Trump and The Remaking of American Grand Strategy Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn Ebook Full Chapter

Trump and the Remaking of American
Grand Strategy Bastiaan Van

Apeldoorn
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/trump-and-the-remaking-of-american-grand-strategy-
bastiaan-van-apeldoorn/
Trump and the
Remaking of American
Grand Strategy
The Shift from Open
Door Globalism to
Economic Nationalism
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn
Jaša Veselinovič
Naná de Graaff
Trump and the Remaking of American
Grand Strategy
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn · Jaša Veselinovič ·
Naná de Graaff
Trump
and the Remaking
of American
Grand Strategy
The Shift from Open Door Globalism
to Economic Nationalism
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn Jaša Veselinovič
Political Science and Public Political Science
Administration Freie Universität Berlin
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Berlin, Germany
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Naná de Graaff
Political Science and Public
Administration
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ISBN 978-3-031-34691-0 ISBN 978-3-031-34692-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Victoria Crocker and Alexandra

Filius for their assistance with the biographical network data collection,
Zala Turšič for her help with the design of our theoretical model figure,
Madison Allums for her confidence in our project, and two anonymous
reviewers for their comments on the book proposal. All remaining errors
are ours.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
References 5
2 Theorizing Trump: A Critical Political Economy
Approach 7
IR Theory at a Loss? The Puzzle of Trump’s Foreign Policy 9
IR Debates on the Nature of Trump’s Foreign Policy 9
IR Explanations of Trump’s Foreign Policy? 14
Structure and Agency in US Grand Strategy:
A Elite-Theoretical Perspective Grounded in Critical
Political Economy 18
References 24
3 American Grand Strategy Before Trump: The History
and Nature of Open Door Globalism 33
The Open Door from the End of the Nineteenth Century
Until the End of the Cold War 35
The First Wave of American Expansionism: From
the Open Door Notes to Wilson’s Liberal Internationalism 36
The Second Wave and the Start of the Third Wave
of American Expansionism: The Cold War Years 38
The Open Door in the Post-Cold War Era: The Clinton,
Bush, and Obama Presidencies 41
The Open Door Under Clinton 41
vii
viii CONTENTS
The Open Door Under G.W. Bush 43

The Open Door Under Obama 45
Conclusion: The Ends of Open Door Globalism 47
References 49
4 Contradictions of Neoliberal Globalization
and the Trumpist Backlash 55
The Contradictions of Neoliberal Globalization
and Obama’s Failure to Restore Open Door Globalism 57
The Deepening Contradictions of Neoliberalism After
the Global Financial Crisis 59
The Growing Limits of American Power and Increasing
Geopolitical Rivalry 60
The Failure of the Incorporation of China into the US-Led
Liberal World Order 61
The Rising Costs of Doing Business with China 62
Twofold Trumpist Backlash Against Neoliberal
Globalization: Putting “America First” Against
the Globalism of Financial Elites and China 64
The Backlash Against Free Trade and Against
the Offshoring and Outsourcing of American Production 69
The Backlash Against China’s Integration into Global
Capitalism 70
Conclusion 72
References 75
5 Enter Trump and the Trumpists: A Social Network
Analysis of Trump’s Foreign Policy-Makers 79
Mapping Foreign Policy Elite Power Structures—Methods
and Data 82
The Trump Administration and Corporate Elite Networks
in Comparative Perspective: Continuity or Change? 84
A Different Corporate Elite in the White House? 86
Distinctive Characteristics of the Trumpian Corporate Elite 89
The Trump Administration and US Elite Policy-Planning
Networks in Comparative Perspective: The Trumpian Break 93
The (Growing) Disconnect of Trump’s Team 96
Conclusion 101
References 102
CONTENTS ix
6 The Unmaking of Open Door Globalism and the Shift

Towards Economic Nationalism 107
America First: Rejecting the Exceptionalist Notion of US
Global Leadership and Embracing Economic Nationalism 109
The Trumpist Worldview: Economic Nationalism 113
The Evolution of Trump’s Neo-mercantilist Economic
Nationalism in Practice 116
Trump’s Protectionism and Attack on the Global Trade
System: From Withdrawal from the TPP to the Trade War
with China 117
Reconfiguring the Nexus of National and Economic
Security: Reshoring America’s Manufacturing 121
Trumpian Geopolitics: Deconstructing Liberal World Order
and a New Cold War with China 126
From Leading the Liberal World Order to Wrecking It 126
Trump, and the New Great Power Rivalry: Towards
a US–China Cold War 129
Conclusion 132
References 133
7 Conclusion 141
The Enduring Trumpian Shift: Biden and Beyond 146
An Agenda for Further Research 148
References 149
Appendix: Selection of Trump’s Foreign Policy-Makers

in 2017 and 2019 151
Index 153
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Structure and agency in the transformation of US grand

strategy (Source Adapted from van Apeldoorn and de
Graaff [2016, p. 20]) 21
Fig. 5.1 Sectoral comparison of Clinton, Bush, Obama,
Trump ’17, Trump ’19 (Source Own data collection) 87
Fig. 5.2 Share of F500 firms in corporate connections Clinton,
Bush, Obama, Trump ’17, Trump ’19 (Source Own data
collection) 88
Fig. 5.3 Two-mode network of Trump administration (2017)
officials’ prior corporate affiliations (Source Own data
collection) 89
Fig. 5.4 Two-mode network of Trump administration (2019)
officials’ prior corporate affiliations (Source Own data
collection) 90
Fig. 5.5 Overview of policy-planning linkers and policy-planning
affiliations per administration (Source Own data collection) 94
Fig. 5.6 Overview of policy-planning networks (prior)—Clinton,
Bush, Obama (Source van Apeldoorn and de Graaff
[2016, p. 80]) 95
Fig. 5.7 Policy-planning network Bush (Source Adapted from van
Apeldoorn and de Graaff [2016, p. 152]) 96
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.8 Policy-planning network Obama (Source Adapted

from van Apeldoorn and de Graaff [2016, p. 198]) 97
Fig. 5.9 Policy-planning network Trump 2017 (Source Own data
collection) 98
Fig. 5.10 Policy-planning network Trump 2019 (Source Own data
collection) 98
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract This chapter introduces our study of how and why Trump
remade American grand strategy. The in-many-ways unprecedented
foreign policy of Donald Trump has—despite a vast literature—thus far
not been subjected to much explanatory analysis. Using an original analyt-
ical model informed by critical political economy and based upon unique
empirical and social network analysis of Trump’s foreign policy-making
elite, this study makes a novel contribution by both assessing the nature
of Trump’s foreign policy and offering a comprehensive explanation of
what we argue to be a significant and probably enduring Trumpian shift
towards a neo-mercantilist economic nationalism. This study explains
this shift both in terms of foreign policy-makers’ embeddedness in elite
networks, and by placing their agency within the changing global and
domestic context.
Keywords Donald Trump · US foreign policy · Grand strategy · Open

Door Globalism
There are many firsts when it comes to Donald Trump and his pres-
idency. Significantly, as we are writing this, he has just been arrested
in New York for covering up the payment of hush money to a former
porn star and thereby violating federal election law—the first time in
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
B. van Apeldoorn et al., Trump and the Remaking of American Grand
Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7_1
2 B. VAN APELDOORN ET AL.
history that a former president has been indicted on criminal charges.

A former president who is moreover the current Republican frontrunner
for the 2024 presidential elections. While—as from the time his 2016
campaign started in earnest and throughout his presidency—much of
the polarized media attention continues to focus on all the scandal and
controversy surrounding Trump, scholars are still grappling with the
longer-term significance and implications of four years of Trump in the
White House for both the US and for global politics. It is clear that
Trump brought a shock to the system, not just to the American polit-
ical system, but also to the so-called liberal world order the US itself had
created. This has spawned a large amount of academic literature on the
Trump phenomenon, including on Trump’s foreign policy. As we will
discuss in Chapter 2, the scholarly arguments here so far have concen-
trated on the extent to—and the manner in which—US foreign policy
under Trump has really constituted a significant break, or if there was
indeed more continuity, but very often without explicitly articulating the
benchmark against which this change was to be assessed. Furthermore,
relatively little attention has been paid to properly explaining Trump’s
foreign policy. Based on a distinct approach and original research, this
study then seeks to contribute to the literature on Trump’s foreign policy
by (1) assessing the nature of this policy and determining to what extent
and in what way it has represented a break with US foreign policy of
preceding presidencies, and (2) offering a comprehensive explanation of
why and how this policy came about.
While there are many unparalleled aspects to Trump’s presidency and
his foreign policy, unprecedented should not mean beyond explanation
(cf. Barnett, 2018). While we do not agree with those scholars (to be
discussed in Chapter 2) arguing that beyond the radically different style
and rhetoric there has not been that much substantial change in US
foreign policy under Trump—in fact we instead argue the opposite—
we do believe that we should not reduce the substantively different
foreign policy pursued by his administration to the individual agency
of Donald Trump—even if that agency is essential—and certainly not
without contextualizing that agency. Instead of treating his presidency
as an aberration, we posit that what we argue to be Trump’s remaking
of US foreign policy can be understood through the same approach we
have used to explain the continuity in US foreign policy before Trump
(Van Apeldoorn & De Graaff, 2016). This is an approach that focuses
on the role of elites—in particular of the foreign policy-making elite and
1 INTRODUCTION 3
the extent of its embeddedness in wider elite networks—but also puts that
elite agency within a wider social and political context, thereby integrating
structure and agency and emphasizing their interaction over time.
Seeking to assess and explain continuity and change in US foreign
policy generally we focus not on the day-to-day foreign policy-making
but on what is called grand strategy, or what can be viewed as the
“highest” level of foreign policy representing a comprehensive vision of
the state’s critical “interests” and the overarching and long-term goals
following from that, and how best to promote and achieve those goals
(Layne, 2006, p. 13). Never entirely consistent in its concrete applica-
tions, grand strategy cannot fully account for all individual foreign policy
decisions, which are often also influenced by other, contingent factors,
or indeed related to the idiosyncrasies of individual presidents (not just
in Trump’s case). But grand strategy does inform the general direction
of foreign policy-making. It is from this perspective that this study will
analyse Trump’s foreign policy: examining its general outlook and direc-
tion, rather than in any way attempt to examine its many different policy
decisions across sectors and regions in a detailed way.
We do not claim that Trump and his (often internally divided) team
in the four years that he had been in office were able to articulate a
fully fledged grand strategy of their own, let alone pursue such a strategy
consistently. What we do claim is that Trump—and quite consciously—
has succeeded in unmaking what has been America’s grand strategy since
at least World War II (and in many ways has origins much earlier). This
has been the strategy of what we call Open Door Globalism, a strategy of
economic expansionism through the promotion of open markets across
the globe and the institutionalization thereof (after 1945) into a US-
led liberal world order. And this unmaking Trump has done, we will
suggest at the end of this short book, in ways that have outlasted his presi-
dency, that at least in some significant ways endure under his successor Joe
Biden. In that sense, Trump most likely indeed has permanently remade
US foreign policy. Which makes it all the more important to explain this
historical rupture.
Our core argument is twofold. First, we argue that Trump has
broken with Open Door Globalism—both as a worldview and as a grand
strategy—in probably lasting ways by adopting an outlook and strategy
that can be best interpreted as a neo-mercantilist economic nationalism
based upon an “America first” redefinition of US sovereignty and national
interests. Second, we argue that we can explain this Trumpian shift in
US foreign policy by focusing on the agency of Trump’s foreign policy-

