ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of nationalist populism on US foreign policy and national security under the Trump presidency. It considers how the framing of America First successfully exploited a long-standing gap between public opinion and the foreign policy establishment in the United States on the extent of American global engagement. The chapter explores how America First rhetorically combined populist anti-elitism with nationalist anti-globalism, establishing hostility toward the liberal international order as its most significant, consistent, and politically relevant theme. In its emphasis of Jacksonian unilateralism and American military primacy, America First, at the same time, promoted a considerable degree of continuity, resulting in a persistent disconnect between a populist rhetoric of systemic change and radical reform and a political practice broadly in line with established precepts of US foreign and security policy, ranging from counterterrorism policy to support of NATO. The chapter concludes that America First nonetheless successfully challenged a bipartisan elite consensus on liberal hegemony and military interventionism, significantly widening the space for debate on American grand strategy and reinforcing an overall discursive shift toward restraint among both political elites and public opinion in the United States.
