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The American National Style

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Dateline: The Mexican Border

In responding to foreign policy challenges, the United States is influenced as much by ideas as by events. In the case of border security, the idea that technological or engineering solutions to political problems exist has been especially influential. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump embraced such a solution in calling for a wall to be built along the border as a means to reduce illegal immigration and drug smuggling from Mexico. Once in office, his proposal brought forward a firestorm of controversy, leading to the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, thirty-five days (December 22, 2018–January 25, 2019). Controversy returned later in 2019 when it was announced that the Pentagon was transferring $3.6 billion from military construction projects in twenty-three 52states, nineteen countries, and three U.S. territories to pay for the wall, including upgrading the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Only about 60 miles of replacement barriers were built in the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency and much of what was being constructed were see-through fences and vehicle barriers. The first construction of a brand-new wall in Texas began in October 2019.

A closer look reveals that, for over a decade, the United States has been seeking a technological solution to the border problem. The U.S.–Mexico border is 1,969 miles long. It is the world’s most frequently crossed international border. In 1994 President Bill Clinton authorized Operation Gatekeeper to “to restore integrity and safety to the nation’s busiest border” by stopping illegal immigration. Prior to this point, only about some 80 miles of barriers and fencing existed along the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas and California. Operation Gatekeeper, targeting the San Diego border sector, involved doubling the Border Patrol’s force, building more fences and walls, and implementing high-tech land and air surveillance along the border.

In 2006 President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, stating that, “This bill will help protect the American people. This bill will make our borders more secure.” This legislation called for creating a double-reinforced fence along 700 miles of the border. When Barack Obama took office in 2009 more than 580 miles of fence was in place, although only a small portion was double-layered. By 2012, the total length of fencing, consisting of some 300 miles of vehicle barriers and 353 miles of pedestrian barriers, had increased to 649 miles.

Constructing the border fence as it currently exists was controversial, with many of the same concerns leveled at Trump’s Great Wall proposal. The first is cost. Trump proposed that Mexico pay for the wall. The 14-mile San Diego fence was to cost a total of $14 million, but just the first 11 miles ended up costing $42 million. The initial costs of pedestrian fencing averaged $3.9 million per mile, and those of vehicle fencing ranged from $200,000 to $1.8 million per mile. In Bush’s plan, the projected cost of upkeep of the fencing system was $66.5 billion over the next twenty years. According to the Department of Homeland Security, in FY 2010 the fence was breached over four thousand times; with an average repair cost of $1,800 per breach, the total for just one year came to $7.2 million.

Second, there is the question of its effectiveness. As the fence was constructed and passageways into the United States blocked, illegal crossing did not so much end as move on to other points. The Tucson enforcement zone was once the most active point of entrance; it is now the Rio Grande Valley. In a six-month span covering late 2013 and early 2014, more than ninety-seven thousand illegal migrants were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley, a 69 percent increase from the previous year. Just as technology in the form of fencing has been used to stop border crossings, it has also been used to overcome it. Over a two-week period, three smuggling tunnels were found, along with over 40 tons of marijuana. The tunnels were equipped with lighting, ventilation, and—in one case—a railcar system.

A great deal of data on illegal border crossings fuels the arguments of both defenders and opponents of the border fence system. According to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), over 396,000 undocumented people were caught entering the United States illegally in 2018, compared to 1.6 million people in 2000. Year-to-year variation was common until 2010, when a steady decline began that continued until recently. Defenders of the border fence system cite the drop as evidence of success. Opponents point to economic recession, which reduced the number of U.S. jobs available to border crossers and the percentage of Mexicans aged 15–29. From October 2017 to January 2018, the CPB apprehended 109,000 people who had crossed the border illegally. This number jumped to more than 200,000 between October 2018 and January 2019. A primary actor in the surge was the rise in extreme poverty and gang violence in home countries, which caused families rather than independent young workers to move to the United States in large protective groups.

A third point of controversy has been the manner in which the fence was constructed. More than thirty legal waivers were used to bypass existing laws and regulations. The project received exemptions from acts including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Homeland Security Department, justified the legal waivers, stating, “Criminal activity does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation.” States and communities along the border registered objections to the fence because of its negative impact on the economic health of their areas.

Fencing is not the only technological solution the United States has embraced in its efforts to secure its border with Mexico. The same drone aircraft used to hunt out terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq are now being employed (without their missile packages). In 2017 the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol flew a total of 635 missions.

The Mexican border is not the only border the U.S. has sought to close off using technology. In 1980, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro unexpectedly announced that anyone wishing to leave Cuba for the United States would be permitted to do so. Almost instantly Cuban-Americans in Miami organized an operation that came to be known as the Mariel boatlift. President Reagan ordered the Coast Guard to stop refugees from reaching the United States by boat after an estimated 125,000 Cubans arrived in Florida on boats of varying sizes and seaworthiness. In 1991– 1992, some 40,000 Haitians tried to reach the United States by boat. Poverty and political oppression were the primary forces that produced this mass exodus. President George H. W. Bush ordered that their boats be intercepted before reaching the United States and returned to Haiti. In his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to change this policy. As inauguration day approached, 54fears grew of another mass exodus from Haiti. Shortly after taking office, Clinton revoked his pledge and kept in place the 1981 Reagan order.

Embracing engineering solutions as a means to deal with political problems is only one of the ways in which ideas shape the content and conduct of U.S. foreign policy. To get a fuller picture, this chapter examines the concept of an American national style as it relates to foreign policy, with special attention to the style’s sources and consequences. Later, the chapter looks at how past approaches influence the contemporary U.S. debate over foreign policy.

