Continuity and Change: American Foreign Policy in the Era of Donald Trump through the Lens of Role Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Jana Tůmová
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Role Theory ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Continuity And Change

Far-right populism and foreign policy identity: Jair Bolsonaro's ultra-conservatism and the new politics of alignment

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Feliciano De Sá Guimarães ◽  
Irma Dutra De Oliveira E Silva
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Role Theory ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Far Right ◽  
New Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Conceptions ◽  
National Role Conceptions

Abstract In the last two decades, far-right populists have formed governments all over the world. However, systematic analyses on how far-right leaders recreate their countries' foreign policy identity are still underdeveloped. In this article, we analyse how far-right populist leaders use their conservative identity-set to align with other right-wing governments and how they use the same conservative repertoire to deal with ideological rivals. More precisely, we argue that these leaders tend to overemphasize a deep conservative identity-set towards other far-right populist governments, something we call ‘thick conservative identity’. This profoundly conservative identity-set is composed of three national role conceptions: anti-globalism, nationalism and anti-foe. However, they do not repeat this identity-set towards ideological rivals, preferring to use a more nuanced and contradictory one, something we call ‘thin conservative identity’. The trigger of such difference is the anticipated mutual expectation of conservatism between Ego and Alter, in which Ego mimics Alter's deep conservatism. We use Jair Bolsonaro's alignment with Donald Trump and Bolsonaro's relationship with China as illustrative cases. We use the main concepts of role theory to understand both how conservative alignments are created and how far-right governments deal with ideological rivals.

scholarly journals Trump, Russia, and China: The First 100 Days

2017 ◽  
pp. 116-122
Author(s):  
M. Share
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Key Indicator ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

On April 30 the United States and the World marked the 100th day in office of Donald Trump as President of the United States. The first 100 days are considered as a key indicator of the fortunes for a new President’s program. This article briefly reviews the 2016 campaign and election, the 11 week transition period, his first 100 days, a brief examination of both American-Russian relations and Sino-American relations, and lastly, what the future bodes for each under a Trump Presidency. The 100 Day period has been chaotic, shifting, and at times incoherent. He has made 180 degree shifts toward many major issues, including Russia and China, which has only confused numerous world leaders, including Presidents Putin and Xi. There has been a definite disconnection between what Trump says about Russia, and what his advisors and cabinet officials say. So far Trump has conducted a highly personalized and transactional foreign policy. All is up for negotiation at this a huge turning point in American foreign policy, the greatest one since 1945. Given all the world’s instabilities today, a rapprochement between the United States and Russia is a truly worthwhile objective, and should be strongly pursued.

American Grand Strategy and Political Economy Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Narizny
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Rust Belt ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
American Grand Strategy

Nearly everything a state does has distributional consequences, including grand strategy. Societal groups with different stakes in the international economy and defense spending often have conflicting strategic priorities, and these groups pursue their parochial interests by supporting the nomination and election of like-minded politicians. Thus, grand strategy is a product of political economy. An overview of American foreign policy over the last several decades illustrates this logic. In the 1980s, the Democratic and Republican coalitions had conflicting interests over the international economy, so the two parties diverged on grand strategy. The recovery of the Rust Belt in the 1990s and 2000s, however, brought increasing convergence. Political discourse over foreign policy was fiercely partisan, but, with the notable exception of George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, the two parties shared essentially the same view of America’s role in the world. The disastrous outcome in Iraq led the Bush administration back to the middle ground in its second term, and Obama followed the same course. In contrast, the election of Donald Trump augurs change. Trump’s electoral coalition consists of a different balance of interests in the international economy than that of past Republican presidents, so he is likely to pursue different strategic priorities.

scholarly journals Trump, Populism, and American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten Wojczewski
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Self And Other

Abstract Employing a discursive understanding of populism and combing it with insights of poststructuralist international relations theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this article examines the conceptual links between foreign policy and populist forms of identity construction, as well as the ideological force that populism can unfold in the realm of foreign policy. It conceptualizes populism and foreign policy as distinct discourses that constitute collective identities by relating Self and Other. Identifying different modes of Othering, the article illustrates its arguments with a case study on the United States under Donald Trump and shows how the Trumpian discourse has used foreign policy as a platform for the (re)production of a populist-nationalist electoral coalition. Unlike common conceptions of populism as an ideology that misrepresents reality, the article argues that the discourse develops its ideological appeal by obscuring the discursive construction of social reality and thereby promising to satisfy the subject's desire for a complete and secure identity.

Continuity and change in American foreign policy

Society ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Kissinger
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Continuity And Change

scholarly journals Introduction to the special issue: Elections, rhetoric and American foreign policy in the age of Donald Trump

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572093537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corina Lacatus ◽  
Gustav Meibauer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Electoral Rhetoric

This introduction presents the special issue’s conceptual and empirical starting points and situates the special issue’s intended contributions. It does so by reviewing extant scholarship on electoral rhetoric and foreign policy and by teasing out several possible linkages between elections, rhetoric and foreign policy. It also discusses how each contribution to the special issue seeks to illuminate causal mechanisms at work in these linkages. Finally, it posits that these linkages are crucial to examining the changes brought about by Trump’s election and his foreign policy rhetoric.

scholarly journals Technologization of Discourse: Technologization of American Foreign Policy Discourse in the Middle East in President Donald Trump’s Selected Speeches

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Yaseen T. Aysar ◽  
Perry A. Lucy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
Middle East Politics ◽  
Almost All

Discourse of the powerful is normally characterised as hegemonic since it lacks, whether consciously or unconsciously, familiarity of historical events and intrinsic knowledge of culture. President Trump’s disregard for or over-simplification of the complexities of Middle Eastern cultures in particular, their history, politics, and political geography, his belligerent and rapacious entrepreneurial rhetoric, his authoritarian stance on many global issues combined with the superficial allure of his ‘common man’ persona, and his hegemonising of many of the world’s nations make him the antithesis of the conventional politician. The process of technologization of Donald Trump’s discourse that has been influencing the discursive practices surrounding Middle East politics and American foreign policy has given rise to a type of discourse that is unprecedented in modern time American presidencies, a discourse rooted in threat, disregard, and humiliation. Trump’s disrespect to heads of states entails disrespect of their people, history, and culture, and this is prevalent in almost all his speeches. This paper focuses primarily on Trump’s rhetorical styles in his 28th September 2018 address to the UN, the May 14th 2018 address on the U.S. Embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and finally the April 13th 2018 address on the Syrian airstrikes.

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