Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America's Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover)

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party but also from the bipartisan consensus on the direction of recent U.S. foreign policy. Calling the Iraq war a terrible mistake and lamenting America's nation building expeditions, Trump evinced little interest in maintaining the traditional form of American leadership of the liberal international order. He threatened to pull the United States out of NATO, complained that the United States was being taken advantage of by its trading partners, and argued that immigration was a terrible threat. Instead, Trump's “America First” vision called for a reassertion of American nationalism on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs.

Since Trump took office, it has become clear that “America First” was more campaign slogan than coherent vision of American grand strategy and foreign policy. As president Trump has steered a course that has maintained some of the worst aspects of previous foreign policy – namely the pursuit of primacy and frequent military intervention – while managing to make a new set of mistakes all his own.

This book provides an assessment of Trump's America First doctrine, its performance to date, and its implications for the future.

John Glaser is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. His research interests include grand strategy, basing posture, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the rise of China, and the role of status and prestige motivations in international politics. Glaser has been a guest on a variety of television and radio programs and has had his work published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, CNN, and Time, among other outlets.

Christopher A. Preble is the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Cornell University Press, 2009) and Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy.

Trevor Thrall is a senior fellow for the Cato's Institute's Defense and Foreign Policy Department, with expertise in international security and the politics of American national security. Thrall is also an associate professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government where he teaches courses in international security. He is the coeditor of U.S. Grand Strategy in the 21st Century: The Case for Restraint(Routledge 2018) and co-host of the Power Problems podcast, a biweekly podcast which explores key questions in international security with guests from across the political spectrum.