James Joyner draws our attention to an article by Robert Kagan in the New Republic which makes the argument that the United States has, indeed, historically been expansionist and notes the contrast to another article from 1998, also by Robert Kagan.
The problem here is that the United States unlike countries like, say, England or France does not have a foreign policy or, more accurately, our foreign policy is an emergent phenomenon which depends on the actions and interactions of a number of competing and cooperative political forces within the United States. Consequently, the United States is in turn imperialistic, isolationist, and mercantile depending on which force is in the ascendancy at any given time.
Under a Theodore Roosevelt the country may be imperialistic while just a few years later under, say, Coolidge it will be isolationist.
This apparent changeability is confusing and dismaying to friends and enemies alike. But I also believe that the interaction of the different forces which influence American foreign policy has undeniably given our country a strength and adaptability.
There’s another factor which, I believe, tends to complicate matters. Unlike in many countries in which large companies, banks, and so on have a major direct involvement of the national governments of their native countries and, indeed, the national governments may in one form or another actually be stockholders in the companies that’s not nearly so true for the United States. Consequently, while large companies may influence U. S. foreign policy they are not official agents of that policy.
Hi Dave,
our foreign policy is an emergent phenomenon which depends on the actions and interactions of a number of competing and cooperative political forces within the United States. Or, put in a shorter version – the U.S. has domestic policy which it then inflicts on the rest of the world. We’re going to have to differ on whether that is always a strength of the American method.
Still, nice post, which reaches to the heart of America’s changing face far better than James Joyner’s reaching for Machiavelli and the doctrine of fear over that of enlightened co-operation.
Regards, Cernig
Oh, I don’t always think it’s a strength. I just think that, historically, it has been but that at any given time it certainly may not seem like it. I think, for example, that’s the motivation for Churchill’s comment: “the Americans always do the right thing—when all other alternatives have been exhausted”.