Lars-Erik Lundin in dialogue with Ambassador Michael Sahlin within the framework of the SV-AR 2.0 project. [1]

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The discussion about Donald Trump's second term often moves between two extremes: either he is seen as the founder of a new political era, or as a symptomatic figure carried by deeper social trends. Three interpretations recur — that Trump is impulsive without a plan, that he follows a well-thought-out doctrine written down by others, or that his intuition moves within a framework set by others. The starting point is that Sweden's NATO membership after Putin's ultimatum in December 2021 and the attack on Ukraine in 2022 is not questioned, but that the NATO we now belong to has become a more problematic phenomenon — not least because the USA under Trump appears to be an uncertain factor.

The article and podcast test the three interpretations against three foundational documents: the White House National Security Strategy from December 2025, the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership within Project 2025, as well as the Trump campaign's Agenda 47. The purpose is not to claim that the documents alone explain the policy, but to examine how far they go as an analytical map.

Source analysis

A credible assessment requires separating basic documents from interpretations. The National Security Strategy is an authoritative government text; Mandate for Leadership at around 900 pages is the Heritage Foundation's basic text for Project 2025; Agenda 47 is the campaign platform's program and mobilization rhetoric. These three are not equivalent: a strategy sets priorities but is not a forecast in a crisis, a campaign text says less about institutional compromises after the takeover, and a think tank's handbook provides ideas and personnel but is not government instruction.

Assessments from think tanks such as Brookings, Chatham House, Carnegie, the Atlantic Council and the Peterson Institute can be used as a guide but not a substitute for the basic text. It is only in the connection between text, budget, appointments, government practice and actual foreign policy that one can determine whether the documents function as governing doctrine, ideological foundation or ex post rationalization.

The security strategy from 2025

The strategy is divided into four parts — introduction, goals, means, and the strategy itself — and the regional order is telling: the Western Hemisphere first, then Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and finally Africa. The document describes itself as a correction by an elite that had convinced itself that permanent global dominance was in the US interest.

The strategic goals include a Trump addition to the Monroe Doctrine, denying competitors strategic assets in the Western Hemisphere, supporting European allies while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence, and having American technology and standards—particularly in AI, biotechnology, and quantum computing—drive the world forward. The principles are peace through strength, non-interference, flexible realism, the primacy of nations, balance of power, and justice—the last of which requires significantly higher European defense spending. The strategy also states that the era of mass migration is over, that the time when the United States carried the entire world order is over, and rejects the ideologies of climate change and zero emissions.

However, clarity should not be overstated: the strategy says less about priorities when multiple crises—Ukraine, Taiwan, the Western Hemisphere, the Middle East, domestic border policy—simultaneously demand resources. It should therefore be read as a hierarchy of preferences, not a ready-made operational plan.

Project 2025

Mandate for Leadership organized around four fronts: the family, the dismantling of the administrative state, sovereignty and borders, and the God-given rights of the individual. The legal basis is the theory of a unified executive branch, with centralized control of the government apparatus to the White House. Specifically, it proposes replacing merit-based officials with loyal employees, partisan control of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the regulatory agencies, and removing the State Department leadership by January 20, 2025, and replacing them with ideologically vetted acting heads without Senate confirmation.

Project 2025 is thus both a program of ideas and an administrative implementation model. At the same time, caution is required: overlap with presidential orders can mean direct influence, but also ideological family resemblance, shared personnel networks or broader Republican program development.

47 Agenda

Agenda 47 is presented as Trump's plan to dismantle the "deep state" and return power to the people, with promises to make it easier to fire officials and purge "warmongers and globalists" from the defense, foreign and security apparatus. In foreign policy, it promises a review of the defense alliance with Europe, a demand that Europe reimburse the equipment costs for Ukraine, and a negotiated solution to Russia's invasion "in twenty-four hours". The overlap with Mandate for Leadership concerns, among other things, civil service reform, closure of the Ministry of Education, mass deportations, the death penalty for drug dealers and the call-up of the National Guard.

Unlike the other two texts, Agenda 47 is more personal, campaign-based, and rhetorically polarizing: the people versus the deep state, the nation versus the globalists, the peacemaker versus the warmongers. This makes it more difficult to use as an accurate forecast of government policy.