making elite, while in turn explaining this agency by analysing its social
sources. We do this both in terms of foreign policy-makers’ embed-
dedness in elite networks, as well as by placing their agency within the
changing global and domestic context as the contradictions of and limits
to Open Door Globalism had become more manifest in the final years of
the Obama presidency. Building upon prior research (De Graaff & van
Apeldoorn, 2021) and expanding on this using unique data analysed by
employing Social Network Analysis (SNA), this study will show that the
Trumpian foreign policy-making elite was a partly differently constituted
one, breaking with the long-established pattern of the elite networks that
allowed a globalist “Open Door” consensus to be forged and reproduced.
But, placing this within a wider context of a backlash against neoliberal
globalization as well as against the attempt to incorporate China into
the global Open Door, we also argue that the very fact that Trump was
able to come to power and at least partially break with established elite
networks and with America’s long-standing grand strategy, signalled, and
simultaneously much aggravated and deepened, a crisis of established elite
power, of a corporate power elite whose interest and worldview had long
dominated US foreign policy-making.
The remainder of this short book is organized as follows. Chapter 2
reviews the existing literature on two key questions: the nature of US
foreign policy under Trump, and the explanations for US foreign policy
during this period. We then introduce an elite-theoretical perspective on
US foreign policy informed by Critical Political Economy which helps
explain both the continuities and the significant changes we are witnessing
in US foreign policy. Chapter 3 offers a brief historical overview of Open
Door Globalism as it evolved from the end of the nineteenth century into
the post-Cold War. We focus on the three presidencies of the post-Cold
War era by briefly describing how all held on to the Open Door Globalist
world view both in theory and in practice, illustrating that despite some
variation in means there is much continuity up and until Trump in US
grand strategy in terms of its ends.
Chapter 4 then places the Trump phenomenon within a changing
global and domestic context and analyses how in the aftermath of the
global financial crisis and amid an ongoing global power shift Obama
failed to successfully address the contradictions of neoliberal globaliza-
tion and overcome the limits of Open Door Globalism. We analyse how
Trump used this context to mobilize his base and sketch how Trump
1 INTRODUCTION 5
himself and some of his (future) advisers, interpreted the changing global
and domestic context through an economic nationalist “reading” of
the (geo)political conjuncture. Changing context alone cannot explain
changes in US foreign policy, which is why in Chapter 5 we analyse
the actual foreign policy-making actors interpreting and acting upon this
changing context, as based upon their ideas and interests, by mapping and
analysing the social networks of the administration’s top foreign policy-
makers, to identify the social sources of their agency and worldviews. In
contrast to previous presidencies, we find a clear lack of links between
Trump’s policymakers and what for decades has been a core feature of
the foreign policy establishment: its extensive and heavily overlapping
network of foreign policy think tanks and advocacy groups.
In Chapter 6 we analyse both the rhetoric and the evolving practice
of Trump’s foreign policy, to show how Trump’s foreign policy-makers
unmade Open Door Globalism and thereby remade American Grand
Strategy. While Trump’s presidency did not fully replace the Open Door
Globalist worldview with a coherent and fully developed alternative, we
identify a clear ideological shift towards a neo-mercantilist variety of
economic nationalism. Finally, in the Conclusion (Chapter 7), we summa-
rize the results of our research, reflect on the ways in which the Biden
presidency has not seen a return to Open Door Globalism but in fact
doubled down on some aspects of the economic nationalist strategy, and
indicate some avenues for further research.
References
Barnett, M. (2018). What is international relations theory good for? In R. Jervis,
F. J. Gavin, J. Rovner, & D. N. Labrosse (Eds.), Chaos in the liberal order: The
Trump presidency and international politics in the twenty-first century (pp. 8–
21). Columbia University Press.
De Graaff, N., & Van Apeldoorn, B. (2021). The transnationalist US foreign-
policy elite in exile? A comparative network analysis of the Trump administra-
tion. Global Networks, 21(2), 238–264.
Layne, C. (2006). The peace of illusions: American grand strategy from 1940 to
the present. Cornell University Press.
Van Apeldoorn, B., & De Graaff, N. (2016). American grand strategy and
corporate elite networks: The Open Door since the end of the Cold War.
Routledge.
CHAPTER 2
Theorizing Trump: A Critical Political

Economy Approach
Abstract Academic literature on the Trump phenomenon has sought to

make sense of Trump, his administration, and his (foreign) policy. Schol-
arly arguments have concentrated on the extent to—and the manner in
which—US foreign policy under Trump has really constituted a signifi-
cant break, or if there was indeed more continuity but very often without
explicitly articulating the benchmark against which this change was to
be assessed. Much less attention has been paid to properly explaining
Trump’s foreign policy. This chapter first critically reviews the litera-
ture on both questions: the nature of US foreign policy under Trump,
and the explanations for US foreign policy during this period, iden-
tifying remaining gaps and research puzzles. We then introduce an
elite-theoretical perspective on US foreign policy informed by Critical
Political Economy which helps explain both the continuities and the
significant changes in we are witnessing in US foreign policy.
Keywords US foreign policy · Donald Trump · Grand strategy ·

Corporate elite · Policy-planning elite · Critical political economy · IR
theory
The Trump phenomenon—a presidency that broke with convention and

precedent in so many ways—has naturally not only been (and still is)
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 7

Switzerland AG 2023
B. van Apeldoorn et al., Trump and the Remaking of American Grand
Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34692-7_2
the object of endless journalistic commentary and punditry but has

also spawned a formidable academic literature seeking to make sense of
Trump, his administration, and his (foreign) policy. This chapter consists
of two parts. In the first part, we present a critical review of the literature
on Trump’s foreign policy, on its nature, and on what may account for it.
Here most scholarly efforts have concentrated on the extent to—and the
manner in which—US foreign policy under Trump has really constituted
a significant break, or whether—despite outer appearances and stylistic
extravagance—there was indeed more continuity in substance. Much of
the literature produced during Trump’s time in office had to deal with
what often appeared to be a moving target during a turbulent and often
chaotic presidency. It was perhaps because of this imperative to play catch
up with Trump’s vagaries that there has been little in the way of a more
systematic attempt to identify the nature of Trump’s foreign policy and
thereby find a comprehensive and empirically substantiated answer to the
question of continuity versus change. Moreover, as our literature review
shows, there has been little attempt to properly explain Trump’s foreign
policy. This short book seeks to provide both: an empirical assessment of
the content of Trump’s foreign policy and a theoretically informed expla-
nation of the changes and continuities found therein. The present chapter
will therefore, after a critical review of the existing literature, introduce a
theoretical framework that we argue helps understand both the conti-
nuities and the significant changes in we are witnessing in US foreign
policy.
Within the field of International Relations (IR), many scholars in
fact concluded that Trump was an anomaly, not fitting any established
theoretical models. Yet, if we want to make sense of Trump and his
Administration’s remaking of US foreign policy (and some of the remark-
able subsequent continuities under President Biden), we need to move
beyond the idiosyncrasies of the former president himself (cf. Drezner,
2020) as well as the conventional theories to be able to explain this unique
and transformative phase in the history of US foreign policy. To this end,
the second part of this chapter outlines what we call a Critical Political
Economy approach that offers an integrated account of both structure
and agency involved in the (re-)making of US foreign policy. Here the
structure refers both to American capitalist society and its capitalist state as
well as to the structure of the global capitalist political economy and world
order. It is within these contexts, we posit, that US foreign policy is made,
2 THEORIZING TRUMP: A CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY … 9
or more particularly, that the agency of the actual foreign policy-making

elite is located.
IR Theory at a Loss? The Puzzle

of Trump’s Foreign Policy
The existing literature on Trump’s foreign policy grapples with two basic
questions. First, what kind of foreign policy or strategy are we dealing
with: what was its nature, and what, if anything, made it different from
past policies and strategies? Secondly, how to explain the policies Trump’s
administration pursued, and the degree of either continuity or change
that we observe. The literature remains divided on both questions, with
the divisions often running across different schools within IR theory.
Particularly the first question, to which we now turn, was hotly disputed
throughout Trump’s presidency.
IR Debates on the Nature of Trump’s Foreign Policy

