunity that would allow him to recover from the disadvantageous position against Russia, the only polar superpower. As journalist Marzio Mian narrates during his travels through the lands of ice, the Arctic has incalculable value for Russia: it obtains all its energy, commercial, mining, and maritime capital, and stores its nuclear arsenal there. When Trump declares that “taking control of Greenland is necessary to prevent Russia or China from doing so”, he is not lying or delirious. He simply exposes his proxy geopolitics, based on coercive agreements with third parties to counterbalance and weaken his rivals.The news that Greenland has rejected agreements with China to exploit the island's resources under American pressure is no exception in recent years. We find similar news after the US reached a favorable agreement to control the Strait of Panama, or since the intervention in Venezuela. With the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the US prevents Venezuelan oil and other resources from traveling to Beijing or Moscow. As historian Michael Klare suggests, Trump's obsession with oil is not so much to feed on it as to prevent his competitors from doing so.The war against Iran is also a clear example. While Israel aims to consolidate itself as the hegemonic power in the region, the US seeks to weaken a valuable ally of Russia and China. Since the US bombed the Iranian island of Kharg, China has not received crude oil from Iran, and, with the blockade of Hormuz, it cannot obtain it from Saudi Arabia or the Emirates either. The aforementioned security strategy already warned: "We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas reserves, and the chokepoints through which they transit".The US proxy geopolitics taints international relations. It fosters distrust, betrayal, and Manichaeism. And it forces us to think of different responses than usual. For example, can limits be placed on allies and agreements sought that do not seek to harm rivals? Appealing to international law seems as necessary today as it is anachronistic and harmless. But acting in a proxy manner only intensifies regional tensions and military escalation in a somnambulistic race reminiscent of the preludes to World War I.
