What Is the Trump Doctrine? John Bellamy Foster on U.S. Foreign Policy & the "New MAGA Imperialism"

Support our work

What is MAGA imperialism? Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster says that, despite its feints toward anti-imperialist isolationism, President Donald Trump's foreign policy has coalesced into a "hyper-nationalist" form of populism that rejects the U.S.'s post-WWII adherence to liberal internationalism and promotes dominance over other countries via military power rather than through economic globalization. Foster explains that this "Trump doctrine is opposed to multi-ethnic empires and multi-ethnic nations," operating under a "racial definition of foreign policy, with the notion that the United States is a white country and other ethnicities don't belong." And while some analyses of the Trump coalition locate its base in the "white working class," in reality this ideology is rooted in the lower middle class, which owns more property and is less opposed to the wealthy capitalist class. "If you go back to the 1930s, to Italy and Germany, it's the same constituency that drove the fascist movement, but it's a result of an alliance between big capital … and the lower middle class."

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest