America Needs to Keep Some Trumpism in Foreign Policy
Republicans are likely to maintain a healthy skepticism of entanglements, long wars and efforts to impose values.
Keeping America great again?
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s chaotic diplomacy has fascinated and horrified the world, leading many allies to hope that the past four years constitute a bizarre aberration from the longer arc of American history. Yet for good and for ill, Trumpism is part of a longer intellectual tradition in U.S. foreign policy that will remain quite influential in a post-Trump Republican Party.
It may seem odd to think of Trump as being part of any intellectual tradition, because his conduct is so idiosyncratic and his ideas frequently seem so scattered. But the president’s approach to foreign policy has always been anchored by a few key ideas.