There are two main specificities of the speech with which Donald Trump took office for the second time as President of the United States.
The first is that it was intended primarily for the American audience. Hence, its focus touched on topics related to the current problems of the United States of a domestic political and economic nature: from the crisis with the pressure of illegal immigration to the country, corresponding to related circumstances such as crime and drug trafficking, to changes to "our trade system to protect American workers and families". To this end, later on the day of his inauguration, already in the White House, among the many executive orders signed by the president were those introducing two specific states of emergency. One is related to security and concerns the border with Mexico. It will allow him to redirect additional financial resources to deter the entry and resettlement of illegal immigrants into the country, as well as their obtaining refugee status. In addition, the president signed another executive order aimed at eliminating the possibility of obtaining American citizenship for children born to parents who do not have it (either because they are illegal immigrants or because they have a temporary visa). The other emergency introduced by the president is of an economic nature and is aimed at removing regulations and other types of obstacles to the exploration and development of US energy resources.
The second specificity of Trump's speech was that it resembled more of an election speech. And if this betrays inconsistency, given that he is already president, and not a candidate for the White House, then, on the other hand, it allowed him to demonstrate consistency with his rhetoric from last year. From here he announced that under his leadership the federal government would protect freedom of speech and oppose social engineering ("the official policy of the US government is that there are only two sexes, male and female").
Trump himself as a possible political phenomenon is a reaction to the ideological attacks of the liberalism that preceded him - in the face of the two terms of Barack Obama and that of Joe Biden. Appearing with an alternative to their programs and winning the presidential elections twice, he has the right - no more, no less - of any other US head of state to implement his policies. The protection of the country's borders, the fight against crime, the deregulation of the state's economy from within and its protectionism from without, the criticism of value (and biological) relativism and foreign policy liberal interventionism - all this was tested in the presidential elections in November last year, and Donald Trump gained the trust of his fellow citizens. Hence, both his speech and the executive orders with which he began his first day in the White House after his second return as US president are natural and logical. Including his arguments with which he withdrew the country from its membership in the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreements (for the second time). What should rather be the subject of criticism is another executive order of his, with which he exempted from criminal liability over 1,500 people involved in the storming of the Capitol in 2021 (neither his Vice President J.D. Vance nor the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives Mike Johnson expected such a broad and generous amnesty).
Given that Donald Trump's inaugural address was primarily aimed at the American audience, it dealt with US foreign policy relations rather modestly and superficially. But if the speech of the 45th and 47th head of the White House is set as criteria and a starting point for the upcoming focus of his diplomacy, then the big losers are Europe (Ukraine) and NATO, which were not mentioned at all in it (against this background, even Mars found a place in the Republican's inaugural speech). If we allow ourselves a joke, with so many little green men in Eastern Ukraine and in Western European capitals, the former armed with Russian machine guns, the latter with apocalyptic climate manifestos, Trump preferred to focus his attention on the little green men from Space.
The foreign policy topos from mother earth, however, that were affected by Trump, concerned the Western Hemisphere. The American president stated that the United States would take back the Panama Canal and that it would rename the Gulf of Mexico to the American (the Middle East was also mentioned in passing, but more as an occasion for Trump to emphasize his role in concluding the agreement between Israel and "Hamas"). In one of the executive orders that followed the inauguration, which were signed by the American president, the drug cartels were designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Although not only, the latter obviously concerns Mexico first and foremost, since a significant part of the drugs entering the United States through the country in question. But this designation is also interesting because it would provide legal protection for possible military actions by Washington against its southern neighbor, if Trump - who has already made such threats - decides to actually take forceful actions to neutralize the cartels in question. Although he did not impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada, Trump said that it is possible to introduce 25% tariffs on the two countries from the beginning of February. Following the example of the Republican's first term, tariffs are emerging as a systematic and universal foreign policy tool ("we will impose tariffs and taxes on foreign countries to enrich our citizens").
This emphasis on the Western Hemisphere under Donald Trump represents a return to the "Monroe" doctrine. But this is not just about the US seeing itself as the absolute titular of North and South America, but also about the understanding that the importance of zones of influence and buffer zones is being rehabilitated and legitimized in the system of international relations. The latter corresponds to the idea of the subordination of states in international relations and shadow sovereignty: the world is made up of power centers around which there are peripheries of states with half-independence. When in international relations, national interest is realized on the back of international law, strong states win and weak states lose, because although strong and weak states are similar in having national interests, they differ in the availability of resources with which they can pursue and achieve their goals.
However general, Trump's claim that wars will be stopped ("our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unification to the world") introduces a new genre in the theory of international relations: that of realism-pacifism. This is an oxymoron, because the national interest, which is the basis of The America First policy, does not imply dissolution in the liberal utopianism of eternal or universal peace. Such a goal cannot be achieved with such tools: national interest is realized through force and seeks private gain, not common justice, and leads to the subordination of states, not equality between them. Using nationalism to achieve peace is like climbing on the devil's shoulders and expecting him to take you to heaven. Even the use of the aforementioned tariffs as a sanctioning foreign policy tool paves the way for trade conflicts, which are usually a prelude to wars. Protectionism also corresponds more to Thomas Hobbes' war than to Immanuel Kant's peace.
"And we will continue to fulfill our destiny to the stars by launching American astronauts to plant the American flag on the planet Mars," Donald Trump declared in his inaugural address. This could give rise to the first planetary coalition - between Panamanians and Martians. Of course, the green men might avoid the wrath of the 47th president of the United States if they agreed to eat three servings of peanut butter a day, swap their shuttles for Elon Musk's, and reject the slogans "Green lives matter" as leftist identity politics.