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

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.