Denial and rejection : international law and donald trump’s foreign policy agenda

الملخص EN

Since Trump’s Administration took office, this elusory question has haunted most issues in the international law.

So far, the Trump Administration has been in office for a little over forty-four months, a tumultuous period that has disrupted international law and international politics.

Another looming question is whether the Trump Administration’s many initiatives will permanently change the nature of America’s foreign policy? In particular, this paper will discuss Trump’s foreign policy, since his emerging philosophy seems to be a general rejection of the Obama approach: not “engage-translate-leverage,” but rather, “disengage black hole-hard power.” Wherever possible, the Trump instinct seems to be to disengage-unilateralism or, as he calls it, “America First.” The United States of America and Trump are sturdy actors in the making and unmaking of international law.

But the basic idea underlying international law is that international law is no longer just for nation-states or national governments.

What Jeremy Bentham once called “inter-national law”, the law between and among sovereign nations, has evolved into a hybrid body of international and domestic law developed by a large number of public and private transnational actors.