The Importance of Ideas

Policy makers come and go, but ideas and ways of thinking endure. George W. Bush’s major foreign policy innovation, moving from containment and deterrence to preemption, strikes many as a radical departure from the past, but others see in it the long reach of American history.1 The same holds true for neoconservatism, the set of foreign policy ideas that formed the conceptual foundation for the Bush Doctrine (see chapter 1), with its emphasis on preemption, unilateral action, and support for democratization. To many, the Bush Doctrine is neither “neo” nor “conservative.” Its core ideas of moralism, idealism, exceptionalism, militarism, and global ambition have deep intellectual roots in the American foreign policy tradition.2 Barack Obama’s foreign policy received a great deal of criticism for embracing the idea of “leading from behind.” It was rejected by many as ill-conceived, un-American, and bound to fail. Regardless of the merits of these critiques, few pointed out the similarities between leading from behind and the post-Vietnam Nixon Doctrine (see chapter 1), which called for providing weapons to regional allies so that American troops would not have to be used to contain the spread of communism.3 Today, many see similarities in Obama and Trump’s foreign policies, which share a reluctance to commit military force to situations that have the potential for getting out of control.

The importance of ideas as a force in foreign policy decision-making stems from both their immediate and long-term effects.4 In the short run, shared ideas help policy makers and citizens cope with the inherent uncertainty involved in selecting among competing policy lines. In the long run, ideas can become institutionalized as organizations and laws are designed around them. As they become anchors for future reform debates, ideas continue to exert an influence on policy long after they may have lost their vitality and after those who espoused them have passed from the scene.

The result of this interplay of policies and ideas is a layered pattern in which policies reflecting different sets of ideas and pulling in different directions are combined, with little overall coherence. This pattern is very much evident in American trade policy. Conventional explanations of American trade policies focus on the political leverage of societal interest 55groups or the demands of the international system.5 Others argue that only by looking at ideas can America’s movement from a protectionist cycle (which began in the early nineteenth century and culminated in the highly protective tariffs of the 1930s) to a free-trade cycle with elements of both free trade and fair trade to Trump’s embrace of fair trade be explained.

The national security policy arena provides an even clearer picture of the influence on American foreign policy of shared ideas and ways of acting. The logic of containment became embodied in a wide range of U.S. foreign policy initiatives including military alliances, foreign aid programs, and covert action. Even the Nixon administration’s much heralded shift to a policy of détente at the end of the Vietnam War (see chapter 1) could be comfortably fitted into the larger strategy of containment. Détente was designed to protect U.S. influence as much as possible in an era of lessened power abroad and increasingly isolationist feeling at home. Confrontation and crisis management were now too expensive to be the primary means for stopping Soviet expansion. Détente sought to accomplish this end by creating a framework of limited cooperation within the context of an international order that recognized the legitimacy of both U.S. and Soviet core security goals.6

More fundamentally, the importance of ideas lies in how they shape policymakers’ and citizens’ views of the role of the United States in the world. One theme that dominates this world view is a sense of exceptionalism, the belief that the American political system, values, and historical experiences are unique and models for others to follow. By one count, the phrase “American exceptionalism” appeared 4,172 times in national U.S. publications from 2010 to 2012.7 Accompanying exceptionalism is the perceived need (right) to a leadership role in world affairs, either by example or through transforming the international system.8

Not everyone embraces the ideas of exceptionalism and leadership equally. In 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated that “if we use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future.” Compare this with President Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy, which emphasizes the centrality of sovereignty and nationalism. Others disagree quite strongly with this reading of America’s role in the world.9 For some, the United States has been antirevolutionary, seeking to prevent social change and stop Third World revolutionary movements that might threaten its dominant position in world affairs. This view is often expressed in the writings of revisionist historians, who find U.S. foreign policy to be imperial in nature and rooted in the expansionist needs of capitalism. Others see U.S. foreign policy as racist, as evidenced by its immigration policy, which historically discriminated against the Chinese and other non–Western Europeans; hesitated to support international human rights conventions; and wavered in its attitude about the suitability of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines for either statehood or independence.

Isolationism versus Internationalism

U.S. foreign policy is frequently discussed in terms of a tension between two opposing general foreign policy orientations: isolationism and internationalism. From the isolationist perspective, American national interests are best served by “quitting the world” or, at a

minimum, maintaining a healthy sense of detachment from events elsewhere. Isolationism draws its inspiration from Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he urged Americans to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world” and asserted that “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or very remote relations.”10 Among the major foreign policy decisions rooted in the principles of isolationism are the Monroe Doctrine, the refusal to join the League of Nations, the neutrality legislation of the 1930s, and, more loosely, the fear of future Vietnams.

According to the internationalist perspective, protecting and promoting American national interests requires an activist foreign policy. Internationalists hold that the United States cannot escape the world, that events abroad inevitably affect U.S. interests, and that any policy based on the denial of their relevance is self-defeating. Such widely divergent undertakings as membership in the United Nations and NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Helsinki Human Rights Agreement, and involvement in Korea and Vietnam can be traced to the internationalist perspective on world affairs.

The oscillation between isolationism and internationalism has not been haphazard. An underlying logic appears to guide movement from one to the other. Five earlier periods of U.S. foreign policy of twenty to thirty years’ duration have been identified, each of which has an introvert (isolationist) and extrovert (internationalist) phase.11 According to this line of analysis, the United States has left the last phase of an internationalist phase; the isolationist phase began in 2014. Evidence of this shift is readily found in public opinion polls, which indicate that, while the American public remains internationalist, it has become less supportive of the use of military force abroad; in addition, majorities now see both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as mistakes.

TABLE 3.1
Period		Introvert (years)	Extrovert (years)
1		1776–1798	1798–1824
2		1824–1844	1844–1871
3		1871–1891	1891–1918
4		1918–1940	1940–1967
5		1967–1987	1987–2014
6		2014–2034?

