The Doctrinal Foundations of the Change in U.S. Foreign Policy During Trump’s Presidency: Mexico and Canada

Abstract

Introduction. The research’s subject is the foreign policy’s theoretical foundations of D. Trump’s presidential administration in 2016–2020, which consist in changing the principles’ use of American liberal internationalism to the conservative nationalism’s principles under the motto which is called “Make America Great Again”. The theoretical approaches’ basis of intergovernmental interaction in the field of politics, economics and migration is considered on the example of relations between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The work’s purpose is to identify the doctrinal basis of D. Trump administration’s foreign policy and the impact of the adopted foreign policy settings on changes in intergovernmental interaction in the international arena. Methods. The theoretical bases’ methodology for the doctrinal provisions development of the U.S. foreign policy during the D. Trump’s administration was to use behavioral approach and special methods of political analysis. There were no major analytical studies on this topic at the time of writing. Therefore, the author of the article used the materials for his research from Russian and American scientific and periodical journals for 2019–2020. Analysis. The publications’ analysis by domestic and American authors has shown that the change in the U.S. foreign policy during the D. Trump’s presidency is due not so much to the personal qualities of the U.S. President, as some researchers believe, but to the objective conditions of the world process, where the United States want to but they can’t bear the burden of the world leader in the conditions of significant growth of other global power centers. Results. The author’s analysis of intergovernmental interaction between the United States, Canada and Mexico has shown the chosen path of using the conservative nationalism’s principles in relations with their closest allies is not so much due to the personal qualities of D. Trump how many objective changes taking place in the world political process, which led to an increase in mutual contradictions between these states. Overall, the author argues that the choice of a conservative nationalism’s policy in American foreign policy is associated with the crisis of liberal democracy.