Victor Davis Hanson

• July 14, 2026

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

The world that we’re looking at today is radically different than that of just five years ago, radically different in the sense that it is much more in the interest of the United States. And I know that seems controversial because [President Donald] Trump is written off as someone who is too fluid and volatile.

His tweets, his verbiage, can put people off, but that’s the art-of-the-deal unpredictability of his nature. Some of it can be a drawback, some of it an advantage, but overall, it doesn’t help analysis to just look at what he says. It’s more important to see what he’s done.

Let’s go through the world abroad as it is today systematically.

Look at Latin America. Five years ago, the Chinese were controlling, through their surrogate companies, the entry and exit to Panama. Russia and China were the de facto rulers of Venezuela, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. A slew of communist governments had taken over South America. Cuba was still defiant.

What’s happened now? There are no Chinese influencers in Panama. We have said that John Kerry was wrong. The Monroe Doctrine is not anachronistic. It’s very much alive.

There have been pro-U.S. changes in government in Venezuela, maybe not immediately yet, but there will be, as well as in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. That’s just a radical change.

In other words, the Western Hemisphere is now staunchly pro-U.S. and copying many of the protocols that we are, such as being tough on crime, free-market economics, secure borders, and ending illegal immigration. They’re not sending people out of insane asylums or mental hospitals or prisons into the United States.

It’s a radically different world.

Look at Europe. Five years ago, Europe had been jawboned by Donald Trump in his first term to at least spend 2% [on defense]. Only six nations did so. He jawboned them, he threatened them. Six nations did so.

Now, almost 30 of 32 nations have agreed to spend 2% of GDP. But more importantly, they have now all agreed to spend 5%.

Even the two free-riders that are most notorious, Spain and Canada—yes, they do not spend 2%, and Spain has defied NATO’s protocols and says it will not spend 5%. Canada, for all its self-righteousness, was running a $55 billion surplus with us. It was not patrolling its [southern] border as it should, and it was spending about 1.3% of GDP on defense.

Now it has pledged to spend not just 2%, but work its way up to the projected and desirable 5%. It’s working to reduce its surplus.

Spain has stopped all of this bellicose verbiage that it’s going to resist the United States. Why? Because Trump said, “Go your own way. We don’t need you, and we don’t want your products, and we don’t even want your NATO base. Just be happy and go off by yourself and create the Spanish Empire again if you want.”

It worked.

Spain said, “No, no, no, no, we’re a NATO member. You misunderstood us.”

So, if you look at Europe today, they are going to spend probably a half-trillion dollars in further defense readiness. And more importantly, they’re reexamining all of the things that weaken Europe.

This green mania. They’re going to bring back nuclear power, natural gas, and oil production. It won’t be rapid, and there’ll be resistance, but they know that’s the only recourse for them.

They’re going to secure their borders. They’re going to start deporting people from Europe.

In other words, Europe is going to be much stronger, and it will be more closely aligned with the United States, even though they might not say so.

Russia is not getting sanctioned oil from Venezuela or Iran. None.

There’s been a radical change in the course of the Ukraine war, partly because Donald Trump said all targets are up for grabs.

“Ukraine, I made my peace with [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, and if you want to hit refineries with your drones, go ahead. And, oh, by the way, we’re going to let you produce Patriot missiles. We’ll give you a license to do so, so you can protect your cities.”

Russia has lost its client in the Middle East, in Syria, and it’s probably at the weakest point economically, militarily, and industrially in the last 50 years, especially vis-à-vis the United States, where the economy is growing at almost 2.5% of GDP, and our military will now spend $1.5 trillion, almost 5% of GDP.

We’ve exceeded all of our recruiting targets.

The same thing is true of China.

China was creating an enclave in the Belt and Road agenda in Latin America. It’s out now. No toehold, no grip, nothing in Venezuela, nothing in Panama, no cheap oil.

It was importing 14 million or 15 million barrels a day. It can’t afford that at the current price. It’s down to 10 million barrels, and it can’t get cheap oil on the sly either from Iran.

Its defenses were shown to be shoddy when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iran’s air-protective cover in about a day and a half. That was all Chinese- and Russian-supplied.

Its economy is in bad shape. Its idea that it was going to run up these trillion-dollar surpluses forever is over with, and it’s much, much weaker than it was five years ago.

What it sees in Ukraine is not reassuring, nor is what it sees in the Middle East, if it is considering invading Taiwan.

And then, finally, the Middle East.

Did anybody ever believe that Israel would be supplying missile defense to Arab countries in the Gulf?

Did any person ever believe that the supposedly indomitable, scary, terrifying, formidable Iran—93 million people with an unpredictable theocratic terrorist regime that had killed more Americans through terrorism than anyone since 9/11—would be dealt with and that its military, nuclear, and industrial complex would be neutered?

And that’s where it is today.

After it broke many of its protocols, I think we now are seeing the correct U.S. policy.

What Trump is going to do is, the first time they continue to hit us, he hits them back disproportionately—10 times more damage on them than they inflict.

The time is running out for them.

At one point, he’s going to take out all of the communications and transportation to China and Russia, either through the train tracks—he’s already blown up a rail bridge—or through the Caspian Sea.

He’s going to hit dual-use targets. He may hit generation plants, and Iran knows that.

So, I think the U.S. will say to them, “We’re going to do all this to you. You’re not going to be militarily capable for 10 or 20 years. You’ve lost a half-trillion. You wouldn’t want to be you. And, oh, by the way, we’ll have a vestigial number of ships.”

And they’re going to tell the Europeans and those in Asia, “This is your strait. It’s very critical to you, not to us. We’ll help you organize an effort to keep it open.”

So, what’s the common denominator?

Trump is very unpredictable. He has a very unusual style of diplomacy. It rankles people in the West.

He can be crude. He can be uncouth. He can tweet at three in the morning. He can say one thing on Monday and change his mind on Tuesday.

He says that he might like to invade or take Greenland, and all he was trying to say is that the Chinese and the Russians are going to use this base, as the Nazis did in World War II, because it’s undefended, and its colonial master in Europe—farther away from it than it is from us in North America—can’t defend it.

And therefore, the more I threaten, or am boisterous, the more they will invest and the more Europeans will take me seriously.

And indeed, they’ve spent a billion dollars, or pledged to spend a billion dollars, on the defenses of Greenland, and they have given us a base.

Same thing with Canada.

Prime Minister [Mark] Carney said, “Ok, OK, OK. Stop the 51st-state stuff, and we will make our 5% projections. We will make our 2% immediately. We will work on the surpluses.”

Because he’s unpredictable, and that can be a drawback, as we’ve seen, we’ll leave it to historians to assess whether all of these triumphs he’s achieved overseas were negated by the lack of goodwill or the damage to bilateral relations.

I don’t think that will be the case, but historians will adjudicate that.

But the point I’m making is that the world is much more in the interest of the United States than it was five years ago, and most of that is due, excuse me, to the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/07/14/world-trump-pro-american/

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