By Jay Tolson Conventional wisdom puts
it this way: Americans, having little interest in
the wider world, have never been very adept at
dealing with it. Portrayed as "innocents
abroad," they are said to vacillate between
head-in-the-sand isolationism and holier-than-thou
moralism.
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The trouble with this view, shared not
only by foreign observers but by many Americans as
well, is that it is simply untrue. As
foreign-affairs specialist Walter Russell Mead
argues in his prizewinning book, Special
Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It
Changed the World, Americans have taken a lively
interest in international affairs since the
nation's founding. Along the way, they have
developed a distinctive diplomatic tradition--really
a collection of competing traditions--that has
generally served the nation, and arguably the world,
quite well.
True, American foreign policy has
usually borne little resemblance to the practices of
Europe's great powers, formulated by such
masters of realpolitik as Otto von Bismarck of
Prussia. But if we have often looked inconsistent or
naive in our policies, it is not because we lacked
guiding principles. To the contrary, says diplomatic
historian Walter McDougall, it is "because we
have canonized so many diplomatic principles since
1776 that we are pulled every which way at
once."
That profusion of competing policy
approaches is an inevitable consequence of democracy
itself. Yet for all the bumpiness that democracy
entails, America's ascent to the status of the
world's sole superpower has less to do with the
brute "power politics" of the last 50-odd
years than with the energies unleashed by
Americans' long debate over their place in, and
relations with, the larger world.
The terms of
that debate, addressed in many of the nation's
most important foreign-policy documents, have
remained remarkably consistent for two centuries.
The abiding themes include America's concern
with its political and historical uniqueness, its
drive for territorial expansion and influence
(particularly in this hemisphere), its wariness of
alliances with other nations, and a constantly
shifting mix of pragmatism and idealism.
Many of
those concerns emerge in George Washington's
Farewell Address of 1796. Its words about steering
clear of "permanent alliances with any portion
of the foreign world" are often cited as a
clear warrant for isolationism or unilateralism.
Washington certainly feared that the independence
and integrity of the new republic might be
compromised if it were drawn into the schemes of
less virtuous--that is, European--states. That theme
has resonated among ardent republicans (lower case)
to the present, as was seen in the recent debate
over whether the United States should invade Iraq
without the support of France and Germany.
But
Washington's speech, written with the
assistance of his brilliant treasury secretary,
Alexander Hamilton, was far more nuanced than many
take it to be. Washington did not urge the nation to
extricate itself from "existing
engagements" with friendly nations, and he did
advise it to "trust to temporary alliances for
extraordinary purposes." Behind his counsel was
a greater concern for "good faith and
justice" in dealing with all nations--a moral
strain that would echo through American presidencies
to come.
