In respect of foreign policy, President Trump’s inaugural speech promises more than just the moon. How about the planets? From Mount McKinley to the Gulf, to Panama Canal and — bingo — Mars, America will be triumphant once again. So he vowed in his inaugural address. Our military will be strong, and peace will reign supreme even as manufacturing is retrieved from other countries and brought back home.

As foreign policy speeches go, Mr. Trump’s was elegiac but short on particulars. A body of water to our south will now be known as the Gulf of America. An Alaskan peak will once again be named after the 25th president — a “natural businessman” who “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” And that canal? “We didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we are taking it back,” Mr. Trump said. 

Mostly, the 47th President said, “we are Americans, the future is ours, and our Golden Age has just begun.” Like President Kennedy’s “we choose to go to the moon,” Mr. Trump, perhaps under the influence of Elon Musk, vowed to conquer the next frontier. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” he said. 

Back on Earth, a new Trump doctrine, or the reemergence of his first term’s strategies, might seem self-contradictory. “Like in 2017 we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen,” he said. Yet, “We will measure our success not only by battles we win but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly the wars we never get into.” Is that a reprise of Reagan’s “peace through strength?” — or a new isolationism?

Mr. Trump’s earlier vow to quickly end the Ukraine war was quickly judged by foreign policy mavens as capitulation to President Putin’s ambitions. At the same time, Mr. Trump said that America has “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it.” Is he calculating that as Russia’s top source of income dwindles, Mr. Putin could be forced to make concessions in Ukraine. 

Too, Mr. Trump is indicating that he would rather force the Islamic Republic of Iran to cede its nuclear program through a negotiated pact than through kinetic power. First, though, he would bankrupt the regime through the “maximum pressure” applied in his first term. He has expressed a desire to meet Communist China’s party boss, Xi Jinping. Deterring China from widening its ambitions in the Pacific could also be achieved by tightening economic screws. 

Then again, once a military buildup begins, and as an arms race with Beijing intensifies, skirmishes are possible. Unlike President Biden, whose constant fear of “escalation” led to more of it, Mr. Trump dared to order the killing of terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s vow of retaliation never materialized. Mr. Trump may well conclude that deterring enemies by building a large military can at times be supplemented by, well, using it.   

Some of Mr. Trump’s inaugural themes might seem ambitious. Will listing drug cartels as terrorists end their terror in Mexico and here? Will the emotional return of three Israelis held hostage herald  a Mideast peace? Will Mars be conquered — or liberated? The world might be more complex than the inauguration promises. Yet the “greater, stronger, and far more exceptional” to which Mr. Trump aspires is a fine ambition for a president.