Get ready for a wild ride

Every American president since Harry Truman has arrived in the White House committed to globalism — a belief that America must lead always and everywhere — as the central organising principle of US foreign policy. In recent years, we have seen Barack Obama’s faith in globalism waver. The prospect of President Donald Trump abandoning globalism altogether is real.

For US allies as varied as Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, American globalism has been the gift that has never stopped giving. Nations enjoying a ‘special relationship’ with Washington have relied on American power to shield them from danger and, to some extent, from bearing the consequences of their own folly, past and present.

Listen to Andrew J. Bacevich and Freddy Gray discussing Trump’s foreign policy

Motives other than kindness and goodwill have shaped US policy throughout. Sustaining American globalism has been the conviction that its benefits are reciprocal and its costs affordable. British diplomatic and military support has on multiple occasions endowed American muscle–flexing with a sheen of legitimacy, especially since the end of the Cold War.