SINCE the end of the 1960s, when American military intervention in Southeast Asia triggered a long and bitter public debate, students of American politics and US foreign policy seemed to be operating based on the following axiom:

The Democratic Party and the liberal politicians and intellectuals who embodied its values were representative of a school of thought that advocated foreign-policy restraint and placed emphasis on resolving international crises through the use of diplomatic means, as opposed to military force.

Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, embraced a foreign-policy agenda that accentuated the need to maintain a strong US defence posture and apply it, if necessary, in response to national-security threats, recognising that diplomacy worked only if it was backed by military force.

In the Washington political lingo, the Democrats have been known to be “doves” and the Republicans, “hawks”. GOP lawmakers who tended to call for higher defence budgets faced opposition from Democrats, who demanded that more US dollars be spent on domestic social programmes.

And when the Soviets during the Cold War or the many global Bad Guys that challenged the United States in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall were threatening America, Republicans would instinctively demand that Washington act tough against them, including by using its military power.

The Democrats, on the other hand, contended that military power should be applied as a last resort, only after all the diplomatic means have been exhausted.

So it wasn’t surprising that many Democrats and liberals opposed the decisions by Republican presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush to go to war in Iraq and that Republicans used every opportunity to bash Democrats and liberals, including President Barack Obama, as “weak” on national security and accused them of “appeasing” America’s enemies.

The political bottom line was that when Americans were worried about threats to the national security, they were more inclined to vote for Republican presidential candidates, and that when they were concerned that presidents was dragging the country into costly military quagmires, they would give their support to the Democrats.

But now it seems that the old political axiom would have to be reassessed.

If anything, the major foreign-policy address that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump delivered on Wednesday in Washington suggests that when it comes to the use of American military force, Republicans and Democrats may be about to switch places, with the Donald more restrained about the use of military force than the hawkish Hillary Clinton.

While it would probably be a mistake to describe Mr Trump’s speech, delivered under the auspices of TheNational Interest magazine, as the Trump Doctrine, it nevertheless amounted to a powerful rebuke of the GOP foreign-policy orthodoxy. In fact, it could be seen as a major challenge to the entire global strategy, including national security and trade policies, adopted by the Washington establishment after the end of the Cold War and that sometimes is referred to as “globalism”.

Insisting that as US president, he would “no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism” and stressing that “the nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony”, the Republican frontrunner delivered what could be described as a cry of defiance vis-à-vis the entire way of thinking espoused by the foreign-policy elites, including leading editorial pages and think tanks. This thinking has been driving the policies of Republican and Democratic presidents in the form of military over-extension around the world and, in particular, in the Middle East, and the numerous free-trade deals that result in “the theft of American jobs”, as Mr Trump put it.

Recalling his earlier opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and to oust Saddam Hussein from power and establish a democracy in Iraq, Mr Trump ridiculed the “dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western Democracy” and blasted the US military intervention in the Middle East that “helped to throw the region into chaos, and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper”.

“We tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of American lives and many trillions of dollars were lost as a result,” he said. “The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill. Iran, too, would rush in and fill the void, much to their unjust enrichment.”

The Donald pledged in his address that he would not only reverse US policies in the Middle East that resulted in the over-extension of US military power and financial resources, but would also put pressure on US allies in Europe and Asia who seem to expect the United States to pay the costs of protecting them. They need to “contribute toward the financial, political and human costs of our tremendous security burden” or else his administration would have no choice but to reassess its security commitments to them, Mr Trump asserted.

Unlike “other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct”, he declared, adding that one cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy and that a superpower “understands that caution and restraint are signs of strength”. Under a Trump administration, “the world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies”.

It would be wrong to label President Trump’s foreign policy as “dovish”. In fact, in his address, he vowed to “spend what we need to rebuild our military” and to use all the necessary US military power to destroy ISIS. What he was suggesting was that he would make decisions on war and peace as well as on other global policy issues like trade, based solely on US national interest – or, to put it in simpler terms, President Trump would be more of a nationalist than an internationalist. He wouldn’t go to war in the name of promoting liberal democracy or do nation building or sign trade deals as part of an effort to liberalise global trade; he would do all this only in order to advance US strategic and economic interests. This also explains his willingness to make deals with Russia and China that work for the United States instead of pressing those global powers to improve their human-rights policies.

“America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” the Republican presidential frontrunner said, stressing that his foreign policy would “always put the interests of the American people and American security first”.

And that nationalist posture sets his foreign-policy agenda apart from the one that would be embraced by Mrs Clinton, who will remain committed to American traditional internationalist policy, including in its most recent incarnation, globalism.

In a way, Democratic presidential frontrunner Mrs Clinton has emerged as the most “hawkish” among the rest of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. As a senator from New York, she voted in favour of giving President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, a decision that she now apparently regrets.

But then as Secretary of State, she pushed for using US military power to remove Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi from power and help transform the country into a liberal democracy, a project that – like in the case of Iraq – had failed miserably. She also sided with the hawks in the Obama administration who urged the president to provide more military support to the anti-government insurgents in Syria and would probably adopt such policies if elected as president.

It is true that under pressure from the progressive wing of her party, she did distance herself from the pro-free-trade policies pursued by her husband in the 1990s. But the expectation in Washington is that as president, she would revert to those policies.

The foreign-policy elites in Washington are hoping that their globalist agenda would remain alive and well if she is elected president and takes new steps aimed at remaking the Middle East, even if that includes the use of military power while promoting nation building, democracy and free trade.

The Donald, on the other hand, is confident that Americans, exhausted of military interventions and opposed to trade agreement, would be drawn to his nationalist messages.