Conceptually grasping US foreign policy under President Trump presents
IR theorists with numerous problems. Inconsistencies between the often
outlandish pronouncements of President Trump himself and the policies
of his administration rejuvenated the debates about the political viability
and analytical usefulness of grand strategy as a concept (Dombrowski &
Reich, 2017; Lissner, 2018; Silove, 2018). The at times incoherent policy
(especially in his first year) reflected deep fissures within the foreign
policy-making elite, but also made discerning any “Trump doctrine” diffi-
cult. Some authors therefore have argued that there is little substantive
core to it and that the sole guiding thread is its commitment to unpre-
dictability as a strategy (Bentley & David, 2021; but see Wright, 2019).
A similar focus on Trump’s negotiating strategy shone light on Trump’s
reliance on sudden and unpredictable escalations of diplomatic tensions
(Dueck, 2020, p. 125), a strategy that has roots in his trademark business-
making (Baker & Glasser, 2022; Drezner, 2019a, 2019b). A further
challenge in providing a substantive characterization of US foreign policy
under Trump (and to what extent it corresponded to Trump’s foreign
policy) was how it arguably changed throughout the mandate itself.
Trump’s presidency therefore offered sufficient examples for several plau-
sible lines of argument regarding continuity and change (Hill & Hurst,
2020; see also Macdonald, 2018). In the literature, we distinguish six
stylized and sometimes overlapping (or evolving) positions, each empha-

sizing a different element of US foreign policy conduct under Trump and
identifying (degrees of) either a break or continuity.
In the first group are Realists who during Trump’s campaign and
early into his mandate were excited about the prospects of a break; the
promise of Trump presidency shattering the “liberal hegemony” strategy
consensus and finally bringing about “realism’s moment in the foreign
policy sun” (Drezner, 2016). But the majority of them became disil-
lusioned quickly after Trump assumed office and none of the most
prominent Realist academics was a Trump supporter. Still, from the
perspective of their preferred strategy, they found themselves in agree-
ment with Trump’s electoral promises to end endless interventionism,
state-building efforts, and allies’ free-riding. But while Trump may have
grasped part of the logic behind their preferred strategy, at least as far as
the Middle East was concerned (Walt, 2018a) and realist principles could
be read into his rantings against the failures of the foreign policy establish-
ment, leading Realist Steve Walt was quick to conclude that the President
“is neither a realist nor a skilled and knowledgeable statesman” (Walt,
2018b, p. 15). What remained in this context was to save the “America
first” slogan from its populariser and construct responsible nationalism
(Bacevich, 2017; Brands, 2017a).
The second group consists of authors—including many initially opti-
mistic Realists—who have argued that “despite Trump’s nationalistic
rhetoric” his foreign policy already in his first year quickly reverted to
“policies much closer to the recent historical norm” (Ryan, 2019, p. 207,
original emphasis; Brands, 2017b; Stokes, 2018). In John Mearsheimer’s
words then, looking “beyond President Trump’s hot rhetoric, U.S.
foreign policy certainly has changed in a handful of ways, but not in most
ways, and certainly has not changed dramatically” (quoted in Foreign
Affairs, 2018; see also Herbert et al., 2019, p. 186). As Kitchen (2020)
has noted, the Realists’ critical observations about continuity under
Trump partly stem from the fact that what continued was yet another
administration’s reluctance to embark on their preferred strategic reori-
entation. These authors’ distinction between rhetoric and policies also
tends to underestimate the importance of presidential proclamations for
US standing in the world and their relationship with other powers (see
Holland & Fermor, 2021). As we will show, the identified disconnect was
in itself a contested outcome of disagreements within the administration
and was not just a result of Trump’s half-heartedness or lack of trying to

deliver on his campaign promises.
The third group of scholars also focuses on Trump’s rhetoric but with
the specific aim to map the Trumpian discourse on Walter Russel Mead’s
four-partite scheme of US foreign policy traditions: the Hamiltonian
(promotion of an “Open Door” world), Jeffersonian (maintenance of
a democratic system domestically), Wilsonian (moralist American excep-
tionalism), and Jacksonian (belligerent nationalism and populist values)
(Mead, 2001). These authors trace how Trump’s deployment of Jack-
sonian themes constitutes a break with the decades-long dominance
of a Wilsonian-Hamiltonian synthesis (Cha, 2016; Clarke & Ricketts,
2017; Löfflmann, 2022; Mead, 2017). Countering long-lasting postu-
lates such as cosmopolitanism, multilateralism, free trade, globalization,
and liberal internationalism (Baldaro & Dian, 2018, p. 22), Jackso-
nian inward-looking populist nationalists focus on perfecting the republic
first, rejecting ambitious attempts to remake the world in their own
image (Mead, 2017), and no longer take the necessity of a political and
economic Open Door as its precondition (Clarke, 2021, p. 522). These
authors illustrate that the status-driven Jacksonian foreign policy in a
permanent quest for recognition (Wolf, 2017) is congruent with roughly
three decades of Trump’s relatively consistent (if peculiar) thinking
(Laderman & Simms, 2017; Miller, 2018).
The fourth group’s diagnosis of US foreign policy under Trump is
similar, but rather than trying to locate it in an existing intellectual tradi-
tion, these scholars have been much more concerned with the political
and strategic implications of Trump’s unprecedented and radical break
with the consensus grand strategy of liberal internationalism (Colgan &
Keohane, 2017; Daalder & Lindsay, 2018; Friedman Lissner & Rapp-
Hooper, 2018; Haass, 2020; Kagan, 2016; Kristensen, 2017). Their
warnings were dire: “Trade, alliances, international law, multilateralism,
environment, torture, and human rights—on all these issues, President
Trump has made statements that, if acted upon, would effectively bring
to an end America’s role as leader of the liberal world order” (Ikenberry,
2018, p. 7). In the eyes of those sympathetic to the Liberal International
Order (LIO), which has served the US interests so well, its architect had
under Trump become a hostile and revisionist power with a coherent
strategy for “taking an axe to the Washington consensus” (Rachman,
2018). And indeed, according to many, Trump’s presidency did in fact
live up to many of its promises and significantly undermined the LIO.
When explaining what exactly the break consists of, liberal internation-
alists focused on nationalism, often in particular economic nationalism,
associated not just with Trump himself but with several of his influ-
ential advisers, in particular, Steve Bannon (Brands, 2018; Friedman
Lissner & Rapp-Hooper, 2018; Kim, 2018). Some went as far as to claim
that Trump’s worldview amounts to isolationism (Haass; 2016; Stavridis,
2016) or in general heralds a return of nineteenth-century politics of
mercantilism, domination, and zero-sum unilateralism (Kupchan, 2018;
Wright, 2016, 2019; but see Helleiner, 2019). While not necessarily
sharing the same normative concerns, Mastanduno similarly identifies a
revolutionary break with a 70-year consensus by zooming in on Trump’s
trade policy. By using trade as its principal coercive weapon in “maximum
pressure” campaigns (Drezner, 2019a, 2019b), Trump has maintained
an activist orientation while rejecting the idea of pursuing hegemony
in which the US benefits most by acting as a stabilizer and rule-maker
(Mastanduno, 2020). Instead of using protectionism “as a necessary but
temporary evil” used historically to pry open the foreign markets, Trump
embraced it as a “matter of principle” (ibid., p. 537) and “weaponized”
American structural economic power (Farrell & Newman, 2019; see also
Oatley, 2019).
It will become clear later in the book that we largely agree with many
of these characterizations of the disruptiveness of Trump’s foreign policy.
However, rather than focusing on individual aspects of Trump’s foreign
policy we will also provide something that is often lacking in the above
accounts. While discussions of what constitutes the (essential parts of)
LIO that is under attack and which aspects are worth saving have been
lively (Glaser, 2019; Ikenberry et al., 2018; Porter, 2020), a clear bench-
mark or a “historical norm” against which we are to assess Trump’s
foreign policy has seldomly been provided. This lack of clear criteria was
prone to confusion, with the media sometimes portraying LIO-shunning
Trump as having “isolationist instincts” (Schwirtz, 2018). But if isola-
tionism means that the US gives up on seeking to exercise global power
and having global interests, and just wanting to defend its own borders
(Braumoeller, 2010; see also Wertheim, 2020), then Trump’s policy—no
matter his instincts—was not isolationist (Hendrickson, 2019). Exercising
or seeking to exercise global power does not, as we shall see, neces-

sarily constitute a “globalist” foreign policy,1 and to make this distinction
legible, a clear definition of the historical benchmark is needed instead of
the more pliable concept of LIO.
In the last group we have scholars, predominately self-described Real-
ists who share the liberal internationalist interpretation of the “Trumpian
break” to some extent, but see it either positively or as reflecting longer-
term secular trends. Among the former there are the rare supporters
of Trump’s nationalist foreign policy (Anton, 2019; Schweller, 2018a,
2018b). Dueck, for example considers Trump’s upending of internation-
alist common sense laudable and sees it as pursuing a “forward-leaning
conservative American realism based upon regionally differentiated strate-
gies of pressure against authoritarian competitors” (Dueck, 2020, p. 6).
Dueck sees Trump as more of an effect of the fact that the “golden age of
liberal internationalism has ended some time ago” (ibid., p. 7) by which
he comes close to some other Realists such as Christopher Layne (2017),
who however are by no means as positively inclined towards Trump.
While Trump’s foreign policy may be its de facto undertaker, the demise
of the LIO or Pax Americana is an outcome of tendencies long foretold
(Acharya, 2018; Cohen, 2019; Glaser, 2019; Mearsheimer, 2018). In this
understanding too, Trump is merely a symptom and it is the “impersonal
forces of history - the relative decline of American power, and the emer-
gence of a risen China—that explain why the Pax Americana’s days are
numbered” (Layne, 2018, p. 90; see also Kitchen, 2020; Nye, 2019).
This brief recapitulation of the controversies emanating from attempts
at defining what has changed and what remained the same in foreign
policy under Trump attests to the difficulty of pinpointing continuity
and change in US grand strategy. In every change, however revolu-
tionary, we will always be able to find some continuities, references to
past conduct, or residues of bygone policies and institutional settlements.
In talking about continuity and change it is therefore paramount to have
a clear benchmark and a clear idea of what constitutes (significant) change
(Ashbee & Hurst, 2020; Restad, 2020). Without this benchmark and a
1 Interestingly, Posen (2018) has argued that while Trump’s policy does represent a
radical break with the past, it is not because it is no longer internationalist but because
it is no longer liberal. In Posen’s view Trump’s grand strategy—[which some doubt that
he has in the first place]—is still aimed at maintaining global hegemony but “illiberal
hegemony” (see also Hendrikse, 2018).
clear theorization of foreign policy-formation—especially in the politically

supercharged environment that was the Trump presidency we run into the
danger of cherry-picking different bits of empirical data and engaging in
“a dialogue of the deaf” (Hill & Hurst, 2020, p. 2; see also Jervis, 2020).
One of the key objectives of this study is to remedy this inconclusiveness.
In the next chapter, we therefore propose a historicized conception of
Open Door Globalism as an explicit benchmark. Our second key aim is
to explain the continuities and—more importantly—the changes that have
become manifest during the Trump administration in US pursuit of this
Open Door Globalism strategy. To that end we provide a Critical Political
Economy approach to theorizing changes and continuities in US grand
strategy. But let us first examine what explanations of US foreign policy
under Trump have been provided in the literature.
IR Explanations of Trump’s Foreign Policy?

