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Trump and the
Remaking of American
Grand Strategy
The Shift from Open
Door Globalism to
Economic Nationalism
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
Jaša Veselinovič
Naná de Graaff
Trump and the Remaking of American
Grand Strategy
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn · Jaša Veselinovič ·
Naná de Graaff

Trump
and the Remaking
of American
Grand Strategy
The Shift from Open Door Globalism
to Economic Nationalism
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn Jaša Veselinovič
Political Science and Public Political Science
Administration Freie Universität Berlin
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Berlin, Germany
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Naná de Graaff
Political Science and Public
Administration
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISBN 978-3-031-34691-0 ISBN 978-3-031-34692-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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Cover credit: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Victoria Crocker and Alexandra

Filius for their assistance with the biographical network data collection,
Zala Turšič for her help with the design of our theoretical model figure,
Madison Allums for her confidence in our project, and two anonymous
reviewers for their comments on the book proposal. All remaining errors
are ours.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
References 5
2 Theorizing Trump: A Critical Political Economy
Approach 7
IR Theory at a Loss? The Puzzle of Trump’s Foreign Policy 9
IR Debates on the Nature of Trump’s Foreign Policy 9
IR Explanations of Trump’s Foreign Policy? 14
Structure and Agency in US Grand Strategy:
A Elite-Theoretical Perspective Grounded in Critical
Political Economy 18
References 24
3 American Grand Strategy Before Trump: The History
and Nature of Open Door Globalism 33
The Open Door from the End of the Nineteenth Century
Until the End of the Cold War 35
The First Wave of American Expansionism: From
the Open Door Notes to Wilson’s Liberal Internationalism 36
The Second Wave and the Start of the Third Wave
of American Expansionism: The Cold War Years 38
The Open Door in the Post-Cold War Era: The Clinton,
Bush, and Obama Presidencies 41
The Open Door Under Clinton 41

vii
viii CONTENTS

The Open Door Under G.W. Bush 43

The Open Door Under Obama 45
Conclusion: The Ends of Open Door Globalism 47
References 49
4 Contradictions of Neoliberal Globalization
and the Trumpist Backlash 55
The Contradictions of Neoliberal Globalization
and Obama’s Failure to Restore Open Door Globalism 57
The Deepening Contradictions of Neoliberalism After
the Global Financial Crisis 59
The Growing Limits of American Power and Increasing
Geopolitical Rivalry 60
The Failure of the Incorporation of China into the US-Led
Liberal World Order 61
The Rising Costs of Doing Business with China 62
Twofold Trumpist Backlash Against Neoliberal
Globalization: Putting “America First” Against
the Globalism of Financial Elites and China 64
The Backlash Against Free Trade and Against
the Offshoring and Outsourcing of American Production 69
The Backlash Against China’s Integration into Global
Capitalism 70
Conclusion 72
References 75
5 Enter Trump and the Trumpists: A Social Network
Analysis of Trump’s Foreign Policy-Makers 79
Mapping Foreign Policy Elite Power Structures—Methods
and Data 82
The Trump Administration and Corporate Elite Networks
in Comparative Perspective: Continuity or Change? 84
A Different Corporate Elite in the White House? 86
Distinctive Characteristics of the Trumpian Corporate Elite 89
The Trump Administration and US Elite Policy-Planning
Networks in Comparative Perspective: The Trumpian Break 93
The (Growing) Disconnect of Trump’s Team 96
Conclusion 101
References 102
 CONTENTS ix

6 The Unmaking of Open Door Globalism and the Shift

Towards Economic Nationalism 107
America First: Rejecting the Exceptionalist Notion of US
Global Leadership and Embracing Economic Nationalism 109
The Trumpist Worldview: Economic Nationalism 113
The Evolution of Trump’s Neo-mercantilist Economic
Nationalism in Practice 116
Trump’s Protectionism and Attack on the Global Trade
System: From Withdrawal from the TPP to the Trade War
with China 117
Reconfiguring the Nexus of National and Economic
Security: Reshoring America’s Manufacturing 121
Trumpian Geopolitics: Deconstructing Liberal World Order
and a New Cold War with China 126
From Leading the Liberal World Order to Wrecking It 126
Trump, and the New Great Power Rivalry: Towards
a US–China Cold War 129
Conclusion 132
References 133
7 Conclusion 141
The Enduring Trumpian Shift: Biden and Beyond 146
An Agenda for Further Research 148
References 149