In each of these periods, U.S. policy makers had to confront a major foreign policy problem. In period one, it was independence; in period two, issues involving manifest destiny were dominant; and in period three, it was the process of becoming an industrial power. The crisis of world democracy dominated period four, and in the fifth period the need to create a stable world order was the main challenge facing U.S. foreign policy. In each period, the dominant cycle (introversion or extroversion) imposes limits on the types of solutions that can be considered by policy makers and predisposes the public to accept certain courses of action. The cyclical movement between isolationism and internationalism is seen as spiral in nature; each movement toward internationalism has been deeper than the one before it, and each reversal to isolationism has been less complete than the preceding one.

Disagreement exists over the mechanism that triggers a shift from one phase to the next. One possibility is that shifts in foreign policy orientations may be tied to the business cycle.12 Some have found that U.S. foreign policy takes on a belligerent tone during periods of economic recovery. The more stable the economy, the more moderate is U.S. foreign policy. In a similar vein, it has been argued that the periodic outward thrust of U.S. foreign policy is a product of domestic frustrations and disappointments.13 Foreign policy successes are sought as a sign that the American dream is still valid and capable of producing victories.

Whatever the specific trigger, the movement from isolationism to internationalism and back again is made possible because both general foreign policy orientations are both very much a part of the American national style. It is not that one represents the American approach to world affairs and the other its denial. They are two different ways in which the fundamental building blocks that create the patterns of American foreign policy come together.14 Both are united in the conviction that the institutions and ideals brought forward by the American experience need protection. The approaches differ on how best to provide for their continued growth and development.

Before proceeding to examine the shared roots of internationalism and isolationism, it should be noted that some argue that internationalism is better defined as interventionism: a tendency to intervene in the affairs of other states to a degree far beyond any reasonable definition of U.S. national interest. According to this view, there is no competing theme of isolationism, just opposition to specific cases of intervention on pragmatic or tactical grounds.

Historical Sources of the American National Style

The term national style is used to capture the way in which the ideas and experiences from the past shape current policy making. The sources of the American national style are found in many places.15 Two different 58approaches are used most often. One focuses on the legacy of the overall historical experience of the United States. The second examines the foreign policy ideas of key figures.

Few nations can look back on as favorable a set of conditions in which to grow and develop as the United States. Its vast size provided an abundance of natural resources on which to build a prosperous economy. Just as important for the development of the American national style is the fact that this economic growth took place without any master plan. Individual self-reliance, flexibility, and improvisation were the cardinal virtues in developing America. Guided by these principles, the United States has become a “how-to-do-it” society, with energies that are largely directed to the problem at hand and with long-range concerns that receive scant attention.16

U.S. economic growth also occurred in an era of unparalleled global harmony. With the exception of the Crimean War, from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Great Powers of Europe were largely at peace with one another. The defense of America’s continental borders never required the creation of a large standing army or navy. Peace and security seemed to come naturally and were widely accepted as the normal condition of world affairs. The links between American security and developments abroad went unnoticed. Democracy, rather than the strength of the British navy or the European balance of power, was seen as the source of American security.

This faith in the power of democracy reflects the extent to which American political thought is rooted in the eighteenth-century view of human nature. Most important to the development of the ideas that have guided U.S. policy makers is the work of John Locke, who argued that people are rational beings capable of determining their own best interests. The best government was considered to be the one that governed least. To Locke, the historical record indicated that the exercise of power led inevitably to its abuse and corrupted the natural harmony existing among individuals. Conflicts between individuals could be settled without the application of concentrated state power. The wastefulness and destructiveness of war disqualified it as a means of conflict resolution. Negotiation, reason, and discussion should be sufficient to overcome misperceptions and reconcile conflicting interests.

In contrast to war, trade is seen as promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes. The dynamics of the marketplace bind individuals together in mutually profitable exchanges. This is not the case when governments dominate society and control activity for their own advantage. Because commerce creates a vested interest in peace, logic points to limiting government powers. The American historical experience seemed to offer vivid proof of the correctness of the liberal outlook on human affairs.

Much attention, of late, has also been given to the influence of religion on American foreign policy.17 Four components of this religious framework are especially important. First is the idea of America as God’s “chosen 59nation.” Second is the idea that America has a special mission or calling to transform the world. Third, in carrying out this mission, the United States is engaging in a struggle against evil. Finally, it is an apocalyptic outlook on world affairs. Change will come about not through gradual or subtle changes, but through a cataclysmic transformation in which evil is encountered and then decisively and permanently defeated.

Not all religions necessarily view world politics or America’s role in the world in the same way.18 Within Protestantism, three different schools of thought speak to the conduct of American foreign policy: fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and liberal Christianity.19 Liberal Christianity, which provided the worldview for such key members of the founding generation of “Cold Warriors” as Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles, is now in decline. It has been replaced by fundamentalism and evangelicalism as the politically dominant Protestant forces. Each provides a different lens through which to view America’s place in the world. Fundamentalists are deeply pessimistic about the possibility of bringing about a new world order and see a deep divide separating believers and nonbelievers. Defensive and self-confident, they hold an apocalyptic view of the future and are not particularly interested in cooperating with those with whom they disagree. Evangelicals also divide the world into believers and nonbelievers but are far more optimistic than fundamentalists in their view about the potential for progress and cooperation among different people.

Patterns

Three patterns of thought and action growing from these past experiences provide the building blocks from which the American national style emerges: unilateralism, moral pragmatism, and legalism.

Unilateralism

The first pattern is unilateralism, a predisposition to act alone in addressing foreign policy problems.20 Unilateralism does not dictate a specific course of action. Isolationism, neutrality, activism, and interventionism are all consistent with its basic orientation to world affairs. The unilateralist thrust of U.S. foreign policy represents a rejection of the balance-of-power approach associated with the European diplomatic tradition. It reflects the American sense of exceptionalism and is often perceived by others to be an insensitive and egoistic nationalism.

