Donald Trump and American foreign policy: The return of the Jacksonian tradition

ABSTRACT

This article examines the wellsprings of Donald Trump's nascent foreign policy program. It argues that the locus of the Republican president's foreign policy agenda is found within the Jacksonian tradition of American foreign policy identified by Walter Russell Mead. Here, notions of “national honor” and “reputation” are the driving factors that underpin Trump's emerging narrative. The implications of this for U.S. strategic and defense policy may be an enhanced reliance on nuclear deterrence and the downgrading of the U.S. military's forward posture in Asia and the Middle East.

Notes on contributors

Michael Clarke ([email protected]) is associate professor at the National Security College, Australian National University. He has written extensively on Australian foreign policy, nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation, the history and politics of Xinjiang, Uyghur separatism and terrorism, and Chinese foreign policy in Central Asia in a variety of academic publications, while his journalistic writing on these topics has been published by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, The National Interest, The Cipher Brief, and The Diplomat. He is also the author of Xinjiang and China's Rise in Central Asia – A History (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), co-editor (with Anna Hayes) of Inside Xinjiang: Space, Place and Power in China's Muslim Far North-West (London, UK: Routledge, 2016), and co-editor (with Douglas Smith) of China's Frontier Regions: Ethnicity, Economic Integration and Foreign Relations (London, UK: I. B. Tauris, 2016).

Anthony Ricketts ([email protected]) is a doctoral student at the National Security College, Australian National University. He is also a teaching fellow at the Australian Command and Staff College, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. His doctoral thesis is focused on American grand strategy in the Middle East.

Notes

1. “How Unpopular is Donald Trump?” FiveThirtyEight, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/.

2. Coral Bell, “From Carter to Reagan,” Foreign Affairs 63, no. 3 (1984): 490.

3. Hal Brands, “U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Nationalism: Fortress America and Its Alternatives,” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 74.

4. Thomas Wright, “Trump Takes Allies Back to 19th-Century Global Order,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/03/21/trump-takes-allies-back-to-19th-century-global-order/.

5. David Frum, “Trump's Trip Was a Catastrophe for U.S.-Europe Relations,” The Atlantic, May 28, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-nato-germany/528429/.

6. Walter Russell Mead, A Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Routledge, 2000).

7. Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997).

8. In this article, we make no claim as to the prudence or otherwise of the Trump administration's foreign policy direction but rather seek to demonstrate how it is informed by the Jacksonian tradition.

9. Mead, A Special Providence, 96–97.

10. Walter A. McDougall, “Back to Bedrock: The Eight Traditions of American Statecraft,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 2 (1997): 135.

11. Hans Morgenthau, “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy: The National Interest, no. 58 vs. Moral Abstractions,” American Political Science Review 44, no. 4 (1950): 833 and 853.

12. Samuel Flagg Bemis, “American Foreign Policy and the Blessings of Liberty,” The American Historical Review 67, no. 2 (1962): 292. Emphasis added.

13. Norman A. Graebner, “An American Tradition in Foreign Affairs,” Virginia Quarterly Review 65, no. 4 (Fall 1989): 600.

14. Ibid.

15. See Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy,” 833–854.

16. Graebner, “An American Tradition,”618.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. See Mead, A Special Providence, 102–107. For the regionalist underpinnings of influential strands of American foreign policy, see Joseph A. Fry, “Place Matters: Domestic Regionalism and the Formation of American Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (2012): 451–482.

20. Jackson to L. H. Coleman, April 26, 1824, Jackson to Quincy Adams, November 22, 1821. Cited in Robert Remini, The Legacy of Andrew Jackson (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 7.

21. Mead, 225.

22. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, no. 58 (Winter 1999/2000): 8.

23. David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

24. Rogers M. Smith, “The ‘American Creed’ and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States,” The Western Political Quarterly 41, no.2 (1988):234.

25. Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition,” 15.

26. Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2008), 527.

27. Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition,” 16.

28. Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: W. W. Norton, 1999).

29. For example, see Richard Miniter, “How Obama's ‘Red Lines’ Made the World Much More Dangerous,”, Forbes, February 16, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardminiter/2015/02/16/how-obamas-red-lines-made-the-world-much-more-dangerous/#1988bd9e65e7.

30. Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition,” 24.

31. See for example, Sandra Scanlon, “The Conservative Lobby and Nixon's ‘Peace with Honor’ in Vietnam,” Journal of American Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 255–276.