Appendix: Selection of Trump’s Foreign Policy-Makers

in 2017 and 2019 151
Index 153
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Structure and agency in the transformation of US grand

strategy (Source Adapted from van Apeldoorn and de
Graaff [2016, p. 20]) 21
Fig. 5.1 Sectoral comparison of Clinton, Bush, Obama,
Trump ’17, Trump ’19 (Source Own data collection) 87
Fig. 5.2 Share of F500 firms in corporate connections Clinton,
Bush, Obama, Trump ’17, Trump ’19 (Source Own data
collection) 88
Fig. 5.3 Two-mode network of Trump administration (2017)
officials’ prior corporate affiliations (Source Own data
collection) 89
Fig. 5.4 Two-mode network of Trump administration (2019)
officials’ prior corporate affiliations (Source Own data
collection) 90
Fig. 5.5 Overview of policy-planning linkers and policy-planning
affiliations per administration (Source Own data collection) 94
Fig. 5.6 Overview of policy-planning networks (prior)—Clinton,
Bush, Obama (Source van Apeldoorn and de Graaff
[2016, p. 80]) 95
Fig. 5.7 Policy-planning network Bush (Source Adapted from van
Apeldoorn and de Graaff [2016, p. 152]) 96

xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.8 Policy-planning network Obama (Source Adapted

from van Apeldoorn and de Graaff [2016, p. 198]) 97
Fig. 5.9 Policy-planning network Trump 2017 (Source Own data
collection) 98
Fig. 5.10 Policy-planning network Trump 2019 (Source Own data
collection) 98
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter introduces our study of how and why Trump
remade American grand strategy. The in-many-ways unprecedented
foreign policy of Donald Trump has—despite a vast literature—thus far
not been subjected to much explanatory analysis. Using an original analyt-
ical model informed by critical political economy and based upon unique
empirical and social network analysis of Trump’s foreign policy-making
elite, this study makes a novel contribution by both assessing the nature
of Trump’s foreign policy and offering a comprehensive explanation of
what we argue to be a significant and probably enduring Trumpian shift
towards a neo-mercantilist economic nationalism. This study explains
this shift both in terms of foreign policy-makers’ embeddedness in elite
networks, and by placing their agency within the changing global and
domestic context.

Keywords Donald Trump · US foreign policy · Grand strategy · Open

Door Globalism

There are many firsts when it comes to Donald Trump and his pres-
idency. Significantly, as we are writing this, he has just been arrested
in New York for covering up the payment of hush money to a former
porn star and thereby violating federal election law—the first time in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
B. van Apeldoorn et al., Trump and the Remaking of American Grand
Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7_1
2 B. VAN APELDOORN ET AL.

history that a former president has been indicted on criminal charges.

A former president who is moreover the current Republican frontrunner
for the 2024 presidential elections. While—as from the time his 2016
campaign started in earnest and throughout his presidency—much of
the polarized media attention continues to focus on all the scandal and
controversy surrounding Trump, scholars are still grappling with the
longer-term significance and implications of four years of Trump in the
White House for both the US and for global politics. It is clear that
Trump brought a shock to the system, not just to the American polit-
ical system, but also to the so-called liberal world order the US itself had
created. This has spawned a large amount of academic literature on the
Trump phenomenon, including on Trump’s foreign policy. As we will
discuss in Chapter 2, the scholarly arguments here so far have concen-
trated on the extent to—and the manner in which—US foreign policy
under Trump has really constituted a significant break, or if there was
indeed more continuity, but very often without explicitly articulating the
benchmark against which this change was to be assessed. Furthermore,
relatively little attention has been paid to properly explaining Trump’s
foreign policy. Based on a distinct approach and original research, this
study then seeks to contribute to the literature on Trump’s foreign policy
by (1) assessing the nature of this policy and determining to what extent
and in what way it has represented a break with US foreign policy of
preceding presidencies, and (2) offering a comprehensive explanation of
why and how this policy came about.
While there are many unparalleled aspects to Trump’s presidency and
his foreign policy, unprecedented should not mean beyond explanation
(cf. Barnett, 2018). While we do not agree with those scholars (to be
discussed in Chapter 2) arguing that beyond the radically different style
and rhetoric there has not been that much substantial change in US
foreign policy under Trump—in fact we instead argue the opposite—
we do believe that we should not reduce the substantively different
foreign policy pursued by his administration to the individual agency
of Donald Trump—even if that agency is essential—and certainly not
without contextualizing that agency. Instead of treating his presidency
as an aberration, we posit that what we argue to be Trump’s remaking
of US foreign policy can be understood through the same approach we
have used to explain the continuity in US foreign policy before Trump
(Van Apeldoorn & De Graaff, 2016). This is an approach that focuses
on the role of elites—in particular of the foreign policy-making elite and
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

