US Exceptionalism Is Dead No Matter Who Wins the Election
No matter the president, the US will no longer meet the world as moral beacon or crusader, but as just another Great Power pursuing selfish interests.
Neither beacon nor crusader.
Photographer: Jim Bourg/AFP via Getty Images
A facile way to frame the future of American foreign policy is to set up two scenarios as a binary choice. If Donald Trump returns to the White House, the United States becomes isolationist. If Joe Biden wins reelection, the US remains broadly internationalist.
That framing neglects a change that may be less obvious but more consequential for other countries, a shift that will keep playing out no matter who wins in November: For the first time in its two-and-a-half centuries, the US will stop looking at the world through the lens of its own exceptionalism, and behave as just another Great Power using its awe-inspiring might to serve a narrow self-interest.