The Miller Doctrine

[Celerity]

Stephen Miller is in large part dictating U.S. foreign policy, with a mindset of unilateral violence on a maximum scale.

https://prospect.org/2026/05/27/jun-2026-miller-doctrine-foreign-policy/


Credit: Illustration by Michael J. Hentz

Stephen Miller’s giddy grin takes up half the screen as Fox News host Jesse Watters allows him to expound on the success of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran. “President Trump is saying, ‘We the United States, have the world’s not just most powerful military, most powerful navy,’” Miller says about halfway through his monologue, as the White House twinkles in the dusk behind him and a third split screen shows footage of jets launching off an aircraft carrier. “Whoever controls the seas is able to control the outcomes in any foreign-policy showdown … If Iran chooses the path of a deal, then that’s great for the world, that’s great for everybody. If Iran chooses the path of economic strangulation by blockade, then the world will pass Iran by.”

The April 14 appearance came amidst a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and followed more than a month of U.S. and Israeli bombing that killed dozens of Iranian officials and hundreds of civilians, endangered U.S. allies in the Gulf region, reignited Israel’s devastating war on Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, drove up fuel prices stateside, and threatened supply shocks for multiple components and finished goods globally. A 92-second clip from the appearance encapsulates a striking dynamic in the second Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy: In some sense diplomacy still exists, hence the talk of a “deal,” but it is increasingly backed by the threat of overwhelming military force.

The idea that might makes right as one of “the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time,” as Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper shortly after U.S. military forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, encapsulates this administration’s worldview. From Donald Trump’s threats to other countries on social media to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s press briefings about the war on Iran (or as Hegseth reminds us, Operation Epic Fury), projecting violence abroad in some form is usually the answer.

The policy of belligerent imperialism has more than one origin point, and it is nothing new in the context of American empire. Indeed, U.S. behavior on the world stage over the past 18 months is both uncanny and nihilistic; we are once again prosecuting a baseless and unsuccessful war in the Middle East, only this time no one even bothered to try and sell it to the public. If the Monroe Doctrine opened the door for intervention—both covert and outright—in Latin America, the Trump corollary drove a tank through the wall and set up loudspeakers shrieking “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” on loop. But Miller, as one of the president’s closest advisers and a major power player in the administration, has fueled, architected, and at times instigated America’s practice of foreign policy at gunpoint.

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