POLS IR Seminar Series

The Second Coming?
Revisiting the Clementi-Haglund-Locatelli "Italianization" Thesis
David Haglund - Queen's University (Ontario)

US Cyber Posture and the Trump Administration
Edoardo Landoni - POLS Ph.D candidate

Chair: Andrea Locatelli (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

16 April 2024, h.14.30
Room B - NASP Graduate School
Via Pace, 10 - Milan 

Abstract

From the origins of the Republic in 1788 until the Second World War, isolationism could, with reason, have been considered to be the default setting of the country's grand strategy. In the aftermath of America's intervention in the Second World War, however, it had generally come to be assumed by the foreign policy pundits that the probability of isolationism ever getting resurrected was basically zero. Recently, however, scholars and other observers of the American political scene have been reconsidering whether isolationism truly was something that could be deemed dead and buried.

This growing interest in isolationism, on the part of both those who welcome it and those who abhor it, has of course been stimulated by the electoral prospects of Donald J. Trump, who aspires this coming November to do what no other president in American history, with the single exception of Grover Cleveland in the 19th century, had ever done: to return to the White House after having been unsuccessful in a bid for re-election. Cleveland, first elected in 1884, managed to do this after being rebuffed by the voters in 1888, only to have those same voters restore him to power in 1892. Because he served two discontinuous terms as president, Cleveland is registered as having been his country's 22nd and its 24th president. Donald Trump, should he win this autumn, would thus become America's 47th president, after having been its 45th one. Given this possibility, we have decided to revisit what it was we argued in our original article, with a view to asking what might be the implications of a second Trump administration for Italian, and other European, interests.

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The International Relations Series (IRS) Organizing Committee is composed of Andrea Locatelli, Sara Berloto, and Edoardo Maria Landoni

The list of IRS seminars can be downloaded below.