Description
The American Mission is a framework that has driven the US since the founding days of the republic. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are universal values to repeat around the world. In contemporary times, this longstanding promotion of liberal values is explained through the language and practice of liberal internationalism and democracy promotion. With the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration alongside the financial and economic crises, the Obama administration limited democracy promotion’s use as a suitable tool to acquiring its foreign policy objectives. This paper examines democracy promotion at the conceptual, rhetoric and implementation levels and suggests that this liberal internationalist and democratic peace theory-inspired foreign policy framework was further dismantled by the Trump administration. Dismantled to such an extent that liberal ideology was rejected in favour of a populist, unilateral and economic driven nationalism. This paper also questions the long-term implications of its rejection during these last few years and suggests that the Biden administration looks likely to step-back from this full-scale rejection.