The best-known statement of the unilateralist position is the Monroe Doctrine. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, concern arose that Spain might attempt to reestablish its control over the newly independent Latin American republics. Great Britain approached the United States about the possibility of a joint declaration to prevent this from happening. The 60United States rejected the British proposal, only to turn around and make a unilateral declaration to the same end: The United States would not tolerate European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, and in return, it pledged not to interfere in European affairs. In 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was put forward. Spurred into action by the inability of the Dominican Republic to pay its foreign lenders, President Theodore Roosevelt sent in U.S. forces. The Roosevelt Corollary established the United States as the self-proclaimed policeman of the Western Hemisphere. It would play that role many times. The years 1904–1934 saw the United States send eight expeditionary forces to Latin America, conduct five military occupations ranging in duration from a few months to nineteen years, and take over customs collections duties twice. The legacy of the Monroe Doctrine continued into the post–World War II era. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored overthrows of the Arbenz government in Guatemala and the Allende government in Chile, U.S. behavior in the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, and the 1989 invasion of Panama testify to the continued influence of unilateralism on U.S. behavior in the Western Hemisphere.

The nature of American participation in World War I and the subsequent U.S. refusal to join the League of Nations also reflect the unilateralist impulse. Official World War I documents identify the victors as the Allied and Associated Powers. The only Associated Power of note was the United States. For U.S. policy makers, this was more than a mere symbolic separation from its European allies. Woodrow Wilson engaged in personal negotiations with Germany over ending the war without consulting the allies about the terms of a possible truce. The United States was also the only major victorious power not to join the League of Nations. This abstention is often attributed to isolationism, but it can also be seen as a triumph of unilateralism.21 Membership would have committed the United States to a collective security system that could have obliged it to undertake multilateral military action in the name of stopping international aggression.

The impact of unilateralist thinking also comes through clearly in the neutrality legislation of the 1930s. These acts placed an embargo on the sale of arms to warring states. Because arms sales were seen as the most likely method of U.S. entry into a war, they had to be prohibited regardless of the consequences of the embargo on events elsewhere. The post–World War II shift from isolationism to internationalism did not bring about an abandonment of unilateralism; it only covered it with a multilateral façade. Control over NATO’s nuclear forces remains firmly in the hands of the United States. The presence of the UN flag in Korea and references to SEATO treaty commitments in Vietnam could scarcely conceal the totally U.S. nature of these two wars. In the United Nations, the United States’ veto power protects its vital interests from the intrusion of other powers, and the system of weighted voting used in international financial 61organizations guarantees the United States a preponderant voice in their deliberations.

The American penchant for unilateralism was never far beneath the surface in its dealings with allies during the later years of the Cold War. Nowhere was this more evident than at the Reykjavik summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. James Schlesinger observed at the time that in proposing to eliminate all ballistic missiles within ten years, “the administration suddenly jettisoned 25 years of deterrence doctrine . . . without warning, consultation with Congress or its allies.”22

The global war against terrorism did not change this unilateralist impulse; if anything, it reinforced it. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush gave notice to the world that he was prepared to act unilaterally against terrorism. “Some governments will be timid in the face of terror. . . . If they do not act, America will.” Unilateralism is central to Trump’s America First approach to foreign policy and his disdain for working through alliances and international organizations.

Moral Pragmatism

The second pattern in American foreign policy is moral pragmatism.23 The American sense of morality involves two elements. The first is that state behavior can be judged by moral standards. The second is that American morality provides the universal standard for making those judgments. By definition, American actions are taken to be morally correct and justifiable. Flawed policy initiatives are routinely attributed to leadership deficiencies or breakdowns in organizational behavior, not to the American values that guided the action. In the aftermath of World War I, the Nye Committee investigated charges that the United States had been led into war by banking interests, and the McCarthy investigations explored alleged communist penetration of the State Department following the “loss of China” in the 1950s. This dimension of moral pragmatism reappears in Trump’s foreign policy, in his characterizations of the foreign policies of past administrations as “the worst deal ever.”

In judging state behavior by moral standards, the United States typically places responsibility for foreign policy problems on the evil nature of the opponent rather than on the underlying dynamics of world politics or its own actions. George Kennan, the author of the containment doctrine, put it this way: “There seems to be a curious American tendency to search, at all times, for a single external evil, to which all can be attributed.”

In line with Kennan’s observation, Paul Pillar, a CIA officer who once served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, has gone so far as to argue that the United States needs a villain in making foreign policy, and that it found one in Iran.24 The end result is that the United States has become preoccupied with Iran to a far greater extent than is warranted by 62the threat. Pillar argues that, by casting an adversary as a villain, several harmful byproducts for U.S. foreign policy follow, all of which have surfaced in negotiations to limit Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons: (1) denial that any reasonable basis for the adversary’s action exists; (2) underestimation of how much support the government may have among its people; and (3) underestimation of the adversary’s willingness to compromise.

American pragmatism takes the form of an engineering approach to foreign policy problem solving.25 The preferred method for uncovering the solution is to break the problem into smaller ones—the same way an engineer may take a blueprint and break a large task down into smaller ones. An organizational or mechanical solution is then devised for each of the subproblems. In using the engineering approach, it is not unusual to lose sight of the political context of the larger problem being addressed. When this happens, the result can be the substitution of means for ends, improvisation, or reliance on canned formulas to solve the problem.

U.S. involvement is typically put in terms of “setting things right.” It is assumed that a right answer does exist, and that it is the American answer. In addition, the answer is seen as permanent. Foreign policy crises arise when states see the problem in different terms. To some, this has been especially evident in U.S.–Soviet arms control talks. The American approach to strategic thinking treated nuclear war as a “mathematical exercise.” 26 Operating on the basis of a very different historical experience, the Soviets viewed war in quite different terms, marked by a great deal of uncertainty without a concrete solution.

