Trump’s National Security Strategy: “America First” meets the establishment
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702018790274 |
| Author | Aaron Ettinger |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Policy Papers |
Policy Paper
Trump’s National
Security Strategy:
‘‘America First’’ meets
the establishment
Aaron Ettinger
Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
Donald Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) promises to put ‘‘America first.’’
However, it is only a partial break from convention, and evinces a deep current of
incoherence in Trump’s foreign policy. The NSS attempts to combine two incompatible
worldviews into a single doctrine: the president’s ‘‘America First’’ nationalism and the
seventy-year-old internationalist consensus among the US foreign policy establishment.
Not only does it betray strategic dissonance, it portends an impossible working rela-
tionship between Trump’s insurgent nationalism and the traditionalism of the US foreign
policy bureaucracy.
Keywords
United States, National Security Strategy, Donald Trump, principled realism, sovereignty
In Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, he warned the world that ‘‘from this day
forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.’’
1
Thus, the conceptual
frame for a Trump Doctrine was, if not born, reanimated for the twenty-first cen-
tury. But what constituted a ‘‘Trump Doctrine’’ was a matter of interpreting the
headlines and tweets. For most of 2017, foreign policy observers understood that
the unifying concept would be ‘‘America First,’’ even if no one knew what it meant.
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(3) 474–483
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018790274
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Corresponding author:
Aaron Ettinger, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue, W. Hagey
Hall, room 315, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
Email: aaron.ettinger@uwaterloo.ca
1. Donald Trump, ‘‘The Inaugural Address,’’ 20 January 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-
statements/the-inaugural-address/ (accessed 24 May 2018).
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