One of President Donald Trump’s main political positions has always been that America’s allies should pay more for the benefits they get from America’s military power. This includes claiming that South Korea and Japan pay more for the presence of American troops on their soil, and suggest that the United States will only honor its mutual defense obligations under NATO to countries that are not “criminal” in their defensive use.
Lately, however, he seems to be going even further – mulling the idea of turning the US military into a kind of mercenary force.
- In his recent remarks, President Donald Trump has dismissed the US military as a paid service. Instead of treating America’s international security role as advancing America’s strategic interests, Trump is increasingly framing military defense as something that other countries must buy into — whether through a naval escort in the Strait of Hormuz or a broader “guardian” role funded by Middle East oil revenues.
- Washington has long justified its global military presence as serving US economic and security interests. Trump’s approach replaces that logic with a more transactional one, where military intervention is expected to bring direct financial returns.
- Following the disappointing results of the Iran war, the depletion of US military resources, and countries in the region looking to change their alliances, it is not clear that there are still customers for what Trump is selling.
Politics recently reported that Trump administration officials have been mulling ideas to encourage shippers who are still reluctant to return to the Strait of Hormuz, despite their concerns that it remains unsafe after the cease-fire agreement between the United States and Iran. (This was before Iran announced on June 20 that it was closing again the narrow stream, casting doubt on the whole plan.) The idea reportedly included a “VIP pass” system where shippers would pay the US to receive a naval escort through the strait.
For more information, Trump he suggested in an interview with David Sanger of the New York Times last week that if Iran does not comply with the terms of its agreement with the United States, one step he could consider would be to make the United States the “guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20 percent of the region’s revenues – essentially a regional police force paid for by oil money.
Over the weekend, Trump expanded on that idea in a Social Truth post, pushing back on reports that Iran would impose tariffs on ships passing through the strait. to write“There will be NO CHARGES in the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days during the Ceasefire Period, and there will be NO CHARGES after the 60-day period expires, unless they are imposed by the United States and the United States, if the contract is not completed as the Guardian of the Angel countries. Middle East for the purpose of payment of past, present, and future expenses.”
This is, as Sanger noted, the departure of a president who has long questioned the need to maintain an expensive military presence in the region and the need to involve the US military in foreign wars. But it is also surprising given that the need to keep oil from the Persian Gulf is one of the largest, if not the largest. of A major reason why the United States has a large military presence in the region in the first place. From 1980 “Carter Doctrine,” through the Reagan administration’s tank wars in the Persian Gulf, through Desert Storm and up to 9/11 and the War on Terror, America’s military power helped keep the oil flowing not because it was being paid for by local emirs — but because doing so was seen as a vital national interest. of the United States.
The new vision sounds more like an international guardian than a government-backed mercenary army.
Turning the US military into a mercenary force
At one point, Trump seemed to see the best model of America’s military supremacy as a kind of protection racket, where countries would pay a lot of money to be under the American security umbrella. Now he seems to have something more short-term and pragmatic in mind: A system in which the United States is an international arbiter for hire.
This “guns will travel” model of American power feels like a natural evolution of Trump’s current approach to foreign policy. It is obvious at this point that the president is not an isolationist; is a right-wing globalist who is comfortable intervening – including with military force – to deal with foreign conflicts, even when US interests are not at stake. But unlike his a liberal internationalist or neoconservative predecessors, he is skeptical of alliances and binding security commitments. (The mutual defense plan The U.S. inking of an executive order by Qatar last year feels less like a sign of how seriously this administration takes Qatar’s security than it does about deals like this.)
Instead of the traditional network of alliances and security guarantees that have long been subordinated to US military power in the world, Trump’s ideal vision sometimes seems more similar to the agreements that Russia inked in recent years to provide security services to various African governments, first through now-defunct military contractor Wagner Groupand now through more directly government-run militias. That is a very different way of thinking about the role of American power in the world.
The “influence” of American power
The evolution from the Carter Doctrine – which held that any attempt to “gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be considered an attack on the vital interests of the United States of America” - to Trump’s view of turning the US military into what sounds on paper like a mercenary army for the kings of the Gulf, can be seen as a sign of what political scientists Abraham and New Farmanre have called. “a manifestation of American power.”
The term was borrowed from science fiction writer Cory Doctorow’s details about how online products – especially social networking sites – degrade over time as they shift from providing useful and enjoyable services to their users to extracting value from them. Likewise, the United States has spent decades selling its allies on a model that ties their security and stability to American military supremacy. And now that they are locked in, Washington is imposing user fees.
During the Carter and Reagan eras, it seemed obvious that the United States benefited from the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. In the era of Trump, the president wants to make sure we get a short cut.
But as Trump seeks to monetize America’s military supremacy, potential “customers” may begin to wonder what they’re getting for the money. The Gulf countries were ready to reconsider their traditional reliance about the United States as an ally before Trump started a war that led to missile attacks on their cities and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It didn’t help that the war eventually ended and the Iranian government is still in power, with many of its missile and nuclear programs still unfinished. (In recent days, Trump has gone so far as to say that it is only right for Iran to have ballistic missiles while many of its local rivals do.) It can be difficult to advertise your services as a “guardian angel” when this is the result. Now, there are an ongoing conversation about creating a regional security system that includes the Gulf states and Iran, but not the United States.
It is also far from clear whether the United States has the firepower for an international role to solve problems. The Iran War, a short war with a weaker enemy, taxed US stocks of missiles and interceptors to the point that the military had to divert resources from other hot areas of the world. On Wednesday, Trump gathered the heads of US defense contractors at the White House pressure them to increase production.
And in the age of AI-enabled warfare, the US military is is increasingly closed for the services of companies like SpaceX, which has increased the price of internet connection for America’s kamikaze drones during the war with Iran, and Anthropic, which reversed how its products were being used on the eve of the conflict. In their 2025 Wired magazine article on US military appropriation, Farrell and Newman use Starlink as a prominent example of how countries are locked into US-dominated military platforms. The Ukrainian military’s reliance on Starlink for battlefield connectivity, for example, became a liability when Musk cutting service in 2022 when Ukraine was rapidly retaking territory. (Musk reportedly feared nuclear retaliation by Russia.) But it’s clear that the United States is also vulnerable to this kind of leverage from its private contractors.
In addition, even if counterterrorism has faded somewhat as a US security priorityit is clear from this recent conflict that the United States still has a difficult time winning symmetrical wars against weaker adversaries who have a geographic advantage and more will to fight. The US cannot eliminate the security threat from adversaries like Iran, although it can punish and degrade them – hence Trump’s repeated threats to return to airstrikes if the country steps out of line again.
The notion that the United States will need to play a continuing “guardian” role to keep the Middle East stable is far from “eternal peace” Trump was promising a year ago after the signing of the cease-fire agreement in Gaza. not a high point for US-Israel relationsjust a few months after the two countries broke new ground by entering into side-by-side combat for the first time. But still, Trump seems to somewhat embrace Israel’s logic of “to cut the grass” — the idea that instead of engaging in long, productive battles to defeat outmatched opponents, it is better to launch frequent missions to degrade them and remove them from the balance.
The “guardian” role that Trump seems to have in mind may be less of a police force than an environmental service — replacing the goal of long-term security for America itself and its allies with short-term profit.
