Publication

This article argues that the best way to understand where President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy might be heading is to study the career of Joseph McCarthy, who was a US Senator from 1947-1957. Like the “red-baiting” McCarthy, Trump has built a base of working-class white support with a message that combines populist hostility towards elites with exaggerated depictions of foreign threats. The latter hand-wringing, however, doesn’t represent a coherent set of foreign policy ideas, nor is it designed to. As long as the 2020 election looms on the horizon, preserving Trump’s electoral base will take precedence over coherence.