the extent of its embeddedness in wider elite networks—but also puts that
elite agency within a wider social and political context, thereby integrating
structure and agency and emphasizing their interaction over time.
Seeking to assess and explain continuity and change in US foreign
policy generally we focus not on the day-to-day foreign policy-making
but on what is called grand strategy, or what can be viewed as the
“highest” level of foreign policy representing a comprehensive vision of
the state’s critical “interests” and the overarching and long-term goals
following from that, and how best to promote and achieve those goals
(Layne, 2006, p. 13). Never entirely consistent in its concrete applica-
tions, grand strategy cannot fully account for all individual foreign policy
decisions, which are often also influenced by other, contingent factors,
or indeed related to the idiosyncrasies of individual presidents (not just
in Trump’s case). But grand strategy does inform the general direction
of foreign policy-making. It is from this perspective that this study will
analyse Trump’s foreign policy: examining its general outlook and direc-
tion, rather than in any way attempt to examine its many different policy
decisions across sectors and regions in a detailed way.
We do not claim that Trump and his (often internally divided) team
in the four years that he had been in office were able to articulate a
fully fledged grand strategy of their own, let alone pursue such a strategy
consistently. What we do claim is that Trump—and quite consciously—
has succeeded in unmaking what has been America’s grand strategy since
at least World War II (and in many ways has origins much earlier). This
has been the strategy of what we call Open Door Globalism, a strategy of
economic expansionism through the promotion of open markets across
the globe and the institutionalization thereof (after 1945) into a US-
led liberal world order. And this unmaking Trump has done, we will
suggest at the end of this short book, in ways that have outlasted his presi-
dency, that at least in some significant ways endure under his successor Joe
Biden. In that sense, Trump most likely indeed has permanently remade
US foreign policy. Which makes it all the more important to explain this
historical rupture.
Our core argument is twofold. First, we argue that Trump has
broken with Open Door Globalism—both as a worldview and as a grand
strategy—in probably lasting ways by adopting an outlook and strategy
that can be best interpreted as a neo-mercantilist economic nationalism
based upon an “America first” redefinition of US sovereignty and national
interests. Second, we argue that we can explain this Trumpian shift in
4 B. VAN APELDOORN ET AL.

US foreign policy by focusing on the agency of Trump’s foreign policy-

making elite, while in turn explaining this agency by analysing its social
sources. We do this both in terms of foreign policy-makers’ embed-
dedness in elite networks, as well as by placing their agency within the
changing global and domestic context as the contradictions of and limits
to Open Door Globalism had become more manifest in the final years of
the Obama presidency. Building upon prior research (De Graaff & van
Apeldoorn, 2021) and expanding on this using unique data analysed by
employing Social Network Analysis (SNA), this study will show that the
Trumpian foreign policy-making elite was a partly differently constituted
one, breaking with the long-established pattern of the elite networks that
allowed a globalist “Open Door” consensus to be forged and reproduced.
But, placing this within a wider context of a backlash against neoliberal
globalization as well as against the attempt to incorporate China into
the global Open Door, we also argue that the very fact that Trump was
able to come to power and at least partially break with established elite
networks and with America’s long-standing grand strategy, signalled, and
simultaneously much aggravated and deepened, a crisis of established elite
power, of a corporate power elite whose interest and worldview had long
dominated US foreign policy-making.
The remainder of this short book is organized as follows. Chapter 2
reviews the existing literature on two key questions: the nature of US
foreign policy under Trump, and the explanations for US foreign policy
during this period. We then introduce an elite-theoretical perspective on
US foreign policy informed by Critical Political Economy which helps
explain both the continuities and the significant changes we are witnessing
in US foreign policy. Chapter 3 offers a brief historical overview of Open
Door Globalism as it evolved from the end of the nineteenth century into
the post-Cold War. We focus on the three presidencies of the post-Cold
War era by briefly describing how all held on to the Open Door Globalist
world view both in theory and in practice, illustrating that despite some
variation in means there is much continuity up and until Trump in US
grand strategy in terms of its ends.
Chapter 4 then places the Trump phenomenon within a changing
global and domestic context and analyses how in the aftermath of the
global financial crisis and amid an ongoing global power shift Obama
failed to successfully address the contradictions of neoliberal globaliza-
tion and overcome the limits of Open Door Globalism. We analyse how
Trump used this context to mobilize his base and sketch how Trump
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

