I encourage you to read Walter Russell Mead’s analysis of events at Foreign Policy in full. Here’s a snippet:
Since World War II, U.S. grand strategy has been shaped by two major schools of thought, both focused on achieving a stable international system with the United States at the center. Hamiltonians believed that it was in the American interest for the United States to replace the United Kingdom as “the gyroscope of world order,†in the words of President Woodrow Wilson’s adviser Edward House during World War I, putting the financial and security architecture in place for a reviving global economy after World War II—something that would both contain the Soviet Union and advance U.S. interests. When the Soviet Union fell, Hamiltonians responded by doubling down on the creation of a global liberal order, understood primarily in economic terms.
Wilsonians, meanwhile, also believed that the creation of a global liberal order was a vital U.S. interest, but they conceived of it in terms of values rather than economics. Seeing corrupt and authoritarian regimes abroad as a leading cause of conflict and violence, Wilsonians sought peace through the promotion of human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law. In the later stages of the Cold War, one branch of this camp, liberal institutionalists, focused on the promotion of international institutions and ever-closer global integration, while another branch, neoconservatives, believed that a liberal agenda could best be advanced through Washington’s unilateral efforts (or in voluntary conjunction with like-minded partners).
If you want to know where my views fit into the scheme of things, Dr. Mead does a pretty fair job of describing them here:
Jeffersonians, including today’s so-called realists, argue that reducing the United States’ global profile would reduce the costs and risks of foreign policy. They seek to define U.S. interests narrowly and advance them in the safest and most economical ways.
What has happened? Jacksonian populist nationalism has prevailed:
The distinctively American populism Trump espouses is rooted in the thought and culture of the country’s first populist president, Andrew Jackson. For Jacksonians—who formed the core of Trump’s passionately supportive base—the United States is not a political entity created and defined by a set of intellectual propositions rooted in the Enlightenment and oriented toward the fulfillment of a universal mission. Rather, it is the nation-state of the American people, and its chief business lies at home. Jacksonians see American exceptionalism not as a function of the universal appeal of American ideas, or even as a function of a unique American vocation to transform the world, but rather as rooted in the country’s singular commitment to the equality and dignity of individual American citizens. The role of the U.S. government, Jacksonians believe, is to fulfill the country’s destiny by looking after the physical security and economic well-being of the American people in their national home—and to do that while interfering as little as possible with the individual freedom that makes the country unique.
[…]
Many Jacksonians came to believe that the American establishment was no longer reliably patriotic, with “patriotism†defined as an instinctive loyalty to the well-being and values of Jacksonian America. And they were not wholly wrong, by their lights. Many Americans with cosmopolitan sympathies see their main ethical imperative as working for the betterment of humanity in general. Jacksonians locate their moral community closer to home, in fellow citizens who share a common national bond. If the cosmopolitans see Jacksonians as backward and chauvinistic, Jacksonians return the favor by seeing the cosmopolitan elite as near treasonous—people who think it is morally questionable to put their own country, and its citizens, first.
Read the whole thing (registration required).
Contrary to Dr. Mead I don’t think that the challenge that faces international politics is to “stop the liberal order’s erosion and reground the global system on a more sustainable basis”. I think it’s to prove that the “liberal order” isn’t a fraud, just another way for a small number of people to promote their own interests at the expense of everybody else.
I think he totally misses the militaristic bent of the modern Jacksonian. (short on time to read whole thing so may be covers it.) The modern Jackson are just as, if not more likely, to use military force as the Hamiltonians. No amount of pre-emptive killing is too much to make us safe. He also overstates the liberty thing. Jacksonians are more than willing to give up liberty, especially for groups they don’t like, when it comes to the police and to security issues. It is the Jacksonian who will support the police shooting an unarmed man running away just because they were running away.
Steve
He certainly addresses it in his previous writings on the subject although I don’t think he’d say “militaristic”. I think he’d be more likely to characterize them as “bloody-minded”.
The Jacksonian view of liberty is, well, eccentric. They want to be left alone but don’t have a problem accepting subsidies. They’re less concerned about the liberty of others than for their own. There’s a distinct “us” vs. “them” quality. Jacksonians tend not to believe in limited war and they tend to believe that the morale of enemy civilians is a legitimate target of war.
BTW, “Jacksonian” is not just another way of saying “white” or “Republicans”. Most blacks in the United States are Jacksonians.
Great analysis. In the past couple of years Mead’s annoyed me more often than not, but i think his analysis here is broadly correct.
It seems to me that on his analysis, Jacksonians would be quite comfortable with jackboots — at least if those jackboots were on someone else’s neck: “They’re less concerned about the liberty of others than for their own.”
I suppose there are two ways of looking at this: one would be the rise of Jacksonianism, and the other would be the fall of Wilsonianism. In terms of foreign policy, which is what Mead is discussing here, I think its more the later and would be more important than the former. Wilsonianism is only one of four schools or foreign policy tendencies and if its isolated, then its foreign policy approaches and objectives will fail. Moreso because few citizens have significant Wilsonian tendencies. If its pure Jacksonianism, then it could be isolated though not as easily because most the public is probably Jacksonian, Jeffersonian or some combination of both.
But those who do have very large megaphones. That’s a force multiplier.
I’m little late for this discussion, but I think in Mead’s explanation of American foreign policy, few people are policies fall purely in one camp or the other, and for the most part large foreign policy endeavors require something for more than one camp.
I tend to think the Jacksonian camp is more attuned to ‘martial’ codes and values, but they are not war-mongers. They can act as restraints on military adventures which are not based upon threats to America. When Wilsonians (and to a lesser extent Hamiltonians(*)) wish to go to war, they have to make the case at least partly on Jacksonian terms or it will flounder. When James Joyner says that he supported the Iraq War to the extent that it meant toppling Hussein and coming home, he is taking a Jacksonian view, accepting some goals of the invasion as appropriate with no interest in those that required long-term commitments with foreigners.
arghh, “few people OR policies”
(*) A lot of Hamiltonian military adventures have historically needed only a navy w/ marine operations.
As I wrote in one of my long ago posts on the distinctions among the camps, each has a slogan. The slogan for Wilsonians is “make the world safe for democracy”.
The slogan for Jacksonians is “Don’t tread on me”. They’re not militarists but they counter-attack viciously.
To me the gist is that Trump is attacking the FP Washington consensus. It’s almost universal that establishment FP figures from both right and left are appalled at what they perceive his FP will be (like just about everything else, we’ll have to wait to see what the reality actually is).
There are a whole lot of things I don’t like about Trump, but defenestrating the Washington FP establishment is something I heartily support and I’ve been secretly feasting on their twitter tears and they (wrongly) proclaim the end of global liberalism.
Considering that Andrew Jackson is considered the founder of the Democrat party, it’s ironic that many in the Democrat party are now dissing Trump’s Jacksonian behavior and persona.