Donald Trump’s Jacksonian and Jeffersonian foreign policy

While the presidency of Donald Trump has come to an end, the debate about its theoretical classification is in full swing. Some have argued that Trump’s foreign policy stands in the tradition of Jacksonianism – one of the four schools of thought identified by Walter R. Mead. Others believe Trumpism (or, for that matter, Trumpianism) to constitute a school in its own right. This article suggests that Trump’s foreign policy is both old and new in that it draws on Jacksonianism but combines it with Jeffersonianism – a combination unseen since, at least, the end of the Cold War. Examining the foreign policies of the five American post-Cold War presidents through the lens of Mead’s four schools of thought, the article shows that Trump’s Jacksonianism-Jeffersonianism contrasts sharply with the Wilsonianism-Hamiltonianism of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but that it is only a partial departure from the Wilsonianism-Jacksonianism of George W. Bush and the Wilsonianism-Jeffersonianism of Barack Obama. What strikes many observers as odd about Trump’s presidency, it is claimed, has less to do with the content than with the style of his foreign policy, which, again, can be explained by the unlikely coalition of Jacksonianism and Jeffersonianism the president embraced.