The Man, the State, and Hypermasculinity: The Gendered Reordering of International Order in Trump’s National Security Strategy
The Man, the State, and Hypermasculinity: The Gendered Reordering of International Order in Trump’s National Security Strategy

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how Donald Trump’s hypermasculine presidential leadership reshaped the U.S.-led international order by centering hypermasculinity as a constitutive dimension of international order. While mainstream IR accounts explain transformations in U.S. foreign policy through shifts in power distribution, grand strategy, or leadership preferences, this article argues that such approaches neglect the gendered foundations through which U.S. primacy and hierarchical masculinities are constructed. Drawing on the concepts of gendered multilevel games, gendered leadership, and state hypermasculinity, it conceptualizes hypermasculinity as an interlocking governing rationality operating across multiple levels of analysis and across diplomatic, structural, spatial, and virtual dimensions of state power through presidential leadership. Focusing on Trump’s leadership and a feminist reading of the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, it demonstrates how hypermasculine governing rationalities reorganize international politics through differentiated masculinities, particularly via diplomatic hypermasculinity operationalized through feminization, infantilization, coercive transactionalism, and demands for gratitude. The article concludes that presidential hypermasculinity under conditions of U.S. primacy tends to reproduce security dilemmas as masculinity dilemmas rather than generating durable stability.

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