The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election holds a symbolic significance as the culmination of American politics since the emergence of Trump. From the moment he entered the Republican primary race in 2015 to last year’s presidential election, President-elect Trump has been at the center stage of American politics for nearly a decade. Trump’s prominence over the previous decade is closely tied to the changes that followed the failure of the Iraq War and the financial crisis. The United States failed to devise effective strategies to manage the unipolar order that emerged after the Cold War, as it was preoccupied with ideological battles rooted in anti-communism during the Cold War following World War II. In other words, the United States failed to devise a comprehensive “grand strategy” other than expressing confidence by shifting its policy from engagement to enlargement. After the 9/11 attacks in 2011, the Bush administration’s attempt to link the traditional military approach to the value issue of democratization of the Middle East failed. Compounded by the subsequent large-scale financial crisis, public opinion in the United States suffered a second “Vietnam syndrome”. At a time when there was widespread aversion to intervening in other countries’ affairs and heightened anxiety over the stagnation of domestic manufacturing industries, Trump emerged out of nowhere as an outsider. The failure of the Iraq war spawned America First policies or non-interventionism while the financial crisis led to a new mobilization of the white working class.

This article is an English Summary of Asan Issue Brief (2024-34).

(‘2024년 미국 대선 결과 분석과 미국 외교 전망’)