32. Commission on Presidential Debates, “The Second Gore-Bush Debate,” October 11, 2000, http://www.debates.org/?page=october-11-2000-debate-transcript.

33. Michael Mandelbaum, “Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1 (1996): 18.

34. Ibid, 17.

35. Ibid, 18.

36. Robert J. Merry, “Trump vs. Hillary is Nationalism vs. Globalism, 2016,” The National Interest, May 4, 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041,

37. Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, and Brian Hook, “Presidential Priority: Restore American Leadership,” World Affairs Journal 179, no. 1 (Spring 2016), http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/presidential-priority-restore-american-leadership.

38. Ibid.

39. Ian Bremmer, “Trump in the World: What Could Actually Go Wrong? The Definitive Guide to the Global Risks of a Donald Trump Presidency,” Politico, June 3, 2016, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936.

40. Ashley Parker, “Donald Trump Says NATO Is ‘Obsolete,’ UN Is ‘Political Game,” New York Times, April 2, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/02/donald-trump-tells-crowd-hed-be-fine-if-nato-broke-up/?_r=0.

41. David E. Sanger and Maggie Habberman, “In Donald Trump's Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays,” New York Times, March 26, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy.html.

42. Ibid.

43. Hillary Clinton, “Hillary Clinton Delivers Major National Security Address”, The Briefing, June 2, 2016, https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/statements/2016/06/02/transcript-hillary-clinton-delivers-major-national-security-address/.

44. Yuki Tatsumi. “Donald Trump: A Reality Check for the US-Japan Alliance,” The Diplomat, May 7, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/05/donald-trump-a-reality-check-for-the-us-japan-alliance/.

45. Stephanie Condon, “Donald Trump: Japan, South Korea Might Need Nuclear Weapons,” CBSNews, March 29, 2016, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-japan-south-korea-might-need-nuclear-weapons/.

46. The Japan Times, May 5, 2016, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/05/national/politics-diplomacy/trump-urges-japan-pay-maintain-u-s-military-bases/#.V3elDnjfJVv.

47. Catherine Putz, “Despite Trump's Rhetoric, GOP Senators Try to Reassure South Korea,” The Diplomat, June 3, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/despite-trumps-rhetoric-gop-senators-try-to-reassure-south-korea/.

48. See, for example, Josh Pollack, “Saudi Arabia and the United States, 1931–2002”, Middle East Review of International Affairs 6, no. 3 (2002): 77–102; and David E. Long, “US-Saudi Arabia Diplomatic Relations: An Evolutionary Process,” in Handbook of US-Middle East Relations, edited by Robert E. Looney (London: Routledge, 2009), 403–417.

49. Sanger and Habberman, “In Donald Trump's Worldview.”

50. Tobias Harris and Jeffrey W. Hornung, “Trump Shouldn't Bash Japan,” The National Interest, February 25, 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-shouldnt-bash-japan-15328.

51. Louis Jacobson, “Hillary Clinton Says Donald Trump Argued U.S. Should ‘Encourage’ Japan to Get Nuclear Weapons,” Politifact, June 6, 2016, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/06/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-donald-trump-argued-us-should/.

52. Donald Trump, “Trump on Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, April 27, 2016, at http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-foreign-policy-15960.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Daniel Larison, “No, Trump Isn't an Isolationist,” The American Conservative, November 5, 2015, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/no-trump-isnt-an-isolationist/.

56. Trump, “Trump on Foreign Policy.”

57. The Daily Beast, December 11, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/11/12/trump-i-d-bomb-the-s-t-out-of-isis.html.

58. Andrew Rojecki, “Trumpism and the American Politics of Insecurity,” The Washington Quarterly 39, no. 4 (2009): 65.

59. Randall Schweller, “A Third-Image Explanation for Why Trump Now: A Response to Robert Jervis's ‘President Trump and IR Theory,’” H-Diplo, February 8, 2017, https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/1-5m-third-image#_ftn1.

60. Philip Bump, “Another Core Trump Campaign Promise Falls by the Wayside,” The Washington Post, May 22, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/22/another-core-trump-campaign-promise-falls-by-the-wayside/?utm_term=.0aa84cf2810a.

61. David Graham, “Has Trump Kept His Campaign Promises?” The Atlantic, April 28, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/trump-promises-cheat-sheet/507347/.

