With Dr Jack Clayton

For much of President Donald Trump’s presidency, (both during his first term, and now his second) commentators and analysts have struggled to definitively define his foreign policy and its place in US history. 

This presentation will shed light on his worldview, which has been articulated most clearly by his 2025 National Security Strategy, dubbed as the ‘Donroe Doctrine’. Trump’s hostility towards cooperation and multilateralism and ‘America First’ slogan has mistakenly been called isolationist. 

Instead, his foreign policy can be best understood as unilateralist, whereby the United States’ has the unfettered ability to act in the world, unconstrained. It is rooted in American exceptionalism, the foundational belief that the United States has a unique global role with a mission to change and ‘save’ the world and make it into a vision of its own making. 

However, the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ departs from the idealistic democracy promotion, and resembles nineteenth century exceptionalism, based on nativist cultural and civilisational supremacy.

Bio

Dr Jack Clayton is a US foreign policy academic and analyst who researches
American exceptionalism and the role of domestic public opinion in US military
intervention.