Evil Empire 89Intellectuals Against Noticing
Jeanne Morefield
after two years of President Donald Trump, critics and commen-
tators are still struggling to make sense of his foreign policy. Despite
some hopes that he might mature into the role of commander in chief,
he has continued to thumb his nose at most mainstream academic
frameworks for analyzing and conducting foreign policy. Indeed, what
makes Trump’s interactions with the rest of the world so confusing is
the way he flirts with, and then departs from, the script. He may issue
policies and give speeches that include words such as “sovereignty,”
“principled realism,” and “peace through strength,” but they frequently
appear cheek by jowl with racist rants, crass opportunism, nationalist
tirades, and unrestrained militarism.
It is this uncomfortable mixture of familiar and jarring that has
proven disconcerting for many mainstream international relations
scholars, particularly those “intellectual middlemen” who straddle the
realms of academia, policy think tanks, and major news outlets. Yet
rather than ask how U.S. foreign policy might have contributed to the
global environment that made Trump’s election possible, most have