https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/mapping-ideology-in-the-age-of-trump/During the 2016 presidential campaign and the first months of Trump’s administration, critics sometimes accused Donald Trump of being an isolationist. He had denigrated the war in Iraq, foreswore nation-building, called NATO obsolete, and promised to put “America First.†Calling him an isolationist was a convenient, if inaccurate, way for the foreign policy establishment to label Trump as being outside the parameters of the normal foreign policy consensus.
After Trump’s first year in office — which included bombing Syria, escalating the war in Afghanistan, and authorizing weapons transfers to Ukraine — no one calls Trump an isolationist, yet he still isn’t entirely conventional. Trump’s comfort with military force and the range of threats he sees around the world bears some similarity to past hawkish presidents, yet the way he talks about the United States and its role in the world bears more similarity to advocates of restraint. Trump does not fit neatly into our old categories of realists, liberals, and isolationists. How do we map the terrain of America’s foreign policy ideologies in the age of Trump?
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