Emma Ashford: Happy inauguration week, Matt. It’s well below freezing in Washington, but that hasn’t stopped the raucous (indoor!) celebrations among Republicans as the new Trump administration takes office. Has the inauguration fever gotten to you?

Matt Kroenig: It is an exciting time in our democracy to see the peaceful transfer of power and a new team coming in with energy and fresh ideas. Europeans sometimes criticize our system, with the entire top half of the executive branch changing over every four years with new political appointments, but the sharp break is a good opportunity to reconsider failing policies and try something new.

Speaking of which, President Donald Trump laid out his vision for the future of the country in his inaugural address (delivered inside the Capitol rotunda to avoid the freezing temperatures). I watched at home in front of my fireplace.

What did you make of the speech? Are you enjoying America’s “golden age”?

EA: A golden age would be warmer. Seriously, I think I saw a yeti on Constitution Avenue yesterday. Or perhaps it was the newly pardoned QAnon shaman?

I thought the speech was really interesting, and I was particularly excited to hear that some of the policies the new president thinks are failing are some of the ones that I’ve been arguing against for years. Trump argued against Washington’s involvement in the “continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad” that the Biden administration promoted, and he promised that his legacy would be as a peacemaker. If he means it, I’m enthused.

But it does seem that the speech was at odds with a lot of your policy preferences. The new president backs the Gaza cease-fire, wants to seek peace in Ukraine, and thinks the United States should push freeloading European allies to do more on defense. Maybe he’d be willing to take over this column from me and debate you instead?

MK: No. I don’t think so. As our readers know, the primary line of our debate in this column is intervention versus restraint. Trump is somewhere in the middle, so I think people on both sides see things they both like and don’t like in Trump’s policies.

As he writes in The Art of the Deal, Trump ramps up pressure on negotiating partners to bring them to the table and get a better deal. Hawks like when he ramps up pressure…

EA: They don’t like it when he then makes a deal and takes the pressure off, though!

MK: Exactly! And for doves, it is the reverse. They freak out when he escalates and are relieved when he de-escalates.

But returning to the speech, I liked that it was mostly forward-looking and optimistic about the future of the United States. His mantra of peace through strength was a major theme. And I thought it was notable that he talked a lot about freedom and American exceptionalism, which were not issues he often spotlighted in the first term.

What did you like that you thought I wouldn’t? And vice versa?

EA: Well, I thought the most significant quote was this: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

It’s increasingly clear that Trump’s inauguration marks the end of George W. Bush-style neoconservatism within the Republican Party. The president has been very clear that he doesn’t want to engage in endless Middle Eastern wars, and he is already talking about trying to end the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine.

He’s going to have to make compromises to do so—compromises that conventional wisdom in Washington would never have accepted even a few years ago, such as conceding that Ukraine may not retake all of its territory. Trump is the reason that the United States finally withdrew from Afghanistan! And I seem to recall you saying that we should send more support to Ukraine, once or twice (or three times). I’m surprised that you would support the move to extricate the United States from that war.

MK: I think the 2016 presidential race marked the end of George W. Bush-style neoconservativism, when even his brother, Jeb Bush, admitted that the Iraq War was a mistake.

EA: JEB!

MK: On Ukraine, my mind changed with the facts. At the start of the war, I argued for helping Ukraine win a decisive victory, but President Joe Biden and the West instead pursued an overly cautious approach that made that impossible. Since January 2024, I have argued that it is time to wind down the war.

In fact, I see Trump’s peace-through-strength strategy as echoing the pre-Bush, Reagan-era consensus on defense policy. Trump said in his address that he would achieve peace by building “the strongest military the world has ever seen.” So it is peace achieved through deterrence, not retreat or appeasement.

Casper Weinberger, former President Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, laid out enduring principles for the effective use of military force. It should be used overwhelmingly only when there is a clear theory of victory, and when vital national interests are on the line. Long, drawn-out nation-building campaigns with no end in sight do not qualify.

So, is this another example of us both seeing what we like about Trump? Are you comfortable with his promise to build the biggest military on Earth?

EA: I believe it was the “strongest,” not the “biggest.” The United States already has the strongest military in the world. I’m not excited about the idea of a substantial increase in defense spending, but I also don’t think it’s a radical departure from the status quo.

Now, if we’re looking for something I disliked, the speech included reference to his executive order designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. As I wrote in Foreign Policy recently, the combination of war on terror authorities and the drug war in Mexico has the potential to spiral into a real, serious conflict in the next few years.

