Abstract
Trump’s foreign policy decisions have been perceived as erratic and unhinged. They seem to be the result of an actor-driven foreign policy, unconstrained by bureaucratic structures and independent of the bipartisan consensus that has been guiding US foreign policy since World War II. In this chapter we inquire if this notion of “chaotic foreign policy” is justified or if there is a larger base for Trump’s foreign policy, founded on a shift of the bipartisan consensus. Interpreting the bipartisan consensus as discursive hegemony, three cases are analyzed in order to answer the research question. We focus on the withdrawal of US troops from Syria linked with the issue of the fight against ISIS, Trump’s Israel politics, and US-Russian relations.
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Notes
- 1.
To examine congressional debates would not be adequate here since they would by and large represent the bipartisan consensus. The presidential debate, though, covers newcomers and outsiders (such as Trump) and is therefore more apt to signify future change.
- 2.
It is equally debatable in this context to what extent the foreign political consensus also facilitates unofficial or alternative foreign policy (attacks on Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War; Iran-Contra Affair) (McKay 2009, p. 419).
- 3.
see Deudney and Meiser (2012).
- 4.
A week earlier, Trump had announced that the USA would end participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, an agreement that Prime Minister Netanyahu had long railed against (Fulbright 2018).
- 5.
- 6.
Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren.
- 7.
As secretary of state Hillary Clinton had used her personal email sever which led to an FBI investigation. The FBI did not have access to all the emails sent during her time in office, as her stuff had deleted about 30,000 emails that they said were private (Hendry 2018).
- 8.
Cohen had pleaded guilty to “financial crimes, lying to Congress and campaign violations related to hush money payments made to two alleged sexual partners of Trump’s” (Mangan and Breuninger 2019).
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Dück, E., Stahl, B., McLarren, K. (2020). Trump’s Foreign Policy: Erratic Individualism Versus National Identity Change. In: Oswald, M.T. (eds) Mobilization, Representation, and Responsiveness in the American Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24792-8_15
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