The neutrality principle and related legislation of the 1930s provides an example of moral pragmatism at work. As first put forward, the legislation was easy to implement but paid little attention to the political realities of the day. Weapons were not to be sold to either side. Yet refusing to sell weapons to either participant guaranteed victory to the stronger side and invited its aggression. Neutrality legislation was repeatedly amended in an effort to close the gap between technique and political reality. In 1937, the president was given the authority to distinguish between civil strife and war. In 1939, legislation permitted the cash-and-carry purchase of weapons by belligerents, allowing the United States to sell weapons to Great Britain but making a mockery of the neutrality principle.

The potential dangers of rooting U.S. foreign policy on a foundation of moral pragmatism came through quite clearly in the Iran–Contra fiasco. Convinced of the moral correctness of the goal of freeing American hostages in Lebanon, the Reagan administration proceeded to sell arms to Iran, then diverted monies gained through these sales to the U.S.-backed Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The reliance on engineering solutions and formulas to solve problems also reached excess here, as witnessed by National Security Council (NSC) staffer Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North’s equation for achieving the release of the American hostages, part of which read: 1 707 w/300 TOWs (Tube-launched 63Optically tracked Wire-guided missiles) = 1 AMCIT (American citizen). More recently, this tendency to solve foreign policy problems by designing blueprints and implementing them is evident in the American propensity to equate building democracy with holding elections and writing a constitution.

A frequent complaint leveled at U.S. Cold War foreign policy was that the anti-communist impulse was used to sanction almost any course of action, no matter how immoral, if it brought about the greater goal of stopping communism.27 In the view of many, this attitude has carried over to the global war on terrorism and exists today in Trump’s willingness to invoke seldom-used declarations of emergency as the basis for his actions, to use tariffs as his primary foreign policy bargaining tool, and to engage in brinkmanship in negotiating agreements that leave weaker states little choice but to acquiesce.

Legalism

The third pattern in U.S. foreign policy, legalism, grows out of the rejection of the balance of power as a means for preserving national security and the liberal view that people are rational beings who abhor war and favor the peaceful settlement of disputes.28 A central task of U.S. foreign policy, therefore, is to create a global system of institutions and rules that allow states to settle their disputes without recourse to war. The primary institutional embodiments of the legalist perspective are the League of Nations and the United Nations. Also relevant are the host of post–World War II international economic organizations that the United States joined (i.e., the World Bank and International Monetary Fund). Just as commerce between individuals binds them together, international trade is assumed to bind states together and reduce the likelihood of war.

The rule-making thrust to legalism is found in the repeated use of the pledge system as an instrument of foreign policy.29 In creating a pledge system, the United States puts forward a statement of principle and then asks other states to adhere to it, either by signing a treaty or by pledging their support for the principle. Noticeably absent is any meaningful enforcement mechanism. The Open-Door Notes exemplify this strategy for world affairs problem solving. In the Notes, issued between 1899 and 1900, the United States unilaterally proclaimed its opposition to spheres of influence in China and asked other powers to do likewise, but it did not specify any sanctions against a state that reneged on its pledge. The Washington Naval Disarmament Conference of 1922 and the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact are also examples of use of the pledge system. The Washington Naval Disarmament Conference sought to prevent war by establishing a fixed power ratio for certain categories of warships but failed to include inspection or enforcement provisions. Its restraining qualities were soon overtaken by a naval arms race in areas 64left uncovered by the agreement and by a general heightening of international tensions. The Kellogg–Briand Pact sought to outlaw war as an instrument of foreign policy. Yet, true to its unilateralist impulse, the United States stated that signing the pact would not prevent it from enforcing the Monroe Doctrine or obligate it to participate in sanctions against other states. Agreements reached during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and SALT II) followed the tradition of the pledge system. They specified in broad terms the permissible nuclear inventories of the Soviet Union and the United States, without creating any enforcement provisions.

Variations of the pledge system have become a prominent feature of U.S. contemporary bilateral and multilateral trade policy. Confronted with an intransigent Japan in 1993, U.S. negotiators settled for a “framework” agreement that specified how future agreements would seek to resolve issues of trade imbalances and barriers to trade without detailing any particulars. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed in 2010 between the U.S. and Russia, contained no enforcement procedures. Neither did the 2015 Paris Climate agreement. Countries were expected to set their own reduction standards, and international shaming was to serve as the enforcement mechanism.

Legalism has also placed a heavy burden on U.S. foreign policy. In rejecting power politics as an approach for providing for U.S. national security, policy makers have denied themselves the use of the “reasons-of-state” argument as a justification for their actions. Instead, they have sought to clothe their actions in terms of legal principles. Post–World War II examples include fighting the Korean War under the UN flag, seeking the approval of the Organization of American States for a blockade during the Cuban missile crisis, and citing a request by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States as part of the justification for going into Grenada. This pattern has continued in the post–Cold War era. Obama obtained UN support for his air attacks on Libya, George H. W. Bush moved forward with his military campaign against Iraq after getting UN support, and Clinton did the same for his use of force in Haiti. On the surface it might appear that Trump’s foreign policy has abandoned legalism; instead, he has drawn upon it to support his unilateralist impulse repeatedly, arguing that the U.S. is justified in leaving NATO, trade agreements, and other cooperative ventures because other states have not met their responsibilities and have exploited the United States.

Consequences of the American National Style

As suggested earlier, these three patterns (unilateralism, moral pragmatism, and legalism) come together to support both isolationism and internationalism. They also produce four consequences for the overall conduct 65of U.S. foreign policy. The first is a tendency to “win the war and lose the peace.” As Robert Osgood wrote in 1957:

The United States has demonstrated an impressive ability to defeat the enemy. Yet . . . it has been unable to deter war; it has been unprepared to fight war; it has failed to gain the objectives it fought for; and its settlements have not brought satisfactory peace.30

For many, his observation still rings true today.

