Is President Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine a return to how America’s Founding Fathers thought about foreign policy? Last week, 300 diplomats gathered at a dinner in Washington, D.C. to ponder the question.
The Ben Franklin Fellowship’s Honoring America’s First Diplomat dinner brought together foreign policy experts to compare the Trump doctrine to foreign policy under past administrations.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, Ben Franklin Fellowship’s co-founder and former Foreign Service Officer Simon Hankinson, Alfred von Oppenheim Scholar in Residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin Dr. John Hulsman, and former Trump senior advisor Brittany Baldwin all delivered remarks on the successes of the Trump administration and the challenges it still faces.
The speakers mentioned that the efforts from members of the new administration’s foreign policy, many of whom were in attendance, have enabled the United States to engage in a global strategy of U.S. national interest and realism in international affairs, to the global promotion of American interests, patriotism, policy development, and even the new “Donroe Doctrine.”
“If this organization did not exist, I don’t think we would be anywhere near where we are in the State Department in terms of procedure, reorganization, personnel, or policy,” Hankinson said in his initial address. “We see this as a very long-term endeavor, because we need to ensure the United States remains successful and a Republic that is based on the Constitution.”
“We need to be very clear about our values. An organization like the Ben Franklin Fellowship, which we hope is going to be around a long time, promotes those values and reminds the next generation of the importance of our foreign policy strategy,” Hankinson added.
In its first year, the Trump administration’s foreign policy maneuvers are reshaping geopolitics.
Since his inauguration, Trump has performed strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, removed former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from office, imposed wide-reaching tariffs, and made his desire for America to own Greenland abundantly clear.
On Thursday, the United States withdrew from the United Nations World Health Organization and made clear to foreign leaders at the World Economic Forum that it will remain the world’s leading superpower.
Prior to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s oversight of our state department, the United States was headed in a very negative direction, mirroring the current state of European Nations.
“The European Union has seen 19 consecutive quarters of less than 2% GDP growth,” Hulsman, a former diplomat and foreign policy scholar, said at the dinner.
Hulsman later attributed this to the union’s embrace of globalist policies.
Currently, European powers like France, for example, have fallen into a major economic decline, experienced an epidemic of immigrant violence, witnessed a decline of foreign investments, and engaged in collaboration with America’s adversaries in recent years.
Under Trump’s leadership, speakers at BFF’s dinner told the audience their predictions for 2026: that other global superpowers, like the top European powers, will aspire to model the policies currently enacted by the United States.
Speakers and attendees also engaged in dialogue throughout the night on critical issues “often overlooked” by the foreign affairs community, including cybersecurity, recruitment, AI, human rights, and border security.
“These conversations were conversations that Biden and his team did not have,” an attendee told The Daily Signal.
So long as the Trump administration relentlessly pursues what it believes to be in America’s interests, reflecting the ideals of Benjamin Franklin and other American founding fathers, these conversations will continue.