The election of Donald Trump in 2016 posed a challenge to analysts and scholars. How could the election of so politically inexperienced a candidate, one with a highly controversial personality and a political orientation that differed from that of all his predecessors, possibly be explained? Most of the explanations tend to focus on the socio-economic and cultural grievances of primarily working-class white people from the Midwest and the South. These factors are also considered to exercise major influence on the rise of the “America First” orientation in Trump’s foreign policy. But the international context is also an important factor, and it is often overlooked.