Unpredictable America: Donald Trump and the future of American Foreign Policy, by Thomas A. Schwartz

In his first presidential term, Donald Trump heralded the arrival of an “America First” foreign policy that would critically examine and scale back the commitments and responsibilities America had taken on as a world power, and focus directly on promoting America’s national interest.  As he comes back to the White House, what type of foreign policy will Trump 2.0 carry out?  How will America’s allies and adversaries react?  This talk will attempt to provide some answers, recognizing the uncertainty and unpredictability characteristic of Trump’s decision-making style.

 

 

Thomas Alan Schwartz is the Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Political Science and European Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Originally from Rochester, New York, he was educated at Columbia, Oxford, and Harvard Universities.  He is the author of the books America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (1991) and Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam(2003), and Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (Hill and Wang, 2020).  Along with Matthias Schulz,  he produced the edited volume, The Strained Alliance: US-European Relations in the 1970s, (2009). He has received fellowships from the German Historical Institute, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Social Science Research Center. He served on the Historical Advisory Committee of the Department of State and was the President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. While teaching at Vanderbilt, he has received the Madison Sarratt Teaching prize (2013) and the Alumni Education Award (2008). He is currently working on a history of the Cold War that emphasizes the role of intelligence agencies in the conflict.