IS404 Writing my Part §

Background §

• United States politics was in the spotlight of international appearance for some years, and this was not for the democratic freedom-seeking actions the country is sworn by. The American media personality and business man was unexpectedly elected as the 45th president of the United States. The 2016 election was one the most divisive the country has seen since the 1920s, splitting the interest between the Metropolitan areas and the rural country sides (Brownstein, 2016). However, his administration is even more divisive. President Trump’s approval rating was only at 34% at the final periods of his office (Inc, 2016), meaning U.S. citizens were very split on the president. Now that his term of office is over, Donald Trump’s foreign policy can be further analyzed. In this research, we are going to define specifically what types of foreign policy president Donald Trump aims for, their directions, and some case studies to see the hands on approach. Afterwards, we will further analyze whether or how Trump’s foreign policy differ from non-Trump republicans as well as its traditional rival the democratic party.
• This study predicts that president Donald Trump of the United States is not a typical representation of the divisive view between the Republican and Democratic party. Rather, Trump was an exception that can rather be categorized as Trumpism as compared to Republicanism. Previous presidents could not be fit in the same group as Trump and his isolationist foreign policy. Another hypothesis is that the Democratic and Republican party differ their foreign policy only through the situation the President is placed to deal with.
• Past studies and analysis have been conducted on the foreign policy of Donald Trump as compared to previous presidents. A study conducted in 2019, still amidst the ending of Trump’s presidency, conveyed that Trump was not a popular president with the general public of the United States at all. Data for the study was conducted through public opinion surveys which showed that Donald Trump’s foreign policy only attracted 21% of all voters in 2016. The study also found peculiar phenomenon such as the partisan voters are increasingly closer knit with the leader of their party and his/or ideology than the core policy position of the party itself. Furthermore, the study found that Trump displayed isolationist foreign policies that is polarizing even to the non-Trump republican party he is meant to represent. The Trump isolationist unilateral approaches differed from the preference of the mainstream voters who prefer multilateral approaches to achieving national goals (Tarzi, 2019). Another study, conducted in 2018, named Changes in the American Foreign Policy: From Obama to Trump, examines in detail what is mentioned in its title. The transition from Obama to Trump was one of changes for good and for worse. However, the analysis found that both Barrack Obama and Donald Trump followed the same ‘retrenchment’ foreign policy. In his administration, Obama focused on ‘strategic deliberation’ due to the country’s lack of resources and narrowed his policies to foreign policy issues only. As for Trump, he stepped back from NATO in a more direct way, confronting NATO countries to ‘deal with their problems themselves’ as the U.S.’s responsibility is overwhelming which challenges the essence of the US, its external purpose, and its internal cohesion. Therefore, Obama and Trump did not differ much in their foreign policy objectives, only in the approach they choose. Where Obama tried to reconstruct the U.S.’s image, badly impacted by Bush’s administration, Trump undermined the international confidence in the U.S.’s role to be the leader in the unstable system (Brânda, 2018).

References §

Brownstein, R. (2016, November 17). How the Election Revealed the Divide Between City and Country. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/clinton-trump-city-country-divide/507902/

(Brownstein, 2016)

Inc, G. (2016, November 16). Presidential Approval Ratings—Donald Trump. Gallup.Com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

(Inc, 2016)

Tarzi, S. M. (2019). The Trump Divide and Partisan Attitudes Regarding US Foreign Policy: Select Theoretical and Empirical Observations. International Studies, 56(1), 46–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020881718824488

(Tarzi, 2019)

Brânda, O.-E. (2018). Changes in the American Foreign Policy: From Obama to Trump. International Conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION, 24(2), 160–165. https://doi.org/10.1515/kbo-2018-0083

(Brânda, 2018)