Joshua Trevino. Courtesy | Austin Thomason
Lecturers discussed changes in national security strategy since the Cold War during this semester’s first Center for Constructive Alternative lecture series, held Sept. 27–30.
The CCA, titled “America’s National Security Strategy: An Assessment,” included lectures from Joshua Treviño, senior adviser to the president at the America First Policy Institute, Michael Anton, former director of policy planning at the Department of State during Trump’s second term, and Victoria Coates, vice president of the Davis Institute of National Security at the Heritage Foundation.
Treviño explained in his lecture Sept. 27 that political issues often come from Latin America, because its idea of liberty is rooted in their cultural heritage instead of America’s Anglo-Saxon one. Americans need to control the large bodies of water surrounding the nation in order to keep North America’s political issues at bay and remain a world power.
“The key to North America lies in two Great Basins,” Treviño said, referring to the Mississippi and Great Lakes basins. “If you want to establish a successful North American polity, you’ve got to control one of those two, and preferably both of them. And if you don’t control or at least neutralize both of them, then you’re going to have a continuing, enduring strategic threat that’s going to afflict whatever polity you’re at.”
David Baker, deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, argued Sept. 27 that although countries will always act in their best interest, America needs to continue to join forces with Europe.
“The threats facing us today and in the future require coordinated action on both sides of the Atlantic,” Baker said. “The United States needs to work together to build collective security and solve barriers. As President Trump’s national security strategy made clear, Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States, and transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and American prosperity.”
In his lecture Sept. 28, Anton argued that the quarter century between the Cold War and Trump’s first election was spent frivolously pouring money and resources into unnecessary wars.
“Trump views that 25-year period as a period of drift,” Anton said, referring to the 25 years between the Cold War and Trump’s presidential terms. “It was an overinvestment in strategically tangential operations, waste, and wars that cost, as he says, trillions and trillions. So we’re starting late, but we are going to correct it.”
Anton described the ways that America can correct its past political follies. One change was to remember both the moral and practical consequences of their foreign policy decisions. While it is easy for countries to make decisions based on their own needs, they need to realize those decisions affect surrounding nations, he said.
“Sometimes you can be morally in the right, but your actions have a follow-up consequence,” Anton said. “It’s not enough to try to do statecraft well. You’re in charge of a country. You’re in charge of guiding its destiny. You have to think about your interests and what follow-on consequences are.”
Coates discussed how foreign policy changed during different administrations, in her lecture Sept. 29. Trump’s newest NSS is working to bring America back as a prominent world power, she said.
“The big change in 2025 was that the prioritization of the Western Hemisphere was real,” Coates said. “President Trump has forced the U.S. government to do this, and he has taken dramatic action in Venezuela, to emphasize that he is willing to back this up with force. He wants to change the game, the game board, and he wants to make America both supreme and a very positive force in the Western Hemisphere.”
Coates also emphasized Trump’s focus on China as America’s main threat instead of Russia. While some people worry about Trump’s threat to leave NATO, Coates said he won’t if NATO shifts their focus.
“We want to participate in NATO,” she said. “But they have to make Russia their primary threat because our primary threat is going to be China, and we have to move Russia to secondary threat status.”
Edward Luttwak, author of “The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy,” retold the history of China’s political struggles in his lecture Tuesday evening. He described China’s failed military conquests and, compared to other Asian countries such as Vietnam, said it lacks a strong fighting culture.
“The Chinese have many skills; winning wars is not one of them,” Luttwak said.
Freshman Rebecca Aponte said she appreciated the speakers’ takes on foreign policy.
“It was interesting to hear their appreciation of historical facts without getting into a super political sense,” Aponte said. “Even though there were mentions of the Trump administration or certain publications that they had written for, the speakers made sure to go with history first, but they were able to just give really unbiased judgments of every question.”