himself and some of his (future) advisers, interpreted the changing global
and domestic context through an economic nationalist “reading” of
the (geo)political conjuncture. Changing context alone cannot explain
changes in US foreign policy, which is why in Chapter 5 we analyse
the actual foreign policy-making actors interpreting and acting upon this
changing context, as based upon their ideas and interests, by mapping and
analysing the social networks of the administration’s top foreign policy-
makers, to identify the social sources of their agency and worldviews. In
contrast to previous presidencies, we find a clear lack of links between
Trump’s policymakers and what for decades has been a core feature of
the foreign policy establishment: its extensive and heavily overlapping
network of foreign policy think tanks and advocacy groups.
In Chapter 6 we analyse both the rhetoric and the evolving practice
of Trump’s foreign policy, to show how Trump’s foreign policy-makers
unmade Open Door Globalism and thereby remade American Grand
Strategy. While Trump’s presidency did not fully replace the Open Door
Globalist worldview with a coherent and fully developed alternative, we
identify a clear ideological shift towards a neo-mercantilist variety of
economic nationalism. Finally, in the Conclusion (Chapter 7), we summa-
rize the results of our research, reflect on the ways in which the Biden
presidency has not seen a return to Open Door Globalism but in fact
doubled down on some aspects of the economic nationalist strategy, and
indicate some avenues for further research.

References
Barnett, M. (2018). What is international relations theory good for? In R. Jervis,
F. J. Gavin, J. Rovner, & D. N. Labrosse (Eds.), Chaos in the liberal order: The
Trump presidency and international politics in the twenty-first century (pp. 8–
21). Columbia University Press.
De Graaff, N., & Van Apeldoorn, B. (2021). The transnationalist US foreign-
policy elite in exile? A comparative network analysis of the Trump administra-
tion. Global Networks, 21(2), 238–264.
Layne, C. (2006). The peace of illusions: American grand strategy from 1940 to
the present. Cornell University Press.
Van Apeldoorn, B., & De Graaff, N. (2016). American grand strategy and
corporate elite networks: The Open Door since the end of the Cold War.
Routledge.
 CHAPTER 2

Theorizing Trump: A Critical Political

Economy Approach

Abstract Academic literature on the Trump phenomenon has sought to

make sense of Trump, his administration, and his (foreign) policy. Schol-
arly arguments have concentrated on the extent to—and the manner in
which—US foreign policy under Trump has really constituted a signifi-
cant break, or if there was indeed more continuity but very often without
explicitly articulating the benchmark against which this change was to
be assessed. Much less attention has been paid to properly explaining
Trump’s foreign policy. This chapter first critically reviews the litera-
ture on both questions: the nature of US foreign policy under Trump,
and the explanations for US foreign policy during this period, iden-
tifying remaining gaps and research puzzles. We then introduce an
elite-theoretical perspective on US foreign policy informed by Critical
Political Economy which helps explain both the continuities and the
significant changes in we are witnessing in US foreign policy.

Keywords US foreign policy · Donald Trump · Grand strategy ·

Corporate elite · Policy-planning elite · Critical political economy · IR
theory

The Trump phenomenon—a presidency that broke with convention and

precedent in so many ways—has naturally not only been (and still is)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 7

Switzerland AG 2023
B. van Apeldoorn et al., Trump and the Remaking of American Grand
Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7_2
8 B. VAN APELDOORN ET AL.

