The book, The Trump and Harris Doctrines: Preservationism versus Progressivism in the 2024 Presidential Election, explores the ideological clash that defined one of the most pivotal elections in American history.
Dr. Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus in UBC’s department of psychology and co-editor of the book, reflects on the book’s analysis of the contrasting foreign policies of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—and the election political twists in the 2024 U.S. presidential election that shaped the book.
By Dr. Peter Suedfeld
The Trump and Harris Doctrines: Preservationism and Progressivism in the 2024 Presidential Election is the third book in a series on US presidential foreign policy doctrines edited by Stanley Renshon (CUNY Graduate Center) and me. It compares Trump’s idea of making America great again by reviving and preserving its historical ways of interacting with other countries – to summarize, “America First” – with the globalist philosophy represented in the Obama-Biden-Harris sequence.
Originally, we planned to compare the Trump and Biden Doctrines, but fate struck just as the book was ready to be printed. Yet Kamala Harris seemed likely to continue the foreign policies of her two Democrat predecessors, so after some necessary revisions, the book went forward. And then, of course, reality ambushed us again. But we didn’t give up: the comparison is still relevant. The 2028 campaign will begin soon.
The book’s 19 chapters were written by an international group of specialists from a variety of disciplines, institutions, and countries. The first section compares the three leaders’ versions of foreign policy and examines our framework of nationalist preservationism versus progressive internationalism. The next section takes up how the standard-bearers of the two worldviews perceive other nations. One chapter content analyzes their stance toward 22 other countries plus the EU and the UN, and separate chapters are devoted to US approaches to China, Russia, Iran, and Israel. The final section considers how the doctrines relate to the use of force and diplomacy, border policy, and public opinion.
In selecting the contributors and editing the chapters, we emphasized expertise, but also pressed for fair and balanced analyses. Whether we succeeded, the readers and reviewers will tell us. And news reports will tell us whether the book should be shelved under “Current Affairs” or “Political History.”
About the book
The Trump and Harris Doctrines: Preservationism and Progressivism in the 2024 Presidential Election was published in Springer 2024 and is part of the book series Springer Studies in American Politics.
“Renshon, Suedfeld, and contributors do an excellent job of analyzing the different foreign policy assumptions and implications associated with the Trump and Biden presidencies at a time of deepening international crisis.”
