For the last 30-plus years, the American foreign policy establishment has been dominated by what has come to be known as the “Washington Consensus” – the bipartisan belief in a globalized liberal economic system underwritten by an American security architecture. Within this consensus, the major schools of thoughts in international relations, realists and liberals/idealists, formed the opposing poles of the possible and the aspirational. Today, we see a generational debate in American grand strategy unfolding in real time through the second Trump administration and its many critics: the Consensus vs. the Iconoclasts.

Following the Great Recession, the Washington Consensus came under increasing scrutiny from both the left and right in American politics, perhaps because Americans tend be more hostile to internationalism when the home front is in crisis. Whether it was the Marx-inspired Occupy Wall Street movement or the conservative Tea Partiers coming to terms with the Freedom Agenda’s failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, outside the Beltway, the Washington Consensus was losing support. The result was the election of Donald Trump in what Walter Russell Mead termed “The Jacksonian Revolt.” The election of Donald Trump, and his subsequent dominance of the Republican Party, shattered the illusion that the rest of America shared the Washington Consensus. With Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the stage was set for institutionalizing the electoral realignment of American politics, which inevitably meant challenging the Washington Consensus. Given that context, it’s somewhat surprising that more hasn’t been said about what would replace the Consensus as the dominant American grand strategy.

So what exactly is the Trump administration’s grand strategy? How is it different from the Washington Consensus? Or, to use Mead’s schools of thought in American foreign policy: How does Trump’s team of Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, and Hamiltonian rivals differ from the Hamiltonian-Wilsonian Washington Consensus? Is Trump even coherent enough to inquire about his broader approach to foreign policy?

There is a discernible logic to the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, but recognizing it requires setting aside the Washington Consensus. In both its iconoclastic and populist instincts, the Trump administration’s foundational assumptions of how the world works differ markedly from the key beliefs that undergird the Washington Consensus in both its realist and idealist variations. In general, the Iconoclastic view seems to have rejected the major models of power distribution in the international system.

1. The world is certainly no longer unipolar, which undermines critical assumptions of American primacists of neoconservative and neoliberal stripes.
2. It’s not bipolar, much to the chagrin of restrainers who want the assumed stability of a Cold War duopoly on power and idealists who want a clear adversary for democracy to oppose.
3. It’s not unipolar, it’s not bipolar, so that means it’s multipolar, right? Wrong again. The multipolar system long envisioned by liberals and constructivists stretching back to Immanuel Kant that equitably distributed power among key powers in a globalized system of trade and governance has still not materialized.

Here’s the catch: Depending on what you’re looking at (economics, military spending, participation in international organizations, etc.), the world as it now is has elements of all three of these models. It’s not uniformly unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar. What do you call that?

Enter unbalanced, or uneven, multipolarity. A global system where global powers vie for influence if not supremacy, while multiple regional powers attempt to either carve out regional spheres of hegemony and/or ascend to the rank of global power.  This is a world of two global powers (US and China), and multiple regional, or middle, powers of waxing and waning capabilities creating a dynamic global system of regional power transitions. It is the middle power moment where disrupted regional hierarchies are indicative of dissatisfied regional powers. It’s also characterized by uneven power distributions across regions and the globe.

Going all the way back to the first Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy, this seems to be the basic organizational model that informs the strategic viewpoint of President Trump and his team, and has been carried forward by A. Wess Mitchell in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs.

So, if you inhabit a dynamic world of middle power movement overlaid by great power competition, what should your policy preferences be?

In a world of uneven power distribution and disrupted regional dynamics that inherently limit the options of great powers, one could reasonably expect countries to emphasize security. This may look like prioritizing military readiness, economic interests, and sustainable national finances. You could see an increase in protectionist trade policies like tariffs (a historically consistent lagging indicator of power transitions), and regional and global disruptions. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Such is the moment we’re in. After the heady days of the unipolar moment and the Washington Consensus (or Washington Groupthink, depending), the liberal international order so near and dear to Wilsonians, liberals, constructivists, et al. was hit by the Great Recession, America’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if the causes of the Great Recession and the effectiveness of policy responses are disputed, the perception was that the neoliberal economic model favored by the Washington Consensus failed, especially for the working classes. Meanwhile, the promise of multilateral cooperation collapsed under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic while the credibility of America’s military might was fatally undermined.

Certainly, the fairness of such a characterization can be debated, and the Washington Consensus certainly couldn’t control for every eventuality, but as former economic advisor to the Biden administration, Jennifer Harris has noted in Foreign Affairs, by 2015 “neoliberalism” and “globalization” had become synonymous in the minds of most Americans for everything that ailed Main Street. The Biden administration’s attempt to sustain the Washington Consensus merely underlined its failings as America retreated from Afghanistan, and Russia invaded Ukraine.

Economically, institutionally, militarily, the Washington Consensus was deemed to have failed in highly visible and consequential ways. It’s entirely reasonable, with that frame of reference, for voters and critical policymakers alike to contemplate what an alternative grand strategy would look like and, if able, seek to implement it. Enter the second Trump administration.

President Trump has been talking about great power competition, allies shouldering more of the security burden in Europe, and tariffs for decades so it’s not like he prophetically foresaw this moment. He didn’t. Critics may still claim that Trump, like any broken clock, is right twice a day out of inevitability rather than him perceiving the world more clearly than his detractors claim. However, given the alignment of the global moment with Trump’s preferences and the failures of the Washington Consensus, the President and his Iconoclastic team have clearly been chosen to articulate an alternative grand strategy to address the challenges presented by an unbalanced, multipolar system. They may just be the right team for the job.er, given the alignment of the global moment with Trump’s preferences and the failures of the Washington Consensus, the President and his Iconoclastic team have clearly been chosen to articulate an alternative grand strategy to address the challenges presented by an unbalanced, multipolar system. They may just be the right team for the job.