The inability to “win the peace” stems from the American tendency to see war and peace as polar opposites. War is a social aberration, and peace is the normal state of affairs. Strategies and tactics appropriate for one arena have no place in the other. The two categories must be kept separate to prevent the calculations of war from corrupting the principles of peace. In times of peace, accomplishment of foreign policy objectives rely on reason, discussion, and trade. In times of war, power is the appropriate tool. The absence of a conceptual link between war and peace means that war cannot serve as an instrument of statecraft and that war plans will be drawn up in a political vacuum. The objective of war is to defeat the enemy as swiftly as possible. Only when that is accomplished can we return to the concerns of peace.

One example of the consequences of the American national style is the Bracero Program (see the Historical Lesson).

Historical Lesson

The Bracero Program

World War II led to a significant demand for additional workers in the United States, most notably in agriculture and the railroad industry. Between 1942 and 1964, this demand was filled by Mexican workers, “braceros,” who crossed into the United States as part of a guest worker program negotiated between the two countries officially known as the Mexican Contract Labor Program. The wartime years produced the smallest migrant flow of any of these years, with 49,000–82,000 Mexican workers crossing the border. From 1947 to 1954, the average annual migration was 116,000–141,000 per year. In the last ten years of the Bracero Program, there were an average of 333,000 migrant worker contracts.

This was not the first attempt to regulate the entry of Mexican labor across the border. In 1909, President William Howard Taft signed an executive agreement with Mexico, permitting thousands of Mexican contract workers to harvest sugar beets in Colorado and Nebraska. When the United States entered World War I, restrictions were eased, and the number of Mexican workers increased to 73,000. The Mexican government viewed this situation with some alarm. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 contained a provision that sought to safeguard the rights of emigrant workers, and it attempted to discourage workers from going to the United States unless they already had contracts that provided such protections. These efforts were largely ineffective. In 1929, with the Great Depression under way in the United States and large numbers of Mexicans returning home due to lack of jobs, the Mexican government sought but failed to obtain a bilateral agreement with the United States that would allow it to jointly manage the flow of workers across the border.

At the outset of the Bracero Program, Mexico possessed significant bargaining strength that allowed it to insert provisions protecting migrant rights. These included insisting that the braceros be paid the prevailing wage and prohibiting Mexicans from being rejected at “white” restaurants and other facilities in the American South. Mexico blacklisted Texas because of its discrimination policies and would not allow braceros to go there.

Gradually, however, Mexico’s leverage began to weaken. One important reason was the growing phenomenon of illegal, or “wetback,” immigration into areas such as Texas, where demand for migrant labor was great. In 1943, Congress passed Public Law 45, which gave legal status to the agreement reached with Mexico in 1942. One of its key provisions was that the United States could unilaterally declare an “open border” if need be. This power was used in May 1943 to grant one-year entrance permits. Texas farmers rushed into Mexico and began recruiting migrants, and the process undermined the orderly bilateral recruitment of workers. Lax border control enforcement in the early 1950s further contributed to the flow of illegal migrant workers.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States sought to deal with the problem of illegal migrant labor by transforming it into legal labor through mass deportations and mass legalizations. The scope of the problem was immense. In New Mexico, braceros made up 70 percent of the seasonal labor force. From 1947 to 1949, the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor estimated that 142,000 deportable Mexicans in the United States were legalized as braceros. In 1950, slightly more than 19,800 new bracero contracts were awarded, but an estimated 96,200 illegal Mexicans were working in the United States. From 1955 to 1959, just 18 percent of all seasonal farm laborers were braceros.

The legacy of the Bracero Program is found in many areas. Getting seasonal and regionally concentrated agricultural jobs, rather than establishing permanent residence, became the norm for Mexicans coming to the United States. Part of the Mexican government’s response to the end of the Bracero Program was the creation of jobs along the U.S. border for returning migrants, which became the Border Industrialization or Maquiladora Program. This program has not worked as expected, since firms have preferred to hire young Mexican women rather than returning braceros.

Within the United States, the end of the Bracero Program has not ended the debate over how to address the problem of illegal Mexican workers in the United States or how to provide sanctioned labor to employers. The Reagan administration proposed a pilot program that gave 50,000 Mexicans temporary work permits each year. The George W. Bush administration floated the idea of a massive amnesty program for illegal Mexican migrants in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks. When the administration dropped these plans, Mexico called for establishment of a new guest worker program.

Applying the Lesson

1. What elements of the American national style can be found in the idea of a fence to control immigration and the Bracero Program?

2. Rate the importance of foreign policy and domestic policy considerations in these two policies.

3. Should we think about immigration primarily as an economic problem or as a national security problem?

The closing stages of World War II illustrate the problem inherent in the war–peace dichotomy. Should U.S. forces have pushed as far as possible eastward for the political purpose of denying the Red Army control over as much territory as possible, or should they have stopped as soon as the purely military objectives of the offensive were realized and not risked the lives of U.S. soldiers on nonmilitary goals? The Cold War East–West boundary in Europe reflected the choice of the latter course of action.

The George W. Bush administration was not immune from this artificial separation of war and peace. A sharp distinction between the two was evident in planning for the Iraq War. According to the original war plan, U.S. troops would be withdrawn within six months of the invasion; planning for the postwar transition to democracy was virtually absent. The presence of a sharp war–peace distinction and another consequence, impatience (to be discussed shortly), are evident in Obama’s accelerated efforts to leave Afghanistan as the victor after bin Laden’s death and the quick exit of American forces from Libya after Muammar Gaddafi was removed from power.