It is probably due to the above-charted difficulty of even characterizing
Trump’s foreign policy, that there were few comprehensive attempts at
explaining US foreign policy during his presidency. Thus, asking “[w]here
is IR theory when you really need it”, Barnett argues that Trump
“escapes our theories” because he, seeming to “exist in a separate onto-
logical realm”, defies the assumption of “structure and rationality” that
are key to IR theory (Barnett, 2018, pp. 8–9). Still, there have been
numerous explanations focusing on specific aspects of Trump’s foreign
policy. Moreover, all of the above-discussed characterizations of Trumpian
grand strategy contain implicit theorizations. In what follows we revisit
some of these explanations, setting the ground for introducing our own
theoretical approach in the second half of this chapter.
Trump’s eccentricity and his above-mentioned bending of rationality
assumptions have given rise to many first image explanations of “Trump
the man”. It is noted that Trump “displays the symptoms of a sociopath”
(Barnett, 2018, p. 18; see also Brands, 2018) or the behavioural traits
of a toddler (Drezner, 2020), with personality analyses concluding that
“Trump will be predisposed to take risks and to bargain aggressively while
having no experience in foreign policy, lacking the cognitive complexity
to learn the subtleties of foreign policy, while being heavily reliant upon
advisers to whom he has no loyalty and little if any trust” (Cottam, 2021,
p. 131). Similarly, Rathbun suggested focusing on the individual agency
of Trump, who “is first and foremost a walking foreign policy “Id””, but
also expected structure to prevail as Trump would not be able “to put
together a foreign policy coalition that can sustain his populist foreign
policy” (Rathbun, 2018, p. 99; see also Drezner, 2019b; Walt, 2018a).
These psychologizing explanations implicitly disregard the importance of
his team of foreign policy-makers and—by focusing on Trump’s often
inconsistent and “irrational” policy-behaviour—overlook that, as we shall
argue below, there was more structure and logic (however misguided)
than meets the eye.
As we have seen, some authors try and make sense of this underlying
logic by placing Trump into the long tradition of Jacksonianism and the
populist surge. It was due to his peculiar political intuition that Trump
“sensed something that his political rivals failed to grasp: that the truly
surging force in American politics wasn’t Jeffersonian minimalism. It was
Jacksonian populist nationalism” (Mead, 2017, p. 3; see also Rolf, 2021).
Those authors that identify Pat Buchanan, whose populist, nationalist,
and paleoconservative anti-Bush Sr. campaign in 1992 failed to secure him
the Republican presidential nomination, as Trump’s ideological prede-
cessor also note, Trump’s ideas were not completely unprecedented
let alone somehow un-American (Clarke, 2021, p. 542). While fascinating
and rich, these accounts showing that Trump’s ideas have been existing
on the relative fringes for decades do not explain how someone holding
them managed to break into the mainstream. The issue is not whether
Trump’s Jacksonianism is ideologically original, but how the elements of
Buchanan’s pitch which “still had limited appeal in 1992” turned “out to
be prophetic” (Dueck, 2020, p. 91). In this vein, some critical scholars
have already argued that ideas informing Trump’s foreign policy should
be examined as part of far-right networks which helped normalize the
“complex, sometimes contradictory and incoherent, mix of far-right and
conservative ideological and political discourses” (Parmar & Furse, 2021,
p. 1; see also Kiely, 2021). We build on these contributions to argue
in subsequent chapters that Trump was both a symptom of and further
deepened the crisis of America’s (foreign) policy elite and its social power
structures.
As we have seen, authors stressing continuity tend to separate Trump’s
fiery rhetoric from actual policies, with the latter in their view remaining
much more stable. The explanations (and hopes) for the relative resilience
of the US grand strategy have been sought in either the moderating
effects of institutions or the agency of more mainstream policymakers
within Trump’s team. On the one hand, many liberals initially predicted
that a level of continuity would be assured by the power of institutions,

rules, and norms that make up the liberal world order (Deudney & Iken-
berry, 2018; Ikenberry, 2017; see also Birdsall & Sanders, 2020). On
the other, and in parallel to their Realist colleagues, Liberals also recog-
nized the existence and power of foreign policy elites that ensure the in
their eyes laudable elements of American grand strategy (Saunders, 2022).
Many hopes were therefore placed in the so-called “Axis of Adults”,
a handful of more traditionally oriented foreign policy-makers who
were among Trump’s initial prominent initial hires, to temper the new
President’s disrupting tendencies (Baker & Glasser, 2022, Chapter 4).
At the start of Trump’s administration, Liberals’ main concern was
whether the LIO will survive and to what extent the hostile US foreign
policy will be able to harm it. Less concerned with explaining Trump’s
foreign policy—which was treated as a historical mishap, even if a telling
one—they were planning for “the day after” when liberal order was to be
restored and re-established through US strategy adapted to new circum-
stances (Friedman Lissner & Rapp-Hooper, 2018; Stokes, 2018). It soon
became clear that these new circumstances present a challenge that goes
too deep to allow a simple return to the status quo ante. Trump thus
became “less an architect of the maelstrom than an avatar for forces
that would confound American policy for years or decades” (Lissner &
Rapp-Hooper, 2020, p. 13; see also Cooley & Nexon, 2020). These
deeper trends and structural transformations that Liberals referred to
range from increasing domestic political polarization that undermined US
policy abroad (Ashford & Thrall, 2018; Dueck, 2018; Schultz, 2017;
Trubowitz & Harris, 2019) to the geopolitical implications of rising
powers (Cooley & Nexon, 2020). What is important from our perspec-
tive is that by focusing on the deeper trends, strategizing for the day
after, and relegating Trump to the status of a “chaotic avatar” (Lissner &
Rapp-Hooper, 2020, p. 21) of the challenges to come, Liberals have
essentially absolved themselves from actually explaining Trump and, more
importantly, his foreign policy. Except for identifying some countervailing
factors in institutions and elites, their accounts typically struggled with
putting forward a positive theorization of Trump’s foreign policy. This
is not to dispute the reality of some of the shifts described by Liberals,
but rather than using them as guiding posts for the strategy to come, we
understand them as providing context for explaining US foreign policy
under Trump.
Realists, on the other hand, saw many more traces of liberal inter-
nationalism in Trump’s foreign policy than their liberal counterparts.
Having trouble explaining the persistence of pursuing liberal hegemony—
a strategy they have long considered irrational and contrary to US
interests (Porter, 2020), their solution has been to introduce contin-
gent factors outside the realist framework such as the strength of liberal
ideology (Mearsheimer, 2018) or, most recently, the strength of the
foreign policy establishment (Walt, 2018c). Porter, for example, argues
that the continuities in Trump’s foreign policy resulted from a “habit of
primacy” fostered and reproduced in and through a “cohesive US foreign
policy elite” (Porter, 2018, p. 14). In this account, shared by other Real-
ists, President Trump’s power to devise and execute grand strategy was
not only circumscribed and constrained by pre-existing policies and oper-
ating procedures (Dombrowski & Reich, 2017), but also by the fact that
“liberal hegemony has been a full-employment policy for the Beltway
foreign policy bureaucracy and the penumbra of think tanks, public policy
schools, lobbies, and corporations” (Walt, 2018c, p. 15). The latter,
also known—after Obama’s foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes—as “the
Blob”, is difficult to challenge, even for a populist outsider such as Trump.
Along similar lines, Drezner (2019b) concludes that while Trump has
weakened and delegitimized the foreign policy elite, he has not managed
to replace it with his own set of people and think tanks.
We fully agree that there is such a thing as a foreign policy elite—
a recognition that is indeed also at the heart of our own approach.
The Realist literature, however, seems stronger in deploring and crit-
icizing its existence and policy blunders than in analysing either the
structure of the Blob or how the continuous pursuit of these (from Realist
perspective irrational) policies are to be explained (Jervis, 2020; Karkour,
2021). While acknowledging the overall strong ideological consensus,
collapsing it all into “the Blob” overlooks important intra-elite differ-
ences and obscures how the foreign policy elite operates (Kurthen, 2021;
Löfflmann, 2020). Moreover, as we shall see in Chapter 5, in the case of
Trump, while he may not have succeeded with replacing the old foreign
policy elite, his administration was much less embedded within it, and
this “disconnect” helps us to explain the change in foreign policy strategy
that Porter and others do not take into account. Most importantly, we
argue for the need to understand the (social) sources of and explain both
the consensus as well as the conflicts within and possible changes of the
foreign policy(-making) elite, and ground these in a theoretical frame-

work that goes beyond simply assuming that people forming this elite just
happen to be there and reproduce themselves and their “habitual ideas”.
In the next part, we do that by proposing an elite-theoretical perspec-
tive to US foreign policy informed by Critical Political Economy. In
taking the latter as our starting point, our approach is not unique. For
example, in analysing the election of Trump and Brexit, Rosenberg and
Boyle (2019) provide a rich analysis of the global geopolitical context
and trace the “events of 2016” to “a unique world-historical conjunc-
ture: the early ‘primitive accumulation’ phase of capitalist development
in China intersected in real time with the much more advanced develop-
ment of capitalist countries that were themselves undergoing a process of
‘neoliberal’ restructuring and technological change” (Rosenberg & Boyle,
2019, p. 3). While we to a large degree share their analysis of the global
context, our theoretical framework adds to this more abstract structural
level the agency of elites who interpret, and ultimately act upon these
structural changes, which we propose a key element in the explanation of
the concrete foreign policy pursued. Located within the Critical Political
Economy tradition and more attentive to the actual policies of succes-
sive American administrations, Leoni (2021) defines the core feature of
US grand strategy as being the pursuit of American capitalist interests,
concluding his comparison of Obama and Trump by finding “strategic
continuity and tactical change” (Leoni, 2021, p. 196). The problem
with this functionalist definition is that, as long as the US remains capi-
talist, it cannot but find continuity and treats intra-elite disagreements as
ephemeral. Instead, we propose to analyse these intra-elite disagreements
in order to grasp how the positive content of the “capitalist interest” itself
is being redrawn, and the goals and means of foreign policy with it.
Structure and Agency in US Grand

