Hegseth with Army Rangers on June 6, 2025. Photograph by Alexander Kubitza

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The collapse of NATO in exchange for a Fortress Americas

by PHIL HALL

In the spring of 1939, the world saw the warning signs but dismissed the underlying logic. The world watched Hitler’s demands over Danzig, the relentless rhetoric, and the rapid expansion of the Wehrmacht. Yet, the speed and audacity of the Nazis own ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign that surprised a Europe that believed, despite all evidence, that a wider war could still be averted. The critical error was a failure to understand that Hitler’s strategy was not one of incremental escalation, but of concentrated, overwhelming force applied at the point of least resistance to achieve decisive, rapid gains.

Today, a similar pattern is emerging, not in the heart of Europe, but in the political and strategic pronouncements of Donald Trump and his key advisors. While the media focuses on the drama of his shocking behaviour and twists and turns, a chillingly coherent military doctrine is taking shape—one that suggests a radical pivot from global policing to hemispheric consolidation. The proposed withdrawal of support from Ukraine and a hands-off approach to Taiwan are not signs of isolationism, but the essential preconditions for a new American Blitzkrieg: a lightning-fast campaign to secure the United States’ own backyard, the Western Hemisphere. Trump has renamed the Department of Defence the ‘Department of War’ and now 800 senior US military officers are gathering in Quantico. The war in the Ukraine is lost, China overmatches the USA in manufacturing capacity and equals it in technology, the operational targets for the US military are now in the Americas. The USA is better at bullying and destroying smaller states. Withdrawal from Ukraine and Taiwan is not isolationism but repositioning. The administration would accept the collapse of the NATO in exchange for Fortress America.

At the same time, there’s an additional driver: domestic instability. The U.S. faces internal fractures—economic strain, political polarization, and border chaos—that demand a unifying external focus. A hemispheric campaign, framed as “securing the homeland,” could rally public support, much like post-9/11 interventions, while redirecting attention from domestic failures. The Quantico meeting (September 30, 2025) isn’t just a command conference; it’s also likely to prepare officers for politically charged operations, possibly including domestic stabilisation. An indication of this is that extremist left wing organisations like Antifa have been declared illegal.

The Strategic Logic: From Overextension to Fortress America

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The core of this potential strategy is a cold-eyed assessment of American power. For the roughly Trump-aligned strategic mind, exemplified by figures like retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, the US is dangerously overextended. Confronting two nuclear peers, Russia and China, on their own borders in Ukraine and the South China Sea is seen as a recipe for strategic disaster and economic exhaustion—perhaps even mutually assured nuclear annihilation.

The logical alternative? Cede the contested periphery to consolidate the core. By withdrawing from Ukraine, the US effectively concedes Eastern Europe as a buffer zone to Russia, neutralising a costly drain on resources. By taking a non-interventionist stance on Taiwan, it removes the most likely flashpoint for a direct, catastrophic war with China. This “grand bargain” is not a retreat; but a redeployment. The freed-up military assets, diplomatic capital, and national focus would then be redirected inwards, to a theater where the US holds overwhelming, uncontested dominance: the Western Hemisphere. There have already been strong signs of this with the US threatening drone strikes in Mexico, putting a price on the head of Maduro, sending gunboats to Venezuela, and offering to annex both Greenland and Canada. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban Exiles is in charge of the state department and assuredly Cuba, a few miles off the coast of the USA with a military base on its territory is also on the menu. The US will not tolerate visits by Russian Federation nuclear submarines and destroyers armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles to dock in Venezuelan and Cuban ports.

This is the vision of a “Fortress Americas” for the 21st century—not the USA hiding behind two vast oceans, but the Americas as a united regional block with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, a bi-continent of over a billion people and occupying almost a third of the land surface of the Earth. The USA sees itself securing its vital interests and all the available resources within its own sphere of influence, making it as defined by the modern interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine (a doctrine that was wishful thinking until 1918. Until that point Great Britain dominated the economy of South America). The only question is, after it’s initial blitzkrieg, will the USA conduct a policy of hearts and minds and will it experiment with a South and Central American Marshall-style plan?

Building up for the Hemispheric Blitzkrieg

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What would this “consolidation” look like in military terms? It would likely be a series of rapid, overlapping operations designed to achieve strategic objectives before significant resistance can form—a classic Blitzkrieg template.