A second consequence of the American national style is the existence of a double standard in judging the behavior of states. Convinced of its righteousness and the universality of its values, and predisposed to act unilaterally, the United States has often engaged in actions that it condemns when they are taken by other states. The United States can be trusted to test and develop nuclear weapons, but other states, especially Third World states, cannot. Soviet interventions in Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia are condemned as imperialism, while U.S. interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama are held to be morally defensible. The United States urges its allies not to sell weapons to terrorists or those who support them, while it is selling weapons to Iran in the hopes of securing 68the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. The reverse condition also holds. Activities considered by most states to be a normal part of world affairs have been viewed as highly controversial by the United States. The clandestine collection of information and covert attempts to influence developments in other states, both long-standing instruments of foreign policy, are cases in point. The notion that different rules might apply to the United States than to other states surfaced after revelations of widespread abuse by American interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison. President Bush dismissed as “absurd” an Amnesty International report charging the administration with having created a gulag at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The third consequence of the American national style is ambivalence toward diplomacy. In the abstract, diplomacy is valued as part of the process by which states peacefully resolve their disputes. Along with international law and international organizations, diplomacy occupies a central place in liberal thinking about the proper forums for conducting foreign relations. The product of diplomacy is viewed with great skepticism, however. If the U.S. position is morally correct, how can it compromise (an activity vital to the success of diplomacy) without rejecting its own sense of mission and its principles? As political scientist John Spanier notes, under these conditions compromise is indistinguishable from appeasement.31 Regardless of whether the other party to the negotiations was a twentieth-century communist state or an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century European state, the fruits of diplomacy have been looked on with suspicion. Such feelings of mistrust and doubt are evident today across the political spectrum. They can be seen in Trump’s rejection of Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and fears about what Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have discussed in their private meetings.

The fourth consequence of the American national style is impatience. Optimistic at the start of an undertaking and convinced of the correctness of its position in both a moral and a technical sense, Americans tend to want quick results, and become impatient when positive results are not soon forthcoming. A common reaction is to turn away in frustration. The next time a similar situation presents itself and U.S. action is needed, none may be taken. Calls for “no more Vietnams” reflect this sense of frustration, as did the demand to get U.S. Marines out of Lebanon following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. compound during the Reagan administration. Impatience was evident in the expectation that the United States could oversee the election of an interim Iraqi government, the writing and ratification of a constitution, and the election of a permanent government in just twelve months. As one columnist noted, the problem is that Iraq does not operate on Washington’s clock.32

The desire for quick and visible results is seen by many as creating a bias toward the use of the military as an instrument of foreign policy. Neither diplomacy nor economic power offers quick results; both are slow working and work best when used out of the public eye. Using the military 69as an instrument of foreign policy can create a vicious circle, however. The demand for quick results leads to a reliance on military power, but the rigid distinction between war and peace makes it difficult to use that power effectively. Use of military power may be marked by a double standard or, as Osgood observed, failure to meet political objectives. If the latter occurs, then diplomacy may utilized. Yet here again, the results are likely to be slow in coming, and may be viewed with skepticism. Frustration will set in and dominate U.S. foreign policy until a consensus supports new foreign policy initiatives.

Recall that the American national style does not produce a single type of foreign policy, nor are its various elements always present to the same degree. It can accommodate a variety of foreign policies, ranging from internationalism to isolationism.

Voices from the Past

Because not everyone sees the world the same way or learns the same lessons from the past, many find the most important source of information about the American national style to be the foreign policy ideas developed by earlier generations of policy makers.

One of these is President John Adams. According to Adams, American foreign policy should be based on the principle that the United States is “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” but “the champion and vindicator only of her own.”33 Adams was putting forward an argument for nonintervention into the affairs of others and advocating a foreign policy that was to be based on the “power of example.” To go further, he warned, would involve the United States in “wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition.”

Conservative internationalists point to the writings of Theodore Roosevelt.34 He would replace liberal internationalism’s conception of humanitarian intervention as a philanthropic exercise with one rooted in a sense of nationalistic patriotism. Before the Spanish–American War, Roosevelt wrote, “the useful member of a community is the man who first and foremost attends to his own rights and duties . . . the useful member of the brotherhood of nations is that nation which is most thoroughly saturated with the national ideal.”

Walter Mead identifies four other figures from the past as particularly influential in setting the goals and policies that continue to shape American foreign policy: Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. For virtually the entire post–World War II era, U.S. foreign policy was organized around a combination of Wilsonian and Hamiltonian principles with occasional periods—such as after Vietnam—when Jeffersonian ideas gained prominence. Today, we are witnessing a rise in the influence of Jacksonianism on U.S. foreign policy, as evidenced by the manner in which Trump’s foreign policy is carried out and the goals that it pursues.

Wilson’s core foreign policy ideas are found in his Fourteen Points, which he presented in a speech to Congress in 1918. They constituted an outline for constructing a new world order, one which would be marked by “open” era of international politics, “a general association of nations,” and “political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” Looking beyond the Fourteen Points, Wilsonianism rested on four elements. The first was promotion of democracy, the second was encouragement of free trade, and the third was weapons control. Together, these three elements would place restraints on the exercise of government power and provide space for the development of individual liberty. The fourth element, the League of Nations, would provide an alternative to balance-of-power politics in ensuring national security.35

Early evaluations of Wilson’s foreign policy held it to be naively idealistic and fundamentally flawed. This is no longer the case. His foreign policy principles are now embraced by many as those of a vindicated visionary, one who possessed a “higher realism” in his handling of foreign affairs.36 After the 9/11 terrorist attack, George W. Bush, who had promised a moderate foreign policy, began to sound very much like Wilson. In his 2002 State of the Union address Bush stated, “America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for people everywhere. . . . We have no intention of imposing our culture. But America will always stand firm for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity.”

