All presidents begin their terms of office with determination to bend the world to the arc of their narrative. But quite quickly, the world shapes the policies of a president as much as the president shapes the world.

That said, predispositions do matter. Donald Trump has promised to disrupt the existing global order, to end what he describes as the “free riding” of long-time allies. He has promised to build walls rather than to tear down trade-barriers. And he has promised to slow immigration to the United States rather than welcome the world’s poor and hungry. 

Can we make sense of these promises by setting Donald Trump within the long history of American foreign policy?

In his prize winning book, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, author Walter Russell Mead argues that the United States has had a more successful foreign policy than any other great power in history. 

Host Janice Stein speaks with him about how President Trump could fit into that historical context.