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Donald Trump: The Making of a World View Kindle Edition
| Charlie Laderman (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump won the American presidential election, to the joy of some and the shock of many across the globe.
Now that Trump is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful country on Earth, Americans and non-Americans alike have been left wondering what that means for the world.
It has been widely claimed that Trump’s foreign policy views are impulsive, inconsistent and that they were improvised on the campaign trail.
Drawing on interviews from as far back as 1980, the historians Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms show that this assumption is dangerously false.
Laderman and Simms reveal that Trump has had a consistent position on international trade and America’s alliances since he first flirted with the idea of running for president in the late 1980s. Furthermore, his foreign policy views have deep roots in American history.
Trump will not necessarily enact these positions at once when he is sworn in. Many presidents reverse positions when faced with the responsibility for high office.
However, as Henry Kissinger emphasised, there is little time to learn on the job and policymakers will primarily consume the intellectual capital that they bring to the office.
This book sketches out the worldview that Trump brings to the Oval Office, assembling the sources so that readers can also form their own view of it. And while Trump has shown remarkable consistency over time, there have been some major policy shifts over the years.
Donald Trump: The Making of a World View will reveal on what basis and under what circumstances Trump changes his mind.
For Trump, almost every international problem that has confronted the United States is explained by the idiocy of its leaders.
After decades of dismissing America’s leaders as fools and denouncing their diplomacy, Trump now must prove that he can do better.
Over the past three decades, he has been laying out in interviews, articles, books and tweets what amounts to a foreign policy philosophy.
This book reveals how the worldview of the 45th President of the United States was formed, what might result if it is applied in policy terms and the potential consequences for the rest of the world.
‘This book does a great service in identifying the genesis of President Trump's worldview, based on his words, and considering its likely impact on the future of American foreign policy and the western alliance.’ – Professor John Bew, author of Realpolitik: A History
‘In this insightful study, Laderman and Simms expose the contours of Donald Trump's thinking on foreign policy and explore its roots in US history since 1945. This book refutes the widespread view that Trump can simply be dismissed as an improviser and a showman. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Trump presidency and what it means for the rest of us.’ - Sir Christopher Clark, author of Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Brendan Simms is a Professor in History of European International Relations at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Unfinest Hour (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize), Three Victories and a Defeat, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, and Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation.
Charlie Laderman is a Lecturer in International History at King’s College London and currently a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Sharing the Burden: Armenia, Humanitarian Intervention and the Search for an Anglo-America Alliance.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 24, 2017
- File size896 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Donald Trump: The Making of a World View is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what this president is driving."
(FD Nieuws)"…a scholarly work that lives up to its title. Donald Trump: The Making of a World View is neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump; rather, it presents a balanced, serious-minded analysis of how Trump views international trade […] Highly recommended."
(Andy Jordan, The Midwest Book Review, August 2017) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Review
"Donald Trump: The Making of a World View is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what this president is driving."
(FD Nieuws)"…a scholarly work that lives up to its title. Donald Trump: The Making of a World View is neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump; rather, it presents a balanced, serious-minded analysis of how Trump views international trade […] Highly recommended."
(Andy Jordan, The Midwest Book Review, August 2017) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B01NH9Y1V6
- Publisher : Lume Books (January 24, 2017)
- Publication date : January 24, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 896 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 144 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #973,028 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #771 in Biographies of US Presidents
- #1,712 in United States National Government
- #1,740 in Federal Government
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"As Brogan noted, many Americans held to “the illusion that any situation which distresses or endangers the United States only exists because some Americans have been fools or knaves.”[ 2] Donald Trump was a child of the 1950’ s and, just as his domestic agenda is a nod to that era’s vision of the American Dream, his worldview reflects the mentality that Brogan identified. For Trump, almost every international problem that besets the United States is explained by the idiocy of its leaders."
They then go on to show how Trump's basic framework was elaborated in the 1980s in conventional critiques of the period of European and Japanese free riding. From the early 2000s he then substituted China for Japan as the Asian boogey man.
The book is also extremely useful in pinpointing how late in the day, from 2010 onwards, Trump began to assemble some of his other opinions i.e. hostility to Obama, politicized hostility towards migrants (as opposed to common or garden racism), fondness for Putin.
Seeing Trump as basically locked in an endless replay of the 1980s I think is an important key to understanding his domestic policy as well. He never got over the first traumatic impact of globalization. Or that era's backlash politics.
Simms and Laderman are well known as exponents of a grand strategic approach to history and if you like this you may also like the short essay by Hal Brands and Colin Kahl. Brands at least shares with Laderman a Yale connection.
Trump’s Grand Strategic Train Wreck
As to Charlie and Brendan's book I should admit that they are old friends. But their book really is an impressive demonstration of how valuable it can be to perform the basic operation of reading everything someone said in chronological order. Instant and powerful illumination!
Top reviews from other countries
Watching and listening to Trump's campaign for the presidency, I thought his many foreign policy statements were just rabbits pulled out of the hat, to appeal to each particular audience.
Instead and surprisingly, the authors demonstrate, by analysing what he has said in his writings, interviews and statements from 1980 to 2016, that Trump's foreign policy views have been generally consistent over more than three and a half decades; the only significant changes are that, first, in the early days, he was in favour of "boots on the ground" intervention, whereas he now sees the only acceptable form of intervention as standoff aerial bombardment; second, in 1980 his number one big baddy was Japan, whereas since the late 1990s it is China.
The four foundation stones of his views are that, first, America's supposed friends and allies have been disrespecting and laughing at it, allowing it to bear the cost of defending them without making any meaningful contribution; second and unfairly, many countries, by means of currency manipulation or whatever, have been flooding the American market with cheap goods and taking away American jobs; third, that America spends so much money on helping or defending the rest of the world that it does not have enough to do its duty to its own people, by building roads, schools or whatever; fourth, this has been allowed to happen by a succession of weak, incompetent, stupid American leaders - to make America great again, it urgently needs a great, competent, smart leader and there is only one person up to the job - I wasn't completely clear on who that was but I did pick up that his or her initials are DJT.
This could have been a real grueller but the authors have presented the whole thing in a very easily readable and digestible form, just detailing the nub of each interview or statement but giving all the references for anyone who wants to dig deeper.
I take from it that Britain and Israel (and possibly Russia) are okay; the rest, especially, China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Mexico and Japan (yes, it is still on the hit list, just not at number one), should think about ducking and running for cover; he is a bit ambivalent about France, starting out hating it but then warming to it a little bit after its Libya intervention.
A must read.
These are dangerous times (always have been of course), and the Trump era brings risks of new conflicts, and escalation of existing ones. This book is an essential guide for those from other nations who need to engage with the US administration, or assess its likely position.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 30, 2017