the object of endless journalistic commentary and punditry but has

also spawned a formidable academic literature seeking to make sense of
Trump, his administration, and his (foreign) policy. This chapter consists
of two parts. In the first part, we present a critical review of the literature
on Trump’s foreign policy, on its nature, and on what may account for it.
Here most scholarly efforts have concentrated on the extent to—and the
manner in which—US foreign policy under Trump has really constituted
a significant break, or whether—despite outer appearances and stylistic
extravagance—there was indeed more continuity in substance. Much of
the literature produced during Trump’s time in office had to deal with
what often appeared to be a moving target during a turbulent and often
chaotic presidency. It was perhaps because of this imperative to play catch
up with Trump’s vagaries that there has been little in the way of a more
systematic attempt to identify the nature of Trump’s foreign policy and
thereby find a comprehensive and empirically substantiated answer to the
question of continuity versus change. Moreover, as our literature review
shows, there has been little attempt to properly explain Trump’s foreign
policy. This short book seeks to provide both: an empirical assessment of
the content of Trump’s foreign policy and a theoretically informed expla-
nation of the changes and continuities found therein. The present chapter
will therefore, after a critical review of the existing literature, introduce a
theoretical framework that we argue helps understand both the conti-
nuities and the significant changes in we are witnessing in US foreign
policy.
Within the field of International Relations (IR), many scholars in
fact concluded that Trump was an anomaly, not fitting any established
theoretical models. Yet, if we want to make sense of Trump and his
Administration’s remaking of US foreign policy (and some of the remark-
able subsequent continuities under President Biden), we need to move
beyond the idiosyncrasies of the former president himself (cf. Drezner,
2020) as well as the conventional theories to be able to explain this unique
and transformative phase in the history of US foreign policy. To this end,
the second part of this chapter outlines what we call a Critical Political
Economy approach that offers an integrated account of both structure
and agency involved in the (re-)making of US foreign policy. Here the
structure refers both to American capitalist society and its capitalist state as
well as to the structure of the global capitalist political economy and world
order. It is within these contexts, we posit, that US foreign policy is made,
 2 THEORIZING TRUMP: A CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY … 9

or more particularly, that the agency of the actual foreign policy-making

elite is located.

IR Theory at a Loss? The Puzzle

of Trump’s Foreign Policy
The existing literature on Trump’s foreign policy grapples with two basic
questions. First, what kind of foreign policy or strategy are we dealing
with: what was its nature, and what, if anything, made it different from
past policies and strategies? Secondly, how to explain the policies Trump’s
administration pursued, and the degree of either continuity or change
that we observe. The literature remains divided on both questions, with
the divisions often running across different schools within IR theory.
Particularly the first question, to which we now turn, was hotly disputed
throughout Trump’s presidency.

IR Debates on the Nature of Trump’s Foreign Policy

Conceptually grasping US foreign policy under President Trump presents
IR theorists with numerous problems. Inconsistencies between the often
outlandish pronouncements of President Trump himself and the policies
of his administration rejuvenated the debates about the political viability
and analytical usefulness of grand strategy as a concept (Dombrowski &
Reich, 2017; Lissner, 2018; Silove, 2018). The at times incoherent policy
(especially in his first year) reflected deep fissures within the foreign
policy-making elite, but also made discerning any “Trump doctrine” diffi-
cult. Some authors therefore have argued that there is little substantive
core to it and that the sole guiding thread is its commitment to unpre-
dictability as a strategy (Bentley & David, 2021; but see Wright, 2019).
A similar focus on Trump’s negotiating strategy shone light on Trump’s
reliance on sudden and unpredictable escalations of diplomatic tensions
(Dueck, 2020, p. 125), a strategy that has roots in his trademark business-
making (Baker & Glasser, 2022; Drezner, 2019a, 2019b). A further
challenge in providing a substantive characterization of US foreign policy
under Trump (and to what extent it corresponded to Trump’s foreign
policy) was how it arguably changed throughout the mandate itself.
Trump’s presidency therefore offered sufficient examples for several plau-
sible lines of argument regarding continuity and change (Hill & Hurst,
2020; see also Macdonald, 2018). In the literature, we distinguish six
10 B. VAN APELDOORN ET AL.