Strategy: A Elite-Theoretical Perspective
Grounded in Critical Political Economy
Seeking to explain the transformation of US grand strategy that took place
under Trump, this study emphasizes the role of elites, but does so by
adopting a specific approach and analytical framework rooted in Critical
Political Economy as earlier elaborated by van Apeldoorn and De Graaff
(2016, pp. 16–30).2 Taking as its point of departure the “co-constitution

of production and power” (van Apeldoorn et al., 2010, p. 215)—Critical
Political Economy sees “relations and practices that make up contem-
porary geopolitics [as] internally related to the relations and practices
that constitute (global) capitalism” (van Apeldoorn & De Graaff, 2016,
p. 16). Underlying our approach are the following two core assump-
tions: (1) that the state only “acts” inasmuch as actual people do so,
and that in analysing and explaining foreign policy we therefore need to
analyse the foreign policy-making elite; and (2) that analysing this elite
and understanding its agency we need to examine the social structures in
which these actors are embedded, thus uncovering the social sources of US
foreign policy and grand strategy (see also van Apeldoorn & De Graaff,
2014). We thus relate the agency of the concrete foreign policy-makers to
social structure, as “state activity is always the activity of particular indi-
viduals acting within particular social contexts” (Wight, 2004, p. 279).
Analysing the interplay of structure and agency we view structure as
“referring to 1) the social position an agent occupies, that is, within a
set of social relations, and 2) the wider context in which she operates
and to which her strategic action may be oriented” (van Apeldoorn & de
Graaff, 2016, p. 19).
From this perspective we recognize how the state is related to (capi-
talist) society and how the US state has a “structurally determined
openness” (Jessop, 1990) to the corporate community and its interests.
Here our elite-theoretical perspective builds upon an American tradition
of so-called power structure research that has its roots in C. Wright Mills’
(1956) seminal work on what he identified as “the power elite”, situated
at the apex of American society and controlling large corporations, the
military, and the state. Later empirical research—mapping and analysing
the properties, continuities, and changes within these elite power struc-
tures and networks—documents how the corporate community, the chief
executives and directors of large (multinational) corporations, form a
key component of this power elite, embedded in and overlapping with
extensive elite networks of the owners of corporate wealth and the
people governing influential think tanks (Domhoff, 1967, 2009; Mintz,
2002; Schwartz, 1987). Indeed, a key property of the American “ruling
elite” and a crucial link between the corporate community and the
2 What follows is to large extent a strongly abbreviated version of the more elaborate
framework we outline in van Apeldoorn and De Graaff (2016).
policy-making elite, is what Domhoff (1967, 2009) referred to as the

policy-planning network—a dense conglomeration of think tanks, research
institutes, foundations and (business) advocacy groups that seek to set the
political agenda, develop and propagate key ideas, shape public and elite
opinion, and thus plan and shape policy-making in the US (see also Burris,
2008).
Further elaborating the mutual determination of structure and agency,
we identify several elements that we argue can be seen as in their inter-
actions explaining continuity and change in US grand strategy.3 We do
so by presenting an adapted version of what two of us (van Apeldoorn &
De Graaff, 2016) have earlier introduced as a “transformational model”
of grand strategy, represented here below in Fig. 2.1.
The model above is a stylized representation of a process in which a
team of foreign policy-makers at T1 sets out to reproduce or transform
the preceding grand strategy (at T0 ), thus potentially producing a new, or
simply continuing the old strategy at T1 . Explaining our model, we start
at the bottom of Fig. 2.1 by focusing on what we call the social posi-
tion of foreign policy-makers. While policy-makers can rarely be simply
seen as fully beholden to some external influence they are not operating
in a social vacuum either. We should thus seek to understand how their
agency is both constrained and enabled by the social (power) structures
in which they are embedded. To make sense of this nexus between struc-
ture and agency we argue that a good starting point is to analyse the way
and extent to which foreign policy-makers are embedded in social elite
networks. State officials act the way they do in part because of how their
ideas have been shaped by the social ties that make up what we concep-
tualize as their social position that explains their prior socialization into
certain worldviews. We further theorize that a key element in determining
the social position of foreign policy-makers is the extent and nature of
their links with what we identify as a dominant social force in American
society, that of a corporate power elite.4
Corporate elite power, we suggest, is in fact a “domestic” source of
American foreign policy often overlooked within the literature, and one
3 Underlying our theorization here is a particular understanding of the dialectical

interplay of structure and agency grounded in Realist Social Theory (Archer, 1995).
4 Corporate elite power here must be seen as ultimately representing, at a higher level
of abstraction, capitalist class power, and the corporate elite can be seen as representing a
sub-set of the capitalist class (Carroll, 2010; Mintz, 2002).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
like effect on all who have the time and patience to read what I have
here written.
Speech of Hon. John A. Logan,
On Self-Government in Louisiana, January 13 and 14, 1875.

The Senate having under consideration the resolution submitted
by Mr. Schurz on the 8th of January, directing the Committee of the
Judiciary to inquire what legislation is necessary to secure to the
people of the State of Louisiana their rights of Self-government
under the Constitution Mr. Logan said:
Mr. President: I believe it is considered the duty of a good sailor
to stand by his ship in the midst of a great storm. We have been told
in this Chamber that a great storm of indignation is sweeping over
this land, which will rend asunder and sink the old republican craft.
We have listened to denunciations of the President, of the
republicans in this Chamber, of the republican party as an
organization, their acts heretofore and their purposes in reference to
acts hereafter, of such a character as has seldom been listened to in
this or in any other legislative hall. Every fact on the side of the
republican party has been perverted, every falsehood on the part of
the opposition has been exaggerated, arguments have been made
here calculated to inflame and arouse a certain class of the people of
this country against the authorities of the Government, based not
upon truth but upon manufactured statements which were utterly
false. The republican party has been characterized as despotic, as
tyrannical, as oppressive. The course of the Administration and the
party toward the southern people has been denounced as of the most
tyrannical character by men who have received clemency at the
hands of this same party.
Now, sir, what is the cause of all this vain declamation? What is
the cause of all this studied denunciation? What is the reason for all
these accusations made against a party or an administration? I may
be mistaken, but, if I am not, this is the commencement of the
campaign of 1876. It has been thought necessary on the part of the
opposition Senators here to commence, if I may use a homely phrase,
a raid upon the republican party and upon this Administration, and
to base that upon false statements in reference to the conduct of
affairs in the State of Louisiana.
I propose in this debate, and I hope I shall not be too tedious,
though I may be somewhat so, to discuss the question that should be
presented to the American people. I propose to discuss that question
fairly, candidly, and truthfully. I propose to discuss it from a just,
honest, and legal standpoint. Sir, what is that question? There was a
resolution offered in this Chamber calling on the President to furnish
certain information. A second resolution was introduced, (whether
for the purpose of hanging on it an elaborate speech or not I am not
aware,) asking the Committee on the Judiciary to report at once
some legislation in reference to Louisiana. Without any facts
presented officially arguments have been made, the country has been
aroused, and some people have announced themselves in a manner
calculated to produce a very sore feeling against the course and
conduct of the party in power. I say this is done without the facts;
without any basis whatever; without any knowledge officially
communicated to them in reference to the conduct of any of the
parties in the State of Louisiana. In discussing this question we ought
to have a standpoint; we ought to have a beginning; some point from
which we may all reason and see whether or not any great outrage
has been perpetrated against the rights of the American people or
any portion of them.
I then propose to start at this point, that there is a government in
the State of Louisiana. Whether that government is a government of
right or not is not the question. Is there a government in that State
against which treason, insurrection, or rebellion, may be committed?
Is there such a government in the State of Louisiana as should
require the maintenance of peace and order among the citizens of
that State? Is there such a government in the State of Louisiana as
requires the exercise of Executive authority for the purpose of
preserving peace and order within its borders? I ask any Senator on
this floor to-day if he can stand up here as a lawyer, as a Senator, as
an honest man, and deny the fact that a government does exist?
Whether he calls it a government de jure or a government de facto, it
is immaterial. It is such an organization as involves the liberties and
the protection of the rights of the people of that State. It will not do
for Senators to talk about the election of 1872. The election of 1872
has no more to do with this “military usurpation” that you speak of
to-day than an election of a hundred years ago. It is not a question as
to whether this man or that was elected. The question is, is there
such a government there as can be overturned, and has there been an
attempt to overturn it? If so, then what is required to preserve its
status or preserve the peace and order of the people?
But the other day when I asked the question of a Senator on the
other side, who was discussing this question, whether or not he
indorsed the Penn rebellion, he answered me in a playful manner
that excited the mirth of people who did not understand the
question, by saying that I had decided that there was no election, and
that therefore there was no government to overturn. Now I ask
Senators, I ask men of common understanding if that is the way to
treat a question of this kind; when asked whether insurrection
against a government recognized is not an insurrection and whether
he endorses it, he says there is no government to overturn. If there is
no government to overturn, why do you make this noise and
confusion about a Legislature there? If there is no State government,
there is no State Legislature. But I will not answer in that manner. I
will not avoid the issue; I will not evade the question. I answer there
is a Legislature, as there is a State government, recognized by the
President, recognized by the Legislature, recognized by the courts,
recognized by one branch of Congress, and recognized by the
majority of the citizens by their recognition of the laws of the State;
and it will not do to undertake to avoid questions in this manner.
Let us see, then, starting from that standpoint, what the position of
Louisiana is now, and what it has been. On the 14th day of
September last a man by the name of Penn, as to whom we have
official information this morning, with some seven or ten thousand
white-leaguers made war against that government, overturned it,
dispersed it, drove the governor from the executive chamber, and he
had to take refuge under the jurisdiction of the Government of the
United States, on the soil occupied by the United States custom-
house, where the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States
Government extends, for the purpose of protecting his own life.
This then was a revolution; this then was a rebellion; this then was
treason against the State, for which these men should have been
arrested, tried, and punished. Let gentlemen dodge the question as
they may; it may be well for some men there who engaged in this
treasonable act against the government that they had Mr. Kellogg for
governor. It might not have been so well for them, perhaps, had there
been some other man in his place. I tell the Senator from Maryland if
any crowd of armed men should undertake to disperse the
government of the State of Illinois, drive its governor from the
executive chamber, enter into his private drawers, take his private
letters, and publish them, and act as those men did, some of them
would pay the penalty either in the penitentiary or by dancing at the
end of a rope.
But when this rebellion was going on against that State, these
gentlemen say it was a State affair; the Government of the United
States has nothing to do with it! That is the old-fashioned secession
doctrine again. The government of the United States has nothing to
do with it! This national government is made up of States, and each
State is a part of the Government, each is a part of its life, of its body.
It takes them all to make up the whole; and treason against any part
of it is treason against the whole of it, and it became the duty of the
President to put it down, as he did do; and, in putting down that
treason against the Kellogg government, the whole country almost
responded favorably to his action.
But our friend from Maryland, not in his seat now, [Mr.
Hamilton] said that that was part of the cause of the elections going
as they did. In other words, my friend from Maryland undertook in a
roundabout way to endorse the Penn rebellion, and claim that people
of the country did the same thing against the government of the State
of Louisiana, and on this floor since this discussion has been going
on, not one Senator on that side of the chamber has lisped one word
against the rebellion against the government of the State of
Louisiana, and all who have spoken of it have passed it by in silence
so as to indicate clearly that they endorse it, and I believe they do.
Then, going further, the President issued his proclamation
requiring those insurgents to lay down their arms and to resume
their peaceful pursuits. This morning we have heard read at the
clerk’s desk that these men have not yet complied fully with that
proclamation. Their rebellious organization continued up to the time
of the election and at the election. When the election took place, we
are told by some of these Senators that the election was a peaceable,
and a fair election, that a majority of democrats were elected. That is
the question we propose to discuss as well as we are able to do it.
They tell us that there was no intimidation resorted to by any one in
the State of Louisiana. I dislike very much to follow out these
statements that are not true and attempt to controvert them because
it does seem to me that we ought to act fairly and candidly in this
Chamber and discuss questions without trying to pervert the issue or
the facts in connection with it.
Now, I state it as a fact, and I appeal to the Senator from Louisiana
to say whether or not I state truly, that on the night before the
election in Louisiana notices were posted all over that country on the
doors of the colored republicans and the white republicans, too, of a
character giving them to understand that if they voted their lives
would be in danger; and here is one of the notices posted all over that
country:
2×6
This “2 × 6” was to show the length and width of the grave they
would have. Not only that, but the negroes that they could impose
upon and get to vote the democratic ticket received, after they had
voted, a card of safety; and here is that card issued to the colored
people whom they had induced to vote the democratic ticket, so that
they might present it if any white-leaguers should undertake to
plunder or murder them:
New Orleans, Nov. 28, 1874.
This is to certify that Charles Durassa, a barber by occupation, is a

