Description
With the US being imagined and solidified as the head of a liberal international order since the Second World War, there has been an unmistakable break with the Presidency of Donald Trump. Clearly, the Trump administration was not representative of this liberal order with, for instance, the voiced exit from NATO and its continued presence as a global strongman with his handpicked autocratic allies. However, this paper argues that the break was already made possible through partly liberal and even populist understandings of his predecessor President Barack Obama and fellow competitor Hillary Clinton. This gave rise to rival hegemonic projects as the former did not cover the different demands made by Americans. In general, observers tend to see the US exclusively through its liberal understanding, but this paper asks whether we are not reifying this and therefore overlooking the discursive shifts that helped enable a different foreign policy. It opened up a “mythical space” and “floating signifiers” with the potential of new meanings to be attached to the US and the international order. To explore this further, this paper interrogates the liberal and populist understandings based on an Essex School’s view of discourse.
