Trump at the Crossroads

Trump’s version of American nationalism is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, there is the “isolationist” “America first” aspect, which led him to condemn the Iraq war, question the utility of NATO, and criticize the liberal internationalist interventionism of the Obama administration in Syria and Libya. On the other hand, Trumpian nationalism has a fiercely belligerent aspect, often described as “Jacksonian,” which views any attempt to reach out to old enemies as “appeasement” and too often derides diplomacy as evidence of “weakness.”