America’s reputation and power fell to new lows during Trump’s presidency. Militarily, the United States held its own, but its soft power suffered mightily. President Biden pledges to work with the international community, rely on cooperation with like-minded allies, challenge adversaries, and restore American democracy, society and economy to levels that will once again command international respect. De-Trumping U.S. Foreign Policy will address the objectives, obstacles, and potential outcomes of this attempt over the next few years. Sloan evaluates both elite and public opinion from democratic allies around the world, plus elite opinions from states less friendly to the United States. He documents and analyses Biden’s approach to foreign policy and his goals for the U.S. role in the world. The volume will also examine how Biden’s domestic policy objectives, in the areas of the pandemic, systemic racism, political equity, the economy and climate change, relate to his foreign policy goals. The early steps made by Biden will be laid out and evaluated and hidden chances of success or failure will be measured, with a striking analysis of what failure might mean for the USA and the world.

America's reputation and power fell to new lows during Trump's presidency. Militarily, the United States held its own, but its soft power suffered mightily. President Biden pledges to work with the international community, rely on cooperation with like-minded allies, challenge adversaries, and restore American democracy, society and economy to levels that will once again command international respect. De-Trumping U.S. Foreign Policy will address the objectives, obstacles, and potential outcomes of this attempt over the next few years. Sloan evaluates both elite and public opinion from democratic allies around the world, plus elite opinions from states less friendly to the United States. He documents and analyses Biden's approach to foreign policy and his goals for the U.S. role in the world. The volume will also examine how Biden's domestic policy objectives, in the areas of the pandemic, systemic racism, political equity, the economy and climate change, relate to his foreign policy goals. The early steps made by Biden will be laid out and evaluated and hidden chances of success or failure will be measured, with a striking analysis of what failure might mean for the USA and the world.

Did Donald Trump decisively transform and alter the course of US foreign policy? All presidents promise change, but few presidents promise changes as radical as Trump did during his presidency. The extent to which Trump delivered on that promise, however, remains hotly debated with little or no agreement. The chapters in this edited volume argue that much of this debate is a dialogue of the deaf where scholars speak past rather than to each other, where the basis for claims about change or continuity is unclear and where the argument and knowledge, consequently, fails to progress. At its heart, this is a problem of theory and methods. Employing a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives, this book seeks to move the debate beyond a superficial focus on events to more fundamental questions of how change is defined, measured and explained and in doing so, attempts to advance understanding of foreign policy change and the extent to which Trump can really be considered to have been a transformative president. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Global Affairs.

Hyper-partisanship represents a critical variable that undergirds President Donald Trump’s stewardship of American foreign policy while bipartisanship, a hallmark of American diplomacy, is in a period of rapid decline. The tenure of the 45th president of the United States is shaping up to be one of the most pivotal and contentious in the history of the Republic. Trump’s World: Peril and Opportunity in US Foreign Policy after Obama is an explosive study of the president’s foreign policy agenda. It provides an expansive examination of how Trump’s America First policy contributes to growing counter-US hysteria that could lead to a new wave of anti-Americanism around the world and explores an important question: When the Trump presidency concludes, what is the likely impact of “Trumpism” on world order, relations with traditional allies, the future of multilateralism, world trade, and American diplomacy?

President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” outlook has inspired both enthusiasm and condemnation among different segments of the American population. This book examines the meaning and implications of that perspective, and how the Trump Administration has implemented it—or failed to do so. Contributors, subject-matter experts with diverse points of view, place the Trump Doctrine within the succession of presidential foreign policy themes, and provide a case-by-case analysis of how it has been applied in specific regions and countries around the world. The book’s aim is to provide a fair and balanced assessment, relatively rare in this period of intense partisanship and impending national election.

This volume discusses the presidential foreign policies of the post–Cold War era, beginning with George H. W. Bush and ending with the first 17 months of Donald Trump’s presidency. During this period, the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s most powerful nation. Nevertheless, the presidents of this era faced a host of problems that tested their ability to successfully blend realism and idealism. Some were more successful than others.

