The US election is seen as a battle for America's soul. But history suggests very little changes between US presidents. Foreign policy rarely aligns with campaign promises, and America's positioning on the stage of world affairs has barely shifted despite wildly different leaders in the White House. It's time to recognise power does not reside in the White House, argues Marcus Papadopoulos. 

In 2008, as a writer and reporter at Tribune magazine, I contended that there would be no change whatsoever to American foreign policy in the event of Barack Obama becoming the American president. This was despite Obama’s election pledge to not involve America in the affairs of other countries. I meant that the institutions in Washington would preserve and augment America’s mastery of the international arena by pursuing a doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’, a cloak for American expansionism. Obama’s catastrophic interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine vindicated my pessimistic prediction.

On television and radio in 2016, I averred that there would be no alteration to the objectives and methods of the United States’ foreign policy should Donald Trump win the American presidency. This was despite the clear, anti-interventionist platform on which Trump ran his election campaign. Over the last four years Trump has ordered a direct military intervention in Syria on two occasions and has increased in the flow of American weaponry into Saudi Arabia to strengthen its position in its war against the people of Yemen. Further, his administration has attempted to instigate a coup in Venezuela, has waged an economic war against Iran and has assassinated Tehran’s most distinguished army commander. All of this serves to confirm what I asserted four years ago.