This week’s episode of then & now is part of an occasional series exploring the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.-led international order with guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic. Joined by Dr. Stephen Wertheim, Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we critically examine the far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign policy during the second Trump administration. Stephen characterizes Trump's foreign policy as unpredictable and a departure from traditional diplomatic norms. Specifically, he notes Trump’s avowedly “America First” action and rhetoric, using tariffs seemingly for negotiation purposes rather than as an economic measure and bringing the right-wing culture war to the federal workforce, which has resulted in a partial bureaucratic dismantling. Stephen warns that this approach and Trump’s routine bluffs raise concerns about the long-term impact on the U.S.'s global standing and our relationships with allies. 

Ben Zdencanovic is a Postdoctoral Associate at the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. Ben is a historian of the United States in the world, domestic and international politics, and economic and social policy. He has a particular interest in the relationship between U.S. global power and the politics of redistribution and welfare state. Ben earned his doctorate with distinction from the Department of History at Yale in 2019, where his dissertation was the winner of the Edwin W. Small Prize for outstanding work in United States history. Prior to coming to UCLA, Ben was a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Jackson School for Global Affairs and an Assistant Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago. 

Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A historian of U.S. foreign policy, he analyzes contemporary problems in American strategy and diplomacy. Wertheim has published scholarly research on a range of subjects and concepts in U.S. foreign policy from the late nineteenth century to the present. He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (Harvard University Press, 2020), a Foreign Affairs book of the year, which reveals how the United States decided to pursue global military dominance as an effectively perpetual project. Named one of “the world’s 50 top thinkers for the Covid-19 age” by Prospect magazine, Wertheim regularly comments on current events.

Further Reading

What will Trump 2.0 mean for the global world order?