President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is not liberal. That may sound like a statement of the obvious, but because most educated Americans are trained to think about foreign policy exclusively in light of liberal assumptions, Trump’s approach to the world is incomprehensible to them. Liberalism can mean many things—but it doesn’t mean everything, and Trump is not a wayward liberal. He is neither a non-interventionist who has betrayed his principles, nor a promoter of human rights through regime change, nor a protector of the liberal international order who has only now begun to fight the wars those commitments demand. Trump’s understanding of the world is rooted in his own experience, particularly in his successful career building empires of land and brand.
“Trump is not a wayward liberal.”
There are in fact three warring varieties of liberalism in US politics, which overshadow American thinking about foreign affairs. What these rival liberalisms have in common is the assumption that human beings are basically reasonable and good but are prevented from living lives of perfect freedom and fulfillment by the existence of evil institutions. They differ in which institutions they condemn as the source of tyranny and unhappiness.