The cartels are a significant problem, as is drug trafficking—but the solution is probably not drone strikes on cartel bosses or special forces raids into Mexico.

Or do you think we should replace the war on terror with a new counterinsurgency operation on the southern border?

MK: Border security is a major problem and a national security risk. Many people on the terrorist watchlist as well as Chinese men of military age have entered the country illegally. It’s worth recalling that 74,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses in 2023 (25 times more than the number of those who died on 9/11) because of drugs that the cartels are smuggling across the border.

The current approach is not working.

Designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations allows the use of many tools to crack down short of drone strikes. For example, it makes it illegal for other entities to do business with them, which could deny the cartels’ access to financing and other services.

EA: Fair enough on the sanctions side of things, although the administration could also have used existing “kingpin” authorities to designate them instead. I just remain concerned that the United States has rejected nation-building and counterinsurgency in the Middle East but appears to be thinking about doing it in a neighboring country instead. I doubt the results will be much better.

There were some other interesting bits in the second inaugural address. Trump openly embraced not just American exceptionalism, but also manifest destiny—the 19th-century notion that the United States’ fate was to expand across the whole North American continent—and praised President William McKinley’s foreign policies.

That, along with the references to the Panama Canal, suggest that this administration is going to pay a lot more attention to the Western Hemisphere than in recent decades. It’s certainly an overdue shift, but again, I worry that we’re going to alienate regional states, particularly with silly things such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico!

You have to admit—some of these executive orders are a bit frivolous. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, switching Mt. Denali back to Mt. McKinley, requiring federal buildings to conform to neoclassical architectural styles…

MK: You have to admit that the FBI building is brutally ugly.

EA: I’ll give you that one. Perhaps the new administration can designate the architects responsible as foreign terrorist threats before they offend again.

MK: The renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere makes sense. I am concerned about Chinese companies operating ports on both sides of the Panama Canal. Greenland is strategically important, and the United States has tried multiple times over the decades to acquire it.

Washington can achieve its interests in both these places, however, short of annexation. Panama and Denmark are both pro-American countries. I am sure the Danes would be open to expanding U.S. basing and access to critical minerals if asked, and Trump’s statements have certainly gotten their attention.

EA: The language on the canal in the inaugural address was pretty striking! Trump said, “We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made… the purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. … We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”

There are legitimate security concerns about Chinese companies operating the canal. If Trump is using this language as a bargaining chip to get Panama to concede and place more safeguards around ownership and the Chinese presence in the country, great! But if he genuinely intends to recreate the canal zone through force, that seems to be a much more problematic policy.

As with Panama, when it comes to Greenland, a lot of the rhetoric coming from the transition folks—and even from Trump’s own family!—is focused on actually annexing these territories. Is that really the kind of foreign policy we want to go back to?

MK: We will see. The language is provocative and has much of the world on edge. It also leaves room for maneuver. “Taking it back,” for example, might ultimately mean canceling the contracts with the Chinese firms and turning the port back over to U.S. operators.

What about the other day-one executive orders? There was so much—it’s hard to keep track. Was pulling out of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris climate accord the right move?

EA: Well, global climate action is pretty much dead anyway. I’d like to see more action on that front, but I’m not sure it will make much practical difference to pull out of the Paris accords. The WHO is more complex. Goodness knows, the organization has serious problems internally and in how they handle disease outbreaks in member states.

But if you’re concerned about Chinese influence in the WHO, I’m not sure that the best approach is simply to withdraw and cede the field entirely to the Chinese. Wouldn’t it be better to stay in and play hardball with U.S. influence?

MK: I think so. Trump is right that Chinese capture of multilateral institutions is a major problem. It is galling that the WHO has not yet conducted a serious investigation into the origins of COVID-19, making a future outbreak more likely. I think the best approach to addressing the problem, however, is to engage in competitive multilateralism, and for the United States and its like-minded allies to reassert their influence within these bodies.

EA: Well, I’m fairly confident that multilateralism is not on the agenda for the Trump administration, at least, if the inaugural address is anything to go by.

I think it’s time to wrap up for today. I need to go to a meeting across town, and it will take me an hour or so to put on all the necessary winter gear to survive in the cold. Good preparation for when we seize Greenland, I suppose.

MK: Good idea. It will also be good preparation for when the Senate confirms you as viceroy of Nuuk.