ABSTRACT
The Trumpism that inflamed fierce racial tensions at home has also racialised US policy abroad. Donald Trump both exposed and celebrated the racism at America’s core – the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow – further polarising US politics and destroying much of what little domestic political cohesion he had inherited. He extended his white nativism to foreign policy in casting China as not merely a great-power rival but an implacable alien foe. Racism in Western strategic thought is nothing new. Over a century ago, Oswald Spengler prophesied a declining West and left its white leaders with a terrible proposition: if the rise of the non-white peoples is causing the West’s demise, the white world should either eliminate them or retard their advancement. Despite the apparent continuity in China policy between the Trump and Biden administrations, the so-called bipartisan consensus rests on shaky domestic as well as strategic ground.