stylized and sometimes overlapping (or evolving) positions, each empha-

sizing a different element of US foreign policy conduct under Trump and
identifying (degrees of) either a break or continuity.
In the first group are Realists who during Trump’s campaign and
early into his mandate were excited about the prospects of a break; the
promise of Trump presidency shattering the “liberal hegemony” strategy
consensus and finally bringing about “realism’s moment in the foreign
policy sun” (Drezner, 2016). But the majority of them became disil-
lusioned quickly after Trump assumed office and none of the most
prominent Realist academics was a Trump supporter. Still, from the
perspective of their preferred strategy, they found themselves in agree-
ment with Trump’s electoral promises to end endless interventionism,
state-building efforts, and allies’ free-riding. But while Trump may have
grasped part of the logic behind their preferred strategy, at least as far as
the Middle East was concerned (Walt, 2018a) and realist principles could
be read into his rantings against the failures of the foreign policy establish-
ment, leading Realist Steve Walt was quick to conclude that the President
“is neither a realist nor a skilled and knowledgeable statesman” (Walt,
2018b, p. 15). What remained in this context was to save the “America
first” slogan from its populariser and construct responsible nationalism
(Bacevich, 2017; Brands, 2017a).
The second group consists of authors—including many initially opti-
mistic Realists—who have argued that “despite Trump’s nationalistic
rhetoric” his foreign policy already in his first year quickly reverted to
“policies much closer to the recent historical norm” (Ryan, 2019, p. 207,
original emphasis; Brands, 2017b; Stokes, 2018). In John Mearsheimer’s
words then, looking “beyond President Trump’s hot rhetoric, U.S.
foreign policy certainly has changed in a handful of ways, but not in most
ways, and certainly has not changed dramatically” (quoted in Foreign
Affairs, 2018; see also Herbert et al., 2019, p. 186). As Kitchen (2020)
has noted, the Realists’ critical observations about continuity under
Trump partly stem from the fact that what continued was yet another
administration’s reluctance to embark on their preferred strategic reori-
entation. These authors’ distinction between rhetoric and policies also
tends to underestimate the importance of presidential proclamations for
US standing in the world and their relationship with other powers (see
Holland & Fermor, 2021). As we will show, the identified disconnect was
in itself a contested outcome of disagreements within the administration
 2 THEORIZING TRUMP: A CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY … 11

and was not just a result of Trump’s half-heartedness or lack of trying to

deliver on his campaign promises.
The third group of scholars also focuses on Trump’s rhetoric but with
the specific aim to map the Trumpian discourse on Walter Russel Mead’s
four-partite scheme of US foreign policy traditions: the Hamiltonian
(promotion of an “Open Door” world), Jeffersonian (maintenance of
a democratic system domestically), Wilsonian (moralist American excep-
tionalism), and Jacksonian (belligerent nationalism and populist values)
(Mead, 2001). These authors trace how Trump’s deployment of Jack-
sonian themes constitutes a break with the decades-long dominance
of a Wilsonian-Hamiltonian synthesis (Cha, 2016; Clarke & Ricketts,
2017; Löfflmann, 2022; Mead, 2017). Countering long-lasting postu-
lates such as cosmopolitanism, multilateralism, free trade, globalization,
and liberal internationalism (Baldaro & Dian, 2018, p. 22), Jackso-
nian inward-looking populist nationalists focus on perfecting the republic
first, rejecting ambitious attempts to remake the world in their own
image (Mead, 2017), and no longer take the necessity of a political and
economic Open Door as its precondition (Clarke, 2021, p. 522). These
authors illustrate that the status-driven Jacksonian foreign policy in a
permanent quest for recognition (Wolf, 2017) is congruent with roughly
three decades of Trump’s relatively consistent (if peculiar) thinking
(Laderman & Simms, 2017; Miller, 2018).
The fourth group’s diagnosis of US foreign policy under Trump is
similar, but rather than trying to locate it in an existing intellectual tradi-
tion, these scholars have been much more concerned with the political
and strategic implications of Trump’s unprecedented and radical break
with the consensus grand strategy of liberal internationalism (Colgan &
Keohane, 2017; Daalder & Lindsay, 2018; Friedman Lissner & Rapp-
Hooper, 2018; Haass, 2020; Kagan, 2016; Kristensen, 2017). Their
warnings were dire: “Trade, alliances, international law, multilateralism,
environment, torture, and human rights—on all these issues, President
Trump has made statements that, if acted upon, would effectively bring
to an end America’s role as leader of the liberal world order” (Ikenberry,
2018, p. 7). In the eyes of those sympathetic to the Liberal International
Order (LIO), which has served the US interests so well, its architect had
under Trump become a hostile and revisionist power with a coherent
strategy for “taking an axe to the Washington consensus” (Rachman,
2018). And indeed, according to many, Trump’s presidency did in fact
live up to many of its promises and significantly undermined the LIO.
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