The phrase “Jacksonian” belongs to the foreign policy scholar Walter Russell Mead, part of a famous typology in which he divides American foreign policy tendencies into four worldviews: Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jacksonian and Jeffersonian. The worldviews are simplifications (“intended to be suggestive and evocative,” in Mead’s words), and they inevitably frustrate many scholars; nonetheless, they remain a useful way of thinking about how, in our imperial era, American foreign policy tends to work.

The Hamiltonians are the business-minded internationalists, cold-eyed and stability-oriented and wary of wars that seem idealistic rather than self-interested. The Wilsonians are the idealists, whether neoconservative or liberal-humanitarian, who regard the United States military as a force for spreading democracy and protecting human rights. Most foreign policy elites belong to one of these two groups, both political parties include both tendencies in their upper echelons, and most recent presidencies have been defined by internal conflicts between the two.

But far more American voters are either Jacksonians or Jeffersonians. The Jeffersonian impulse, more common on the left than on the right, is toward a “come home, America” retreat from empire that regards global hegemony as a corrupting folly and America’s wars as mostly unwise and unjust. (“No blood for oil” is the defining Jeffersonian attitude toward all our Middle Eastern misadventures.) The Jacksonian tendency, more common on the right than on the left, is toward a pugilistic nationalism that’s wary of all international entanglements but ready for war whenever threats arise. (“More rubble, less trouble” is the essential Jacksonian credo.) Since neither tendency has that much purchase in the imperial capital, it’s a safe bet that at any given moment in Washington, D.C., elites in both political parties will be trying to mobilize Jacksonian or Jeffersonian sentiment to achieve Hamiltonian or Wilsonian ends.

But when elites of both persuasions preside over too many calamities, you can get Jeffersonians and Jacksonians as important presidential contenders in their own right — think of George McGovern and George Wallace when the Vietnam War went bad. And when one party’s elite loses control of the electoral process entirely, it turns out that you can get an actual Jacksonian in the White House.

Yes, not everything Trump has done fits Mead’s paradigm — but a great deal of what makes him different from previous presidents is plainly Jacksonian. A Hamiltonian wouldn’t have saber-rattled so wildly against North Korea; a Wilsonian wouldn’t be so subsequently eager for a deal with such an odious regime. A Hamiltonian wouldn’t be as eager for an extended trade war with China; a Wilsonian would speak out more clearly against Beijing’s human rights abuses instead of just treating them as one more bargaining chip. Trump’s bureaucracy-impeded attempts to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan are patently Jacksonian; likewise his disdain for his predecessor’s negotiations on climate change. His eagerness to pardon war criminals and threaten war crimes, meanwhile, are Jacksonianism at its worst.