Blog Post | US Diplomatic Practices Under Trump: What Can Career Diplomats Do When Diplomacy Becomes Politicised?
Authors: Geoffrey Wiseman & Allison Scott
Nearing the half-way mark of the second Trump administration, many observers of diplomacy are dismayed by the disruptions to longstanding diplomatic norms and institutions emanating from the White House – including blanket criticisms of, and withdrawals from, international agencies, confounding territorial claims over Canada and Greenland, whimsical imposition of global tariffs, diminished support for Ukraine, a legally dubious military intervention in Venezuela, sidelining the United Nations over Israel’s war in Gaza, and launching a much criticised war with Israel against Iran. [1]
However, many of the actions that have produced such consternation were evidenced in Trump’s first presidency [2], clearly branded by his America-First, Make-America-Great-Again framing. Trump questioned NATO’s relevance and pulled the United States out of several international pacts, notably the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement; and he initiated the US’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization during the Covid-19 pandemic (a process that was completed in 2026). [3]
As early as 2018, political scientist Barry Posen argued that Trump had piloted a wholly new US grand strategy that he termed ‘illiberal hegemony’, [4] with others depicting Trump’s second term foreign policy as ‘neo-royalist’ [5] and America as a ‘predatory hegemon [6]. Such concerns were sharply underscored domestically with Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential elections and his support for protesters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Accordingly, and without understating the scale of Trump’s diplomatic disruption in his second term, we argue that the difference between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 has been one of degree rather than kind.
What, then, can career diplomats representing a liberal democracy such as the United States do when diplomacy becomes heavily politicised? In a new edited volume [7] exploring how diplomats engage with their home publics, we examined how the US diplomatic community responded publicly to the first Trump administration (2017-2021) and its approach to foreign affairs. We then compared those responses to the diplomatic community’s response under the Biden administration (2021-2025), reviewing the Foreign Service Journal of the American Foreign Service Association (the State Department’s professional association). Additionally, we drew on published writings by former diplomats and others that, broadly speaking, are linked to the State Department and the wider ‘foreign policy establishment’. Here’s what we found. [8]
In his first term, President Trump personified illiberal populist capture, which has only intensified in Trump 2.0. Trump’s MAGA foreign policy produced intense politicisation – even deprofessionalisation – of the Department of State and its efforts at domestic engagement. If career diplomats were not seen as – or did not become – sufficiently loyal to the President, they resigned, retired, or sought refuge in the private, non-profit, and think-tank sectors. [9]
Trump appointed a higher proportion of non-career, often underqualified ambassadors to serve abroad and loyalists to senior positions at home. His discomfort with expert advice was evidenced in the freezing of the State Department’s Dissent Channel, a formal internal mechanism established during the Vietnam War to convey alternative policy views to Department leadership (albeit with mixed results). Under secretaries of state Rex Tillerson and then Mike Pompeo, the State Department pursued highly selective domestic engagement directed at groups perceived to be sympathetic to the President’s agenda. While claiming to represent the whole of American society, public outreach targeted select groups, from evangelical Christians to non-college educated ‘low information’ voters, while simultaneously denouncing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies.
In response to Trump’s first term, the Biden administration’s approach to diplomacy’s domestic dimension broadly reflected a tradition of liberal internationalist engagement. In its successes and shortcomings, this effort to engage a wider spectrum of American society offers insights into how future administrations may rebuild a more democratised State Department following populist capture. Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, aimed to reprofessionalise the State Department. He urged diplomats to engage with, and recruit from, a varied cross section of US society, re-activated the Dissent Channel, and embraced diversity and inclusion practices. Furthermore, Blinken’s State Department emphasised well-regarded domestic outreach activities such as Diplomats in Residence and Hometown Diplomats programs and instigated others such as establishing the Welcome Corps (terminated by Trump in February 2025) and appointing a special representative for City and State Diplomacy. These efforts reflected, in Blinken’s words, a desire to “focus more of [US] diplomacy here at home”. [10] However laudable in theory, Blinken’s home engagement initiatives appear not to have reached sufficiently beyond sectors of US society already well disposed to them.
In both style and substance, much of the norm-shattering diplomacy of the second Trump presidency was foreshadowed in his first administration and, more pointedly, in his 2024 presidential campaign. Based on Trump’s unprecedented, personalised use of social media and privileged access to conservative media outlets, Trump himself – rather than the State Department – was the key driver of his administration’s domestic engagement, representing a personalist leadership style that intensified social and political polarisation. American diplomacy in Trump 1.0 was fraught but there were more institutional guardrails in play; one of them, we suggest, was the measured set of responses by the network of diplomatic actors within and around the State Department and their attempts to resist populist capture. That Trump’s first-term illiberal and nativist leanings were even more acute in the second term – inter alia in his hyper-personalised, often idiosyncratic, approach to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran, along with the Venezuela intervention – reinforces our view that it is as critical as ever for political leaders and diplomats to resist polarising diplomacy.
Both global stability and US interests are better served when America’s political leaders and, by extension, their diplomats engage authentically with all sectors of society. With the 2026 midterm Congressional elections looming, it is as critical as ever for leaders to recognise the significance of diplomacy’s domestic engagement. Just as they mediate conflict in the international arena, diplomats have a vital role at home in alleviating societal polarisation.
Geoffrey Wiseman is Professor and Endowed Chair at The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University, Chicago.
Allison Scott is a graduate of The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University, Chicago.
[1] For critiques of these actions see, for example, Malgorzata Zachara-Szymanska and Richard Higgott, ‘Gangster diplomacy and the disordering of international society’, International Politics, 2026. Available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-026-00761-w.
[2] For arguments along these lines, see Tim Hinkelmann-Wild, ‘(De)coding “America First”: Trump’s contestation of international institutions and its consequences’, International Affairs, 102: 1 (2025), p. 61; and Peter Baker, ‘Threatening Friends and Courting Enemies in Trump’s “Upside-Down World”’, The New York Times, August 18, 2026. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/politics/trumps-upside-down-world.html.
[3] For a comprehensive account covering Trump’s first term, see Hinkelmann-Wild, ‘(De)coding “America First”’, pp. 43-62.
[4] Barry R. Posen, ‘The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018).
[5] Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman, ‘Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System’, International Organization, vol. 79, Issue S1, 2025): 12-25.
[6] Stephen M. Walt, “The Predatory Hegemon: How Trump Wields American Power”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 105, no. 2 (March/April 2026): 8-23.
[7] Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, Githma Chandrasekara (eds.), Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Politics (Leiden: Brill, 2026).
[8] Geoffrey Wiseman and Allison Scott ‘Engaging Citizens in a Polarised Society: The Choices for US Diplomacy’. In Melissen et al. (eds.), Home Engagement in Diplomacy: 210-248.
[9] Andrew Cooper, ‘The Impact of Leader-Centric Populism on Career Diplomats: Tests of Loyalty, Voice, and Exit in Ministries of Foreign Affairs’. In Ministries of Foreign Affairs in the World. Actors of State Diplomacy, ed. Christian Lequesne (Leiden: Brill, 2022): 150-171.
[10] Blinken, Antony J. ‘On the modernization of American Diplomacy’. Speech at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, 27 October 2021. Available at https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-on-the-modernization-of-american-diplomacy/.