The hardest nut for US capital in retreat to crack will be Brazil. Certainly Brazil will not be allowed to continue in BRICS. How the Trump government will deal with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his government, increasingly aligned with China, is not yet so obvious. A military golpe de estado, perhaps, in the style of 1964? Bolsonaro already had a shot at it on January 8, 2023. Interesting timing.

Mexico. The campaign would likely begin with a dramatic escalation against Mexican cartels, framed as a necessary act of national defense. This would not be a traditional invasion, but a series of precision drone strikes and cross-border raids by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) units. The goal: decapitate cartel leadership, disrupt fentanyl flows, and assert absolute sovereignty over a porous border. The public justification—”counter-narcotics and border security”—would provide a palatable narrative for a act of war.

Cuba. The presence of Russian or Chinese military assets, particularly hypersonic missile capabilities, in Cuba is a geopolitical red line. A Trump administration, unencumbered by commitments in Europe, could order a rapid amphibious assault and air campaign to neutralize Cuban naval facilities. The objective would be to eliminate a forward-operating base for a peer adversary, an action justified under the Monroe Doctrine and framed as a necessary act of pre-emption. Carrier Strike Groups in the Atlantic and Marines at Guantanamo Bay enable rapid amphibious action. Carrier Strike Group 10 (USS George H.W. Bush) and II Marine Expeditionary Force (Camp Lejeune) are within striking distance

Venezuela. With the largest proven oil reserves on Earth and a government deeply hostile to Washington, Venezuela represents both a strategic resource prize and a node of Chinese and Russian influence. An operation here might involve an airborne seizure of the Orinoco oil fields, coupled with a mechanized advance from cooperative neighbours like Colombia, aiming for rapid regime change and control of the country’s energy wealth.

Silence about the Warning Signs

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The parallels to 1939 are not merely theoretical. The unexpected summoning of nearly all US combatant commanders to a meeting at Quantico in late September 2025 could be and probably is a seismic event, akin to a pre-operational command conference. Furthermore, the rhetoric from key Trump-aligned analysts provides clues. They speak incessantly of “securing our backyard,” “border sovereignty,” and the threat of Chinese bases in Cuba, while simultaneously advocating for withdrawal from Ukraine. They are describing the components of the strategy without explicitly naming the whole. The neocons are in retreat and the US corporate state, turning around, threatens to eat itself.

Their silence on the future military actions is strategic. Just as few in 1939 wanted to believe another continental war was possible, today’s political and media class dismisses the possibility of hemispheric war as alarmist. This failure of imagination is the greatest enabler of a Blitzkrieg strategy.

Unthinkable and Inevitable

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A US-sponsored Blitzkrieg in the Western Hemisphere seems unthinkable. But so did the fall of France in six weeks. The combination of strategic necessity, available military means, and a political willingness to shatter norms makes it a disturbingly plausible scenario for a second Trump term.

The withdrawal from Ukraine and cooling of tensions around the issue of Taiwan is the key indicator. These should not be misinterpreted as a desire for peace, but rather as the clearing of the chessboard for a brutal game in the Americas. The world is watching the wrong theaters of war. The next major conflict will not be in the South China Sea or the Donbas, but in the Caribbean and the Orinoco. The warning signs are there. The question is whether we choose to see them before the lightning strikes.

The stated long-term goal of BRICS, particularly driven by China and Russia, is to create a multipolar world order. This means dismantling the U.S.-led unipolar moment that followed the Cold War and reducing the dominance of the West. This pivot of the USA to the Americas represents strategic victory for the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, for Central and South America and Canada and Greenland, the implications are dire.

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Phil Hall was born into an ANC family in South Africa. The family was forced into exile in 1963 after his mother was imprisoned and his father banned. They relocated to East Africa, where his parents continued their activism and journalism. In 1975, after a period living in India, they journeyed overland back to the UK, eventually settling in Brighton.

Phil pursued a broad education, studying Russian, Spanish, politics, economics, literature, linguistics, and English grammar and phonology. His path led him to live and study in Spain, the USSR (in Ukraine), and later in Mexico, where he married and started a family. Over the next decade, Phil and his partner balanced activism with work before relocating to the UK—a move initially intended to be permanent.

However, professional opportunities took him to Saudi Arabia and then the UAE, where he spent ten years before returning to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in Britain, he founded Ars Notoria Magazine and, alongside fellow humane socialist Paul Halas, launched AN Editions, a small venture dedicated to publishing thoughtful, progressive and exciting new books.