Member of the 1st Ward Colored Democratic Club, and that at the late
election he voted for and worked in the interests of the Democratic
Candidates.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER,
President 1st Ward Col’d Democratic Club.
NICK HOPE, Secretary.
Rooms Democratic Parish Committee.
New Orleans, Nov. 28, 1874.
The undersigned, Special Committee, appointed on behalf of the Parish

Committee, approve of the above Certificate.
ED. FLOOD, Chairman.

PAUL WATERMAN.
H. J. RIVET.
Attest:
J. H. HARDY, Ass’t Sec. Parish Committee.
These were the certificates given to negroes who voted the

democratic ticket, that they might present them to save their lives
when attacked by the men commonly known as Ku-Klux or white-
leaguers in that country; and we are told that there is no intimidation
in the State of Louisiana!
Our friend from Georgia [Mr. Gordon] has been very profuse in
his declamation as to the civility and good order and good bearing of
the people of Louisiana and the other Southern States. But, sir, this
intimidation continued up to the election. After the election, it was
necessary for the governor of that State to proceed in some manner
best calculated to preserve the peace and order of the country.
Now, Mr. President, I want to ask candid, honest, fair-minded

men, after reading the report of General Sheridan showing the
murder, not for gain, not for plunder, but for political opinions in the
last few years of thirty-five hundred persons in the State of
Louisiana, all of them republicans, not one of them a democrat—I
want to ask if they can stand here before this country and defend the
democratic party of Louisiana? I put this question to them for they
have been here for days crying against the wrongs upon the
democracy of Louisiana. I want any one of them to tell me if he is
prepared to defend the democracy of Louisiana. What is your
democracy of Louisiana? You are excited, your extreme wrath is
aroused at General Sheridan because he called your White Leagues
down there “banditti.” I ask you if the murder of thirty-five hundred
men in a short time for political purposes by a band of men banded
together for the purpose of murder does not make them banditti,
what it does make them? Does it make them democrats? It certainly
does not make them republicans. Does it make them honest men? It
certainly does not. Does it make them law-abiding men? It certainly
does not. Does it make them peaceable citizens? It certainly does not.
But what does it make them? A band of men banded together and
perpetrating murder in their own State? Webster says a bandit is “a
lawless or desperate fellow; a robber; a brigand,” and “banditti” are
men banded together for plunder and murder; and what are your
White Leagues banded together for if the result proves that they are
banded together for murder for political purposes?
O, what a crime it was in Sheridan to say that these men were
banditti! He is a wretch. From the papers he ought to be hanged to a
lamp-post; from the Senators he is not fit to breathe the free air of
heaven or of this free Republic; but your murderers of thirty-five
hundred people for political offenses are fit to breathe the air of this
country and are defended on this floor to-day, and they are defended
here by the democratic party, and you cannot avoid or escape the
proposition. You have denounced republicans for trying to keep the
peace in Louisiana; you have denounced the Administration for
trying to suppress bloodshed in Louisiana; you have denounced all
for the same purpose; but not one word has fallen from the lips of a
solitary democratic Senator denouncing these wholesale murders in
Louisiana. You have said, “I am sorry these things are done,” but you
have defended the White Leagues; you have defended Penn; you
have defended rebellion; and you stand here to-day the apologists of
murder, of rebellion, and of treason in that State.
I want to ask the judgment of an honest country, I want to ask the
judgment of the moral sentiments of the law-abiding people of this
grand and glorious Republic to tell me whether men shall murder by
the score, whether men shall trample the law under foot, whether
men shall force judges to resign, whether men shall force prosecuting
attorneys to resign, whether men shall take five officers of a State out
and hang or shoot them if they attempt to exercise the functions of
their office, whether men shall terrify the voters and office-holders of
a State, whether men shall undertake in violation of law to organize a
Legislature for revolutionary purposes, for the purpose of putting a
governor in possession and taking possession of the State and then
ask the democracy to stand by them—I appeal to the honest
judgment of the people of this land and ask them to respond whether
this was not an excusable case when this man used the Army to
protect the life of that State and to preserve the peace of that people?
Sir, the man who will not use all the means in his power to preserve
the nationality, the integrity of this Government, the integrity of a
State or the peace and happiness of a people, is not fit to govern, he
is not fit to hold position in this or any other civilized age.
Does liberty mean wholesale slaughter? Does republican
government mean tyranny and oppression of its citizens? Does an
intelligent and enlightened age of civilization mean murder and
pillage, bloodshed at the hands of Ku-Klux or White Leagues or
anybody else, and if any one attempts to put it down, attempts to
reorganize and produce order where chaos and confusion have
reigned, they are to be denounced as tyrants, as oppressors, and as
acting against republican institutions? I say then the happy days of
this Republic are gone. When we fail to see that republicanism
means nothing, that liberty means nothing but the unrestrained
license of the mobs to do as they please, then republican government
is a failure. Liberty of the citizen means the right to exercise such
rights as are prescribed within the limits of the law so that he does
not in the exercise of these rights infringe the rights of other citizens.
But the definition is not well made by our friends on the opposite
side of this Chamber. Their idea of liberty is license; it is not liberty,
but it is license. License to do what? License to violate law, to
trample constitutions under foot, to take life, to take property, to use
the bludgeon and the gun or anything else for the purpose of giving
themselves power. What statesman ever heard of that as a definition
of liberty? What man in a civilized age has ever heard of liberty being
the unrestrained license of the people to do as they please without
any restraint of law or of authority? No man, no not one until we
found the democratic party, would advocate this proposition and
indorse and encourage this kind of license in a free country.
Mr. President, I have perhaps said more on this question of
Louisiana than might have been well for me to say on account of my
strength, but what I have said about it I have said because I honestly
believed it. What I have said in reference to it comes from an honest
conviction in my mind and in my heart of what has been done to
suppress violence and wrong. But I have a few remarks in conclusion
to submit now to my friends on the other side, in answer to what they
have said not by way of argument but by way of accusation. You say
to us—I had it repeated to me this morning in private conversation
—“Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace.”
Ah, I heard it said on this floor once “Withdraw your troops from
Louisiana and your State government will not last a minute.” I heard
that said from the opposite side of the Chamber, and now you say
“Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace.”
Mr. President, I dislike to refer to things that are past and gone; I
dislike to have my mind called back to things of the past; but I well
remember the voice in this Chamber once that rang out and was
heard throughout this land, “Withdraw your troops from Fort
Sumter if you want peace.” I heard that said. Now it is “Withdraw
your troops from Louisiana if you want peace.” Yes, I say, withdraw
your troops from Louisiana if you want a revolution, and that is what
is meant. But, sir, we are told, and doubtless it is believed by the
Senators who tell us so, who denounce the republican party, that it is
tyrannical, oppressive, and outrageous. They have argued themselves
into the idea that they are patriots, pure and undefiled. They have
argued themselves into the idea that the democratic party never did
any wrong. They have been out of power so long that they have
convinced themselves that if they only had control of this country for
a short time, what a glorious country they would make it. They had
control for nearly forty long years, and while they were the agents of
this country—I appeal to history to bear me out—they made the
Government a bankrupt, with rebellion and treason in the land, and
were then sympathizing with it wherever it existed. That is the
condition in which they left the country when they had it in their
possession and within their control. But they say the republican
party is a tyrant; that it is oppressive. As I have said, I wish to make a
few suggestions to my friends in answer to this accusation—
oppressive to whom? They say to the South, that the republican party
has tyrannized over the South. Let me ask you how has it tyrannized
over the South? Without speaking of our troubles and trials through
which we passed, I will say this: at the end of a rebellion that
scourged this land, that drenched it with blood, that devastated a
portion of it, left us in debt and almost bankrupt, what did the
republican party do? Instead of leaving these our friends and citizens
to-day in a territorial condition where we might exercise jurisdiction
over them for the next coming twenty years, where we might have
deprived them of the rights of members on this floor, what did we
do? We reorganized them into States, admitted them back into the
Union, and through the clemency of the republican party we
admitted representatives on this floor who had thundered against
the gates of liberty for four bloody years. Is that the tyranny and
oppression of which you complain at the hands of the republican
party? Is that a part of our oppression against you southern people?
Let us go a little further. When the armed democracy, for that is
what they were, laid down their arms in the Southern States, after
disputing the right of freedom and liberty in this land for four years,
how did the republican party show itself in its acts of tyranny and
oppression toward you? You appealed to them for clemency. Did you
get it? Not a man was punished for his treason. Not a man ever
knocked at the doors of a republican Congress for a pardon who did
not get it. Not a man ever petitioned the generosity of the republican
party to be excused for his crimes who was not excused. Was that
oppression upon the part of the republicans in this land? Is that a
part of the oppression of which you accuse us?
Let us look a little further. We find to-day twenty-seven
