STEPHEN WERTHEIM I s this how the Pax Americana ends? 1 Since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, countless commentators have answered in the airmative. Four years ater dismissing American decline as a myth, Robert Kagan now glimpses what he calls the “end of the 70-year-old US world order.” 2 In the New York Times Magazine, Ian Buruma delivered an elegy for the Anglo-American partnership that won World War II and led the world ever since, until Brexit-Trump voters opted to “pull down the pillars” of the whole project and retreat to isola- tion. 3 he liberal commentariat is sounding the alarm, warning that mak- ing America great again will actually make America small in the world. Such dirges say less about Trump or his voters than about the limits of conventional wisdom. Candidate Trump never pledged to retract America’s global power. He did denounce nation-building and demand that US allies pay more for protection, but so have many of his predecessors. What was certain, all along, was that Trump would build up the nation’s supposedly depleted military, better funded as it is than its next seven competitors combined. 4 And Trump identiied no shortage of enemies, starting with the expansive category of “radical Islamic terrorism” and not stopping there. When he launched his campaign, Trump declared China 9 TRUMP AGAINST EXCEPTIONALISM he Sources of Trumpian Conduct