Trump’s foreign policy fits the 19th century USA

US President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House on Monday. The crucial question is: what comes next? To those who follow U.S. foreign policy, it seems that the only thing predictable about Trump is that he is unpredictable, even a little crazy.

That may well be true, but perhaps the best way to predict Trump’s future actions is to recognize that he is a step backwards. Or, more accurately, his foreign policy views harken back to a bygone era, an era that he seems to want to make relevant, even great, again. In other words, to understand Trump, one must recognize that he wants to bring a 19th century foreign policy into the 21st century.

I’m not the only one who notices that Trump favors policies more in line with those of presidents from over a century ago. He expressed his admiration for William McKinley, who served as president from 1897 to 1901. During his first term, some compared Trump to Andrew Jackson, the US president who was known not only as an outsider but also for his vigorous policies of ethnic cleansing of Indians. Trump seemed to accept this comparison, as Jackson’s portrait hung in the Oval Office. Even before his election in 2016, observers pointed out that Trump’s worldview seemed more at home in the late 19th or early 20th century.