Donald Trump

“When Donald Trump enters the White House, he will do so with a worldview that has been constantly advanced and relatively consistently articulated in countless statements over the past three decades. Don't say he didn't warn you.”

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.