Uploaded April 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 sent shock waves across political classes globally and prompted debates about whether his "America first" agenda threatened the liberal international order generally and the transatlantic alliance specifically. In this lecture, Professor John Peterson (Professor of International Politics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Politics and IR), addresses the question: "Are we witnessing the emergence of a “post-liberal”, “post-American”, “post-transatlantic” era?" Four sources of evidence help frame – if not answer - the question: history, the crisis of liberal democracy, Trump’s world view, and the power of civil society (globally and nationally) to constrain any US President.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 sent shock waves across political classes globally and prompted debates about whether his "America first" agenda threatened the liberal international order generally and the transatlantic alliance specifically. In this lecture, Professor John Peterson (Professor of International Politics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Politics and IR), addresses the question: "Are we witnessing the emergence of a “post-liberal”, “post-American”, “post-transatlantic” era?" Four sources of evidence help frame – if not answer - the question: history, the crisis of liberal democracy, Trump’s world view, and the power of civil society (globally and nationally) to constrain any US President.