democratic Representatives in the other branch of Congress who
took arms in their hands and tried to destroy this Government
holding commissions there by the clemency of the republican party.
We find in this Chamber by the clemency of the republican party
three Senators who held such commissions. Is that tyranny; is that
oppression; is that the outrage of this republican party on you
southern people? Sir, when Jeff Davis, the head of the great
rebellion, who roams the land free as air, North, South, East, and
West, makes democratic speeches wherever invited, and the vice-
president of the southern rebellion holds his seat in the other House
of Congress, are we to be told that we are tyrants, and oppressing the
southern people? These things may sound a little harsh, but it is time
to tell the truth in this country. The time has come to talk facts. The
time has come when cowards should hide, and honest men should
come to the front and tell you plain, honest truths. You of the South
talk to us about oppressing you. You drenched your land in blood,
caused weeping throughout this vast domain, covered the land in
weeds of mourning both North and South, widowed thousands and
orphaned many, made the pension-roll as long as an army-list, made
the debt that grinds the poor of this land—for all these things you
have been pardoned, and yet you talk to us about oppression. So
much for the oppression of the republican party of your patriotic
souls and selves. Next comes the President of the United States. He is
a tyrant, too. He is an oppressor still, in conjunction with the
republican party. Oppressor of what? Who has he oppressed of your
Southern people, and when, and where? When your Ku-Klux,
banded together for murder and plunder in the Southern States,
were convicted by their own confession, your own representatives
pleaded to the President and said, “Give them pardon, and it will
reconcile many of the southern people.” The President pardoned
them; pardoned them of their murder, of their plunder, of their
piracy on land; and for this I suppose he is a tyrant.
More than that, sir, this tyrant in the White House has done more
for you southern people than you ought to have asked him to do. He
has had confidence in you until you betrayed that confidence. He has
not only pardoned the offences of the South, pardoned the criminals
of the democratic party, but he has placed in high official position in
this Union some of the leading men who fought in the rebellion. He
has put in his Cabinet one of your men; he has made governors of
Territories of some of your leading men who fought in the rebellion;
he has sent on foreign missions abroad some of your men who
warred against this country; he has placed others in the
Departments; and has tried to reconcile you in every way on earth,
by appealing to your people, by recognizing them and forgiving them
for their offenses, and for these acts of generosity, for these acts of
kindness, he is arraigned to-day as a Cæsar, as a tyrant, as an
oppressor.
Such kindness in return as the President has received from these
people will mark itself in the history of generosity. O, but say they,
Grant wants to oppress the White Leagues in Louisiana; therefore he
is an oppressor. Yes, Mr. President, Grant does desire that these men
should quit their everyday chivalric sports of gunning upon negroes
and republicans. He asks kindly that you stop it. He says to you,
“That is all I want you to do;” and you say that you are desirous that
they shall quit it. You have but to say it and they will quit it. It is
because you have never said it that they have not quit it. It is in the
power of the democratic party to-day but to speak in tones of
majesty, of honor, and justice in favor of human life, and your Ku-
Klux and murderers will stop. But you do not do it; and that is the
reason they do not stop. In States where it has been done they have
stopped. But it will not do to oppress those people; it will not do to
make them submit and subject them to the law; it will not do to stop
these gentlemen in their daily sports and in their lively recreations.
They are White Leagues; they are banded together as gentlemen;
they are of southern blood; they are of old southern stock; they are
the chivalry of days gone by; they are knights of the bloody shield;
and the shield must not be taken from them. Sirs, their shield will be
taken from them; this country will be aroused to its danger; this
country will be aroused to do justice to its citizens; and when it does,
the perpetrators of crime may fear and tremble. Tyranny and
oppression! A people who without one word of opposition allows
men who have been the enemies of a government to come into these
legislative Halls and make laws for that government to be told that
they are oppressors is a monstrosity in declamation and assertion.
Who ever heard of such a thing before? Who ever believed that such
men could make such charges? Yet we are tyrants!
Mr. President, the reading of the title of that bill from the House
only reminds me of more acts of tyranny and oppression of the
republican party, and there is a continuation of the same great
offenses constantly going on in this Chamber. But some may say “It
is strange to see Logan defending the President of the United States.”
It is not strange to me. I can disagree with the President when I think
he is wrong; and I do not blame him for disagreeing with me; but
when these attacks are made, coming from where they do, I am ready
to stand from the rising sun in the morning to the setting sun in the
evening to defend every act of his in connection with this matter
before us.
I may have disagreed with President Grant in many things; but I
was calling attention to the men who have been accusing him here,
on this floor, on the stump, and in the other House; the kind of men
who do it, the manner of its doing, the sharpness of the shafts that
are sent at him, the poisonous barbs that they bear with them, and
from these men who, at his hands, have received more clemency than
any men ever received at the hands of any President or any man who
governed a country. Why, sir, I will appeal to the soldiers of the rebel
army to testify in behalf of what I say in defense of President Grant—
the honorable men who fought against the country, if there was
honor in doing it. What will be their testimony? It will be that he
captured your armed democracy of the South, he treated them
kindly, turned them loose, with their horses, with their wagons, with
their provisions; treated them as men, and not as pirates. Grant built
no prison-pens for the southern soldiers; Grant provided no
starvation for southern men; Grant provided no “dead-lines” upon
which to shoot southern soldiers if they crossed them; Grant
provided no outrageous punishment against these people that now
call him a tyrant. Generous to a fault in all his actions toward the
men who were fighting his country and destroying the constitution,
that man to-day is denounced as a very Cæsar!
Sherman has not been denounced, but the only reason is that he
was not one of the actors in this transaction; but I want now to say to
my friends on the other side, especially to my friend from Delaware,
who repeated his bitter denunciation against Sheridan yesterday—
and I say this in all kindness, because I am speaking what future
history will bear me out in—when Sheridan and Grant and Sherman,
and others like them, are forgotten in this country, you will have no
country. When the democratic party is rotten for centuries in its
grave, the life, the course, the conduct of these men will live as bright
as the noonday sun in the heart of every patriot of a republic like the
American Union. Sirs, you may talk about tyranny, you may talk
about oppression, you may denounce these men; their glory may
fade into the darkness of night; but that darkness will be a brilliant
light compared with the darkness of the democratic party. Their
pathway is illuminated by glory; yours by dark deeds against the
Government. That is a difference which the country will bear witness
to in future history when speaking of this country and the actors on
its stage.
Now, Mr. President, I have a word to say about our duty. A great
many people are asking, what shall we do? Plain and simple in my
judgment is the proposition. I say to republicans, do not be scared.
No man is ever hurt by doing an honest act and performing a
patriotic duty. If we are to have a war of words outside or inside, let
us have them in truth and soberness, but in earnest. What then is our
duty? I did not believe that in 1872 there were official data upon
which we could decide who was elected governor of Louisiana. But
this is not the point of my argument. It is that the President has
recognized Kellogg as governor of that State, and he has acted for
two years. The Legislature of the State has recognized him; the
supreme court of the State has recognized him; one branch of
Congress has recognized him. The duty is plain, and that is for this,
the other branch of Congress, to do it, and that settles the question.
Then, when it does it, your duty is plain and simple, and as the
President has told you, he will perform his without fear, favor, or
affection. Recognize the government that revolution has been against
and intended to overthrow, and leave the President to his duty, and
he will do it. That is what to do.
Sir, we have been told that this old craft is rapidly going to pieces;
that the angry waves of dissension in the land are lashing against her
sides. We are told that she is sinking, sinking, sinking to the bottom
of the political ocean. Is that true? Is it true that this gallant old
party, that this gallant old ship that has sailed through troubled seas
before is going to be stranded now upon the rock of fury that has
been set up by a clamor in this Chamber and a few newspapers in the
country? Is it true that the party that saved this country in all its
great crises, in all its great trials, is sinking to-day on account of its
fear and trembling before an inferior enemy? I hope not. I
remember, sir, once I was told that the old republican ship was gone;
but when I steadied myself on the shores bounding the political
ocean of strife and commotion, I looked afar off and there I could see
a vessel bounding the boisterous billows with white sails unfurled,
marked on her sides “Freighted with the hopes of mankind,” while
the great Mariner above, as her helmsman, steered her, navigated
her to a haven of rest, of peace, and of safety. You have but to look
again upon that broad ocean of political commotion to-day, and the
time will soon come when the same old craft, provided with the same
cargo, will be seen, flying the same flag, passing through these
tempestuous waves, anchoring herself at the shores of honesty and
justice, and there she will lie undisturbed by strife and tumult, again
in peace and safety. [Manifestations of applause in the galleries.]
Speech of Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine,
On the False Issue raised by the Democratic Party, Delivered in the

