Foreign policy

What’s So Great About American World Leadership?

How has America come to elect a president who so starkly repudiated decades’ worth of the largely bipartisan vision of U.S. global leadership? And if that vision won’t be the basis of American foreign policy in the 21st century, what will replace it?

The big message of 2016 is that large numbers of American voters, Democrat and Republican, do not buy what their political leaders have been selling for so long, and that includes foreign policy. The evidence of this from Trump’s victory is reinforced by Senator Bernie Sanders’ remarkable showing in the Democratic primaries, and by years’ worth of public-opinion surveys showing the widespread view that the United States “does too much in helping solve world problems.” It is also reinforced by the high poll numbers of an outgoing president who has mounted his own quiet campaign against key elements of Washington’s foreign-policy orthodoxy.