As Trump returns to the White House, what, exactly, is the ideology of Trumpism? Ruairidh Brown argues that Trump’s America First agenda is, at its core, Machiavellian
In 2020, US President Joe Biden declared his victory meant American exceptionalism – the belief that the US has the moral responsibility to lead and defend the free and democratic world – was back. Trump was just a blip in US history.
Four years later, with Trump’s landslide victory, Biden’s attempt to return the US to this moral leadership role has failed. The press declares American exceptionalism is dead. Long live Trump’s America First – at least for the next four years.
Many scholars have tried to work out what ‘America First’ means, beyond a slogan. What ideology will drive Trump’s foreign policy?
Trump is a realist, and classical realism emphasises the importance of power in politics contra theories constructed around moral and idealistic worldviews, such as liberalism and socialism.
The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–39 by British political scientist EH Carr is a cornerstone of the classical realist canon. The book stressed the importance of power over the utopianism Carr believed dominated interwar thought and practice.
The clearest examples of this utopianism were the 1919 Versailles Settlement and the creation in 1920 of the League of Nations, which aimed to establish a liberal world order that excluded non-liberal states. The USSR and Germany, both powerful and influential, were notable exclusions. This new world order was thus out of sync with the reality of political power.
Trump focuses on the reality of US power and interest, not the utopian expectation that America must lead the free world
The realist reading of Trump would put him in the same camp as Carr: a figure focusing on the reality of US power and interest against the utopian expectation that America must lead the free world.
Indeed, scholars have suggested that Trump is continuing Barack Obama’s realist turn. The 44th President recognised that ‘it is beyond our means to right every wrong’. Subsequently, he argued, America had to temper its moral intent against the reality of US power and interest.
Such interpretations, however, overlook Trump's amorality.
Obama tempered American moral expectation with power realities, but he did not abandon it. Carr, too, argued for the importance of power in politics, but he still believed foreign policy required a moral vision.
Trump, by contrast, acts without concern for moral right or wrong.
Take Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Trump has refused to see a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on either side:
Instead, he merely seeks to end the conflict rapidly because of the billions of dollars the US gives to the ‘great salesman’ Zelenskyy.
Trump frames the Taiwan question in equally amoral terms. Taiwan, he says, is merely an ‘insurance client’ of the US – and if they don’t pay their premiums, they deserve to be abandoned.
Though he claims to seek peace, Trump still threatens force to get the ‘best deal’. Indeed, he has warned his negotiating strategy 'will be met with fire and fury':
The spectre of violence threatens not only traditional enemies but allies, too. By intimidating NATO members who ‘don’t pay’, Trump encourages Russa to do 'whatever the hell they want' to those countries:
Trump is prepared to use any means necessary to secure the ‘best deal’ for the US. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, he used emergency legislation to redirect vital supplies from European allies to the US, a move German officials described as 'modern piracy'.
In none of these cases does morality factor into Trump’s calculations. He does not seek to balance moral vision with power, as the classical realists did. Rather, he acts amorally in the pursuit of US power and interest.
Such amoralism suggests that Trump is not a realist, but that his ideology is more akin to that of the sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, because Machiavellian political decision making ignores the moral aspect.
Machiavelli’s best-known work The Prince is notorious for its evaluation of political action only in so far as it contributed to the maintenance of power. Its author remained silent on any notion of moral framework of judgement:
Machiavelli's Discourses, while favouring republican government over principalities, nevertheless considered political action only insofar as it increased the power of the republic. Again, Machiavelli advised acting only to achieve what was in the interests of the polity, regardless of the morality of how it was achieved. Philosopher Leo Strauss called such republican patriotism collective selfishness.
The aim of America First is to pursue the 'best deal' for the US, regardless of morality
Trump’s America First, too, is a case of amoral collective selfishness. Its aim is to pursue the ‘best deal’ for the US, regardless of morality and in spite of the harm it might cause others.
As Carr observed, 'Machiavellian' is often used as an insult. It is important, therefore, to note there can be benefits to Machiavellianism.
Free from a moral imperative to defend the free world, the US is less likely to escalate tensions in Ukraine or Taiwan into an ideological struggle between democracy and autocracy. This will likely avoid a new Cold War situation, a scenario that was distinctly possible under Biden’s exceptionalism.
Free from a moral imperative to defend the free world, the US is less likely to escalate tensions in Ukraine or Taiwan
However, it may also weaken the US’s global standing in the long term.
US hegemony is sustained via material might, but also by a moral vision which other nations share and which contributes to trust and friendship. This is the foundation on which the postwar US liberal world order has been built.
The amoralism of America First loses this normative vision. Under an amoral Trump leadership, the US risks becoming a self-centred state prepared to bully and threaten adversaries and allies to ensure it gets the ‘best deal’. This will doubtless erode trust and amity, wearing away Washington's normative authority, and leaving it only material power.
Abandoning American exceptionalism and embracing amorality may free the US of the burden of defending democracy and freedom; the burden of being the world’s policeman. Nevertheless, in Trump’s amoral international order, it should not then surprise us if this new Machiavellian America comes to be seen as the world’s most bombastic pirate.
Ruairidh currently teaches International Political Theory and International Relations at Forward’s Lisbon Campus.
Before teaching at Forward, Ruairidh taught International Studies in mainland China, where he received the University of Nottingham’s Lord Dearing Award for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning in 2019.
He received his PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2017.
Ruairidh has researched and published on such topics as hermeneutics, political obligation, and the philosophy of friendship.
Political Encounters: A Hermeneutic Inquiry Into the Situation of Political Obligation
Springer, 2019
COVID-19 and International Political Theory: Assessing the Potential for Normative Shift
Springer, 2022