Senate of the United States, Monday, April 14, 1879.
The Senate having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1,)
making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1880, and for other purposes—
Mr. Blaine said:
Mr. President: The existing section of the Revised Statutes
numbered 2002 reads thus:
No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in the civil,
military, or naval service of the United States, shall order, bring,
keep or have under his authority or control, any troops or armed
men at the place where any general or special election is held in any
State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed enemies of the United
States, or to keep the peace at the polls.
The object of the proposed section, which has just been read at the
Clerk’s desk, is to get rid of the eight closing words, namely, “or to
keep the peace at the polls,” and therefore the mode of legislation
proposed in the Army bill now before the Senate is an unusual mode;
it is an extraordinary mode. If you want to take off a single sentence
at the end of a section in the Revised Statutes the ordinary way is to
strike off those words, but the mode chosen in this bill is to repeat
and re-enact the whole section leaving those few words out. While I
do not wish to be needlessly suspicious on a small point I am quite
persuaded that this did not happen by accident but that it came by
design. If I may so speak it came of cunning, the intent being to
create the impression that whereas the republicans in the
administration of the General Government had been using troops
right and left, hither and thither, in every direction, as soon as the
democrats got power they enacted this section. I can imagine
democratic candidates for Congress all over the country reading this
section to gaping and listening audiences as one of the first
offsprings of democratic reform, whereas every word of it, every
syllable of it, from its first to its last, is the enactment of a republican
Congress.
I repeat that this unusual form presents a dishonest issue, whether
so intended or not. It presents the issue that as soon as the
democrats got possession of the Federal Government they proceeded
to enact the clause which is thus expressed. The law was passed by a
republican Congress in 1865. There were forty-six Senators sitting in
this Chamber at that time, of whom only ten or at most eleven were
democrats. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly
republican. We were in the midst of a war. The republican
administration had a million or possibly twelve hundred thousand
bayonets at its command. Thus circumstanced and thus surrounded,
with the amplest possible power to interfere with elections had they
so designed, with soldiers in every hamlet and county of the United
States, the republican party themselves placed that provision on the
statute book, and Abraham Lincoln, their President, signed it.
I beg you to observe, Mr. President, that this is the first instance in
the legislation of the United States in which any restrictive clause
whatever was put upon the statute book in regard to the use of troops
at the polls. The republican party did it with the Senate and the
House in their control. Abraham Lincoln signed it when he was
Commander-in-Chief of an army larger than ever Napoleon
Bonaparte had at his command. So much by way of correcting an
ingenious and studied attempt at misrepresentation.
The alleged object is to strike out the few words that authorize the
use of troops to keep peace at the polls. This country has been
alarmed, I rather think indeed amused, at the great effort made to
create a widespread impression that the republican party relies for
its popular strength upon the use of the bayonet. This democratic
Congress has attempted to give a bad name to this country
throughout the civilized world, and to give it on a false issue. They
have raised an issue that has no foundation in fact—that is false in
whole and detail, false in the charge, false in all the specifications.
That impression sought to be created, as I say, not only throughout
the North American continent but in Europe to-day, is that elections
are attempted in this country to be controlled by the bayonet.
I denounce it here as a false issue. I am not at liberty to say that
any gentleman making this issue knows it to be false; I hope he does
not; but I am going to prove to him that it is false, and that there is
not a solitary inch of solid earth on which to rest the foot of any man
who makes that issue. I have in my hand an official transcript of the
location and the number of all the troops of the United States east of
Omaha. By “east of Omaha,” I mean all the United States east of the
Mississippi river and that belt of States that border the Mississippi
river on the west, including forty-one million at least out of the forty-
five million of people that this country is supposed to contain to-day.
In that magnificent area, I will not pretend to state its extent, but
with forty-one million people, how many troops of the United States
are there to-day? Would any Senator on the opposite side like to
guess, or would he like to state how many men with muskets in their
hands there are in the vast area I have named? There are two
thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven! And not one more.
From the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the lakes, and
down the great chain of lakes, and down the Saint Lawrence and
down the valley of the Saint John and down the St. Croix striking the
Atlantic Ocean and following it down to Key West, around the Gulf,
up to the mouth of the Mississippi again, a frontier of eight thousand
miles either bordering on the ocean or upon foreign territory is
guarded by these troops. Within this domain forty-five fortifications
are manned and eleven arsenals protected. There are sixty troops to
every million of people. In the South I have the entire number in
each State, and will give it.
And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to
intimidate, overrun, oppress and destroy the liberties of fifteen
million people! In the Southern States there are twelve hundred and
three counties. If you distribute the soldiers there is not quite one for
each county; and when I give the counties I give them from the
census of 1870. If you distribute them territorially there is one for
every seven hundred square miles of territory, so that if you make a
territorial distribution, I would remind the honorable Senator from
Delaware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota for his State would
be three—“one ragged sergeant and two abreast,” as the old song has
it. [Laughter.] That is the force ready to destroy the liberties of
Delaware!
Mr. President, it was said, as the old maxim has it, that the
soothsayers of Rome could not look each other in the face without
smiling. There are not two democratic Senators on this floor who can
go into the cloak-room and look each other in the face without
smiling at this talk, or, more appropriately, I should say without
blushing—the whole thing is such a prodigious and absolute farce,
such a miserably manufactured false issue, such a pretense without
the slightest foundation in the world, and talked about most and
denounced the loudest in States that have not and have not had a
single Federal soldier. In New England we have three hundred and
eighty soldiers. Throughout the South it does not run quite seventy
to the million people. In New England we have absolutely one
hundred and twenty soldiers to the million. New England is far more
overrun to-day by the Federal soldier, immensely more, than the
whole South is. I never heard anybody complain about it in New
England, or express any great fear of his liberties being endangered
by the presence of a handful of troops.
As I have said, the tendency of this talk is to give us a bad name in
Europe. Republican institutions are looked upon there with jealousy.
Every misrepresentation, every slander is taken up and exaggerated
and talked about to our discredit, and the democratic party of the
country to-day stand indicted, and I here indict them, for public
slander of their country, creating the impression in the civilized
world that we are governed by a ruthless military despotism. I
wonder how amazing it would be to any man in Europe, familiar as
Europeans are with great armies, if he were told that over a territory
larger than France and Spain and Portugal and Great Britain and
Holland and Belgium and the German Empire all combined, there
were but eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers! That is all this
democratic howl, this mad cry, this false issue, this absurd talk is
based on—the presence of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers on
eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, not
double the number of the democratic police in the city of Baltimore,
not a third of the police in the city of New York, not double the
democratic police in the city of New Orleans. I repeat, the number

Trump and The Remaking of American Grand Strategy Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Trump and The Remaking of American Grand Strategy Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Trump and the Remaking of American

Grand Strategy Bastiaan Van

ISBN 978-3-031-34691-0 ISBN 978-3-031-34692-7 (eBook)

Cover credit: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

We would like to express our gratitude to Victoria Crocker and Alexandra

The Open Door Under G.W. Bush 43

6 The Unmaking of Open Door Globalism and the Shift

Appendix: Selection of Trump’s Foreign Policy-Makers

Fig. 2.1 Structure and agency in the transformation of US grand

Fig. 5.8 Policy-planning network Obama (Source Adapted

Keywords Donald Trump · US foreign policy · Grand strategy · Open

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

history that a former president has been indicted on criminal charges.

US foreign policy by focusing on the agency of Trump’s foreign policy-

Theorizing Trump: A Critical Political

Abstract Academic literature on the Trump phenomenon has sought to

Keywords US foreign policy · Donald Trump · Grand strategy ·

The Trump phenomenon—a presidency that broke with convention and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 7

the object of endless journalistic commentary and punditry but has

or more particularly, that the agency of the actual foreign policy-making

IR Theory at a Loss? The Puzzle

IR Debates on the Nature of Trump’s Foreign Policy

stylized and sometimes overlapping (or evolving) positions, each empha-

and was not just a result of Trump’s half-heartedness or lack of trying to

or seeking to exercise global power does not, as we shall see, neces-

clear theorization of foreign policy-formation—especially in the politically

IR Explanations of Trump’s Foreign Policy?

that a level of continuity would be assured by the power of institutions,

foreign policy(-making) elite, and ground these in a theoretical frame-

Structure and Agency in US Grand

(2016, pp. 16–30).2 Taking as its point of departure the “co-constitution

policy-making elite, is what Domhoff (1967, 2009) referred to as the

3 Underlying our theorization here is a particular understanding of the dialectical

On Self-Government in Louisiana, January 13 and 14, 1875.

This is to certify that Charles Durassa, a barber by occupation, is a

NICK HOPE, Secretary.

Rooms Democratic Parish Committee.

New Orleans, Nov. 28, 1874.

The undersigned, Special Committee, appointed on behalf of the Parish

ED. FLOOD, Chairman.

These were the certificates given to negroes who voted the

Now, Mr. President, I want to ask candid, honest, fair-minded

On the False Issue raised by the Democratic Party, Delivered in the

You might also like