This book offers a comprehensive explanatory account of Trump's foreign policy by assessing its nature, determining the extent to which it broke with the policy of preceding presidencies, and explaining how this shift came about. We argue that Trump has succeeded in remaking America’s grand strategy by unmaking its long-standing strategy of what we call Open Door Globalism, a strategy of economic expansionism through the promotion of open markets across the globe and its institutionalization into a US-led liberal world order. Trump has broken with Open Door Globalism in probably lasting ways by adopting an outlook and strategy of neo-mercantilist economic nationalism based upon an ‘America First’ redefinition of US sovereignty and national interests. We explain this Trumpian shift in US foreign policy by focusing on the social sources of Trump’s foreign policy-making elite’s agency, analysing it both in terms of foreign policy-makers’ embeddedness in elite networks and within the changing global and domestic context. The latter, coupled with a crisis of established elite power, also indicates why Biden has not returned to Open Door Globalism but doubled down on some aspects of the Trumpian economic nationalist break.

Conservatives and liberals alike are currently debating the probable future of the Republican Party. What direction will conservatives and republicans take on foreign policy in the age of Obama? This book tackles this question.

"As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party but also from the bipartisan consensus on the direction of recent U.S. foreign policy. Calling the Iraq War a terrible mistake and lamenting America's nation-building expeditions, Trump evinced little interest in maintaining the traditional form of American leadership of the liberal international order. Instead, Trump's "America First" vision called for a reassertion of American nationalism on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs. Since Trump took office, it has become clear that America First was more of a campaign slogan than a coherent vision of American grand strategy. As president, Trump has steered a course that has maintained some of the worst aspects of previous foreign policy-namely, the pursuit of primacy and frequent military intervention-while managing to make a new set of mistakes all his own. While President Trump continues to muddle along, now is the time to consider what should come after him. In Fuel to the Fire, the authors characterize and explain Trump's foreign policy doctrine and the effect that he likely will have on U.S. foreign policy during his tenure. Furthermore, they provide policy recommendations for the future centered on restraint-a radical departure from America's current expansive global military role in the world, but a return to the historical American focus on trade and diplomacy"--

Looking beyond the headlines to address the enduring grand strategic questions facing the United States today. American foreign policy is in a state of upheaval. The rise of Donald Trump and his "America First" platform have created more uncertainty about America's role in the world than at any time in recent decades. From the South China Sea, to the Middle East, to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, the geopolitical challenges to U.S. power and influence seem increasingly severe—and America's responses to those challenges seem increasingly unsure. Questions that once had widely accepted answers are now up for debate. What role should the United States play in the world? Can, and should, America continue to pursue an engaged an assertive strategy in global affairs? In this book, a leading scholar of grand strategy helps to make sense of the headlines and the upheaval by providing sharp yet nuanced assessments of the most critical issues in American grand strategy today. Hal Brands asks, and answers, such questions as: Has America really blundered aimlessly in the world since the end of the Cold War, or has its grand strategy actually been mostly sensible and effective? Is America in terminal decline, or can it maintain its edge in a harsher and more competitive environment? Did the Obama administration pursue a policy of disastrous retrenchment, or did it execute a shrewd grand strategy focused on maximizing U.S. power for the long term? Does Donald Trump's presidency mean that American internationalism is dead? What type of grand strategy might America pursue in the age of Trump and after? What would happen if the United States radically pulled back from the world, as many leading academics—and, at certain moments, the current president—have advocated? How much military power does America need in the current international environment? Grappling with these kinds of issues is essential to understanding the state of America's foreign relations today and what path the country might take in the years ahead. At a time when American grand strategy often seems consumed by crisis, this collection of essays provides an invaluable guide to thinking about both the recent past and the future of America's role in the world.