Testing the three interpretations

The interpretation that Trump is simply an erratic narcissist without a plan is weakened by the administration publishing a coherent security strategy, the Heritage delivering a comprehensive handbook, and the campaign having a program matrix that is reflected in actual policy. The impulsiveness is in the pace, style, and personal intervention — not necessarily in the doctrinal texts.

The interpretation that Trump is implementing a well-thought-out plan is strongly supported where the basic documents are clear: the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, burden-sharing in Europe, energy dominance, the rejection of zero emissions, the end of the era of mass migration, and the unified executive theory. But it risks underestimating crisis decisions, personal prestige, media logic, factional struggles, and the practical difficulty of implementing radical ideas in a complex state apparatus.

The third interpretation—intuition within a framework set by others—is therefore the most fruitful, but should not be treated as definitively proven. Otherwise, it risks becoming a synthesis that explains everything: when policy follows the documents, the framework is confirmed, when it deviates, the deviation is explained by intuition. The track and locomotive is a useful image only if one also examines when the locomotive changes tracks, when the track ends, and when Congress, the courts, the Pentagon, the financial markets, allies, and adversaries influence the direction of travel.

The war against Iran as the touchstone

A war against Iran fits poorly into the doctrinal framework laid out in the founding documents, with keywords such as non-interference, peace through strength, flexible realism, and an unwillingness to support the entire world order. The AI ​​analysis in three rounds — opinion leaders, basic sources, and a test of the Iran case — provides support for the existence of a plan, but the Iran adventure, which according to opinion polls about 65 percent of Americans now consider to be a bad idea, complicates the picture.

If the war is limited, short-lived, and focused on preventing Iranian nuclear capability, it can be interpreted as a hard variant of peace through strength. If it becomes protracted, regime-changing, or resource-tied, it undermines the strategy’s claim of restraint, non-interference, and regional priority. Iran therefore becomes not just an addition to the analysis but a test of it.

Consequences for European and Swedish security policy

If the third interpretation is the strongest working hypothesis, the direction is more predictable than the pace: reorientation towards the Western Hemisphere, shifting the burden towards Europe, a more transactional stance towards Russia and China, and an ideological offensive against European elites. For Sweden and the Nordic countries, it is important to plan for the strategy without imagining that it eliminates the shocks — especially around defense spending, American presence, support for Ukraine, the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, intelligence cooperation, strategic transport, air defense, and defense industrial sustainability.

The concept transactionalism needs to be specified: a US that demands more European resources is a challenge; a US that conditions the security guarantee itself is something more fundamental. An American war against Iran could also tie up resources that, according to the strategy, would be moved to the Western Hemisphere, increase demands for European responsibility in Ukraine, make a transactional settlement with Russia more attractive to the White House, give China greater room for maneuver in Asia, and force Europe to deal with multiple security crises simultaneously.

A Swedish and European strategy should therefore combine two approaches: reading the documents carefully because they set direction and priorities, and following the decision-making process day by day because actual action is influenced by personal initiatives, crises, media, markets and the actions of opponents. A diplomacy that only waits for a time after Trump underestimates the structural change; a diplomacy that only reads the strategy documents misses the daily dynamics.

Source-critical final reflection

Going to the basics forces corrections in several common narratives. The image of an administration that is soft on Russia and China is an oversimplification—the strategy expresses a desire to prevent regional dominance by others—but partly accurate if “softer” refers to the replacement of ideological confrontation by a transactional stance. The image of a hard line on Europe has stronger textual support, but here too rhetorical conflict, political pressure, and actual alliance dissolution should be kept separate: criticizing European elites, demanding five percent of GDP for defense, reducing the American presence, and undermining Article 5 are not the same thing.

The overlap between Project 2025 and Trump’s presidential orders is neither conspiratorial speculation nor a single chain of command. It shows that the administration operates within an ideological and personnel ecosystem in which Project 2025 plays a role, but its precise significance must be examined on a case-by-case basis — sometimes as direct inspiration, sometimes as a personnel base, sometimes as an expression of a broader conservative agenda.

The conclusion is not that Trumpism lacks a plan, but that the plan is incomplete as an explanation. It provides direction, priorities, and political language, but it is no substitute for analysis of crises, institutional resistance, personal decision-making, and the material constraints that face every American administration. The best analysis is neither to dismiss Trump as planless nor to read every decision as doctrinally predetermined—it is to see the interplay between idea, institution, person, and crisis.

 

[1] The article has been prepared with the support of AI as a tool for source criticism, hypothesis testing and identification of gaps.