Free Thoughts

Christopher Preble and John Glaser talk about how Donald Trump’s rise in the Republican primaries and eventually to the presidency represented an astonishing break with the foreign policy consensus that had prevailed from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. And they detail this more extensively in their book, Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse, which is a comprehensive explanation of how Trump’s “America First” mentality was more a campaign slogan than a coherent vision of American grand strategy and foreign policy.How did Donald Trump change the messaging on foreign policy? Does the public support an adventurous foreign policy? What does the military think of Trump’s rhetoric? Does President Trump have a foreign policy doctrine? Is Trump obsessed with status and prestige? How is Donald Trump erratic?Further Reading:Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America’s Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse (and How We Can Recover), written by Christopher A. Preble, John Glaser, and A. Trevo