The Personality of American Power: Donald Trump and US Strategic Culture ISWS Seminar Series - Guest Speaker - Giselle Donnelly

Giselle is in the midst of writing a series of books on the enduring habits of American strategy-making formed in the British colonial period.

From the Elizabethan era through the Revolution of 1776 a composite empire of four kingdoms, England, Scotland, Ireland and the North American colonies, developed a distinct view of international politics and the use of military power. From the start, the imperial project was an ideological, and initially confessional, one: blood-and-soil nationalism, not even English xenophobia, would not serve to govern a diverse set of peoples. It was also an empire conceived in a global context, wherein the balance of great powers had become a world-wide calculation. And, finally, it was an expansionist enterprise: the global contest necessarily engendered colonial competition.

The result, a security posture that rewarded an ‘engagement' strategy and tended to punish ‘isolationism', could be codified as The Whig Way of War, as the title of the present book in the series puts it. The problem with these strategic habits is that they can be exhausting and expensive: Donald Trump's America is a very weary giant. And there are precedents for British ‘Tory' strategic retreat and retrenchment, which defined the rule of the four Stuart kings and was reprised by George III, the “man who lost America”, in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War.

Giselle will conclude by inviting speculation about America's future employing this frame of reference. Does Trump mark another ‘Tory' interlude presaging a ‘Whig' restoration, or is there a deeper disorder in the personality of American power?