62. Barney Jopson, “Trump's Promises: How Much Has He Achieved so Far?” The Financial Times, February 28, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/af02362c-fd0b-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30?mhq5j=e3.

63. Matthew Kroenig, “The Case for Trump's Foreign Policy: The Right People, the Right Positions,” Foreign Affairs, 96, no. 3 (2017): 30.

64. Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. from Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html.

65. Constanze Stelzenmuller, “Trump's Abandonment of NATO in Brussels,” Brookings, May 29, 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/05/29/trumps-abandonment-of-nato-in-brussels/.

66. Julie Smith, “Trump's Article V Omission Was an Attack against All of NATO,” Foreign Policy, May 26, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/26/trumps-article-5-omission-was-an-attack-against-all-of-nato/.

67. Thomas Wright, “Trump Remains a NATO Skeptic,” The Atlantic, May 27, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-nato-article-five-israel-saudi-arabia/528393/. Emphasis added.

68. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 2 (2017): 4.

69. Remarks by President Trump at NATO Unveiling of the Article 5 and Berlin Wall Memorials—Brussels Belgium, The White House, May 25, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/25/remarks-president-trump-nato-unveiling-article-5-and-berlin-wall.

70. Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe, “U.S. Poised to Expand Military Effort against Taliban in Afghanistan,” The Washington Post, May 8, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-poised-to-expand-military-effort-against-taliban-in-afghanistan/2017/05/08/356c4930-33fa-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.f579680797e5.

71. Phillip Carter, “Welcome to the Forever War Mr. President,” Slate, May 11, 2017, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/trump_s_afghanistan_strategy_could_get_us_sucked_back_into_the_forever_war.html.

72. Bryan Bender and Eliana Johnson, “Trump's Campaign Pledges Face Coalition in Afghanistan,” Politico, May 9, 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/09/trump-afghanistan-troops-taliban-238179.

73. Stephen Walt, “What's the Point of Donald Trump's Afghan Surge?” Foreign Policy, May 17, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/17/whats-the-point-of-donald-trumps-afghan-surge-taliban-afghanistan/.

74. Robin Wright, “Trump Drops the Mother of All Bombs on Afghanistan,” The New Yorker, April 14, 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-drops-the-mother-of-all-bombs-on-afghanistan.

75. Walter Russell Mead, “In Striking Syria, Trump Made all the Right Calls,” The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-striking-syria-trump-made-all-the-right-calls-1491604687.

76. Daniel Baer et al., “Why Abandoning Paris is a Disaster for America,” Foreign Policy, June 1, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/01/why-abandoning-paris-climate-agreement-is-bad-for-america-trump/.

77. Alexandra Wilts, “Trump's Decision to Pull out of Paris Agreement Branded 'One of the Worst Foreign Policy Blunders in History,” Independent, June 1, 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paris-agreement-trump-response-climate-change-deal-withdrawal-latest-news-decision-a7768221.html.

78. Robert Stavins, “Why Trump Pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord,” Foreign Affairs, June 5, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-06-05/why-trump-pulled-us-out-paris-accord.

79. David Sanger and Jane Perlez, “Trump Hands the Chinese a Gift: The Chance for Global Leadership,” The New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/us/politics/climate-accord-trump-china-global-leadership.html.

80. John Upton, “Trump's Base the Big Winner from Paris Withdrawal,” Climate Central, June 1, 2017, http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-base-the-winner-from-paris-withdrawal-21502.

81. Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord, The White House, June 1, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord.

82. Ibid.

83. Jeff Colgan and Robert Keohane, “The Liberal Order Is Rigged,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3. (2017): 37.

84. Alex Ward, “‘America Alone’: Trump's Unilateralist Foreign Policy,” War on the Rocks, May 31, 2016, http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/america-alone-trumps-unilateralist-foreign-policy/.

85. Donald Trump's acceptance speech at RNC 2016, full transcript, July 21, 2016, http://www.syracuse.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/donald_trumps_acceptance_speech_at_rnc_2016_full_transcript.html.

86. Katie Reilly, “Read Hillary Clinton's Speech on Donald Trump and National Security,” Time, June 3, 2017, http://time.com/4355797/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-foreign-policy-speech-transcript/.

87. Marianne Weber, ed., Max Weber (Tuebingnen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1926), 347–348.