The renewed interest in Wilsonianism has not met with universal approval. Some opponents assert that the term lacks clear meaning, to the point that virtually all recent presidents could be termed Wilsonians.37 For example, the Reagan Doctrine (see  chapter 1 ) could be seen as the ultimate embodiment of the Wilsonian legacy given its commitment to expand democracy. David Fromkin poses another problem with Wilsonianism as a model for contemporary American foreign policy.38 He concludes that one of its core assumptions is the importance of a strong presidency. Wilson saw the president’s control of foreign policy as “very absolute.” He believed that the Senate had no choice but to ratify any treaty submitted to it by the president, regardless of any doubts about its wisdom or the secrecy with which it may have been negotiated. Wilson also advocated the Espionage Act of 1917. Edward Snowden (NSA leaks), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union) are among those charged with violating this Act.

Alexander Hamilton advanced a concept of foreign policy that centered on economic considerations. The first task of U.S. foreign policy was promoting the health of the American economy at home and abroad. To that end, Hamilton emphasized the importance of a strong alliance between big business and government. This positioned the United States to engage in the global economy on favorable terms. He advocated a policy of freedom of the seas, and an open-door policy ensuring the free flow of money 71across borders. In the Hamiltonian perspective on foreign policy, excessive amounts of military power and wars were threats to economic stability and growth. Military power must be used for the appropriate purposes and with care. After World War II, this required an American foreign policy that worked with other states to promote and protect an open international economic order. More recently, Hamiltonians were not opposed to the post–9/11 American military offensive against terrorism, because those attacks and their aftershocks threatened the health of American and global economic stability and growth.

Thomas Jefferson’s approach to foreign policy is seen by many as the foundation for isolationism. At its core is the belief that the primary mission of U.S. foreign policy is to protect and perfect democracy at home. From the Jeffersonian perspective, excess foreign involvements, whether for building democracy or economic development, represent a danger to American democracy because they foster the creation of a strong government. A strong government weakens the system of checks and balances, promotes secrecy, and threatens individual liberties, especially when it involves the use of military force. From the Jeffersonian perspective, what is needed is a constitutional foreign policy. To that end Jeffersonians support the War Powers Act, which attempts to limit the president’s use of force; oppose fast track legislation that limits Congressional power to amend international agreements; and oppose National Security Agency (NSA) domestic spying programs implemented after the 9/11 attacks. Senator Ron Paul has advanced a libertarian foreign policy agenda that is Jeffersonian in outlook, expressing concern about the corrupting effects of global involvement on American democracy.39 This has been particularly notable in his opposition to the NSA domestic surveillance program .

The lead figure in the fourth foreign policy world view impacting the American national style is Andrew Jackson.40 His writings and actions provide a foundation for those who stress the populist principles of courage, honor, and self-reliance in the conduct of American foreign policy. Rooted in the American frontier experience, Jacksonians draw a clear and firm distinction between members of their community and outsiders. The purpose of government is to protect and promote the interests of community members against outsiders who, by definition, threaten it. These outsiders, who hold different economic and cultural values, are found both beyond America’s borders and within the government.41 Jacksonians value simple and direct solutions to problems, fearing that complex solutions inevitably come to serve the interests of these outsiders rather than the people. Pessimists at heart, Jacksonians see the community as being threatened constantly by outsiders. For that reason, they champion a foreign policy of constant vigilance backed by overwhelming might that may be employed with few, if any, constraints. For Jacksonians, the objective of war is victory, not a negotiated solution or the achievement of limited objectives. Jacksonians are slow to focus on foreign policy issues, which 72works against achievement of victory in war or other foreign policy initiatives. Domestic issues take precedent. Additionally, once a foreign policy commitment has been made, Jacksonians find it difficult to change their position.

Jacksonianism never disappeared completely from the political scene. The Tea Party movement is often seen as evidence of its most recent revival, although its foreign policy agenda also contains strains of other voices from the past.42 Donald Trump’s election in 2016 is seen as the culmination of this revival.

Over the Horizon: A Millennial Foreign Policy?

The American national style should not be viewed as being frozen in place. Change is possible but not inevitable, and its direction is unpredictable. In the eyes of some observers, change might come as a result of the increased presence of women, blacks, and Hispanics in the policy-making process.43 Their histories read quite differently from those presented in the standardized accounts of the American past, and they may bring to the policy process a very different style of acting and thinking about solutions to foreign policy problems.

A key question looking over the horizon for the U.S. national style is: Can it change in a way to adapt to future foreign policy challenges, or will traditional ways of defining problems and solutions continue? For example, will engineering solutions such as building a wall continue to dominate thinking about protecting U.S. borders, or will other approaches be used? Will border policies be rooted in a nationalist or globalist perspective?

At a minimum, two different scenarios present themselves. The first is a continuation of the important role that Jacksonian thinking currently plays regarding border policy. This is consistent with the view that Trump’s election is best seen as a reflection of an underlying sense of frustration with the American political scene, and not simply a matter of personality and political style. As such, Trump’s Jacksonian political agenda can be expected to outlive his presidency and influence future foreign policy making.

The second scenario involves change. A potential source of change in the American national style is the emergence into political power of a new generation: Millennials.44 Born between 1980 and 1997, they make up almost one quarter of the adult U.S. population. They reached adulthood after the Cold War ended, so they have few memories of a pre–9/11 world with its terrorist attacks and Middle East wars. In addition, they are far more likely than older generations to see the United States as having provoked 9/11 through its foreign policy actions.

Research shows that Millennials differ from older Americans in their foreign policy outlooks in three critical ways: (1) they see the world as significantly less threatening and are less worried about national security; (2) they are more supportive of international cooperation; and (3) while compared to older generations they are more hesitant to support use of military force in specific cases, they do not reject using force out of hand. They are more supportive of multilateral military efforts than unilateral action.

These contrasting generational positions are very evident in Millennial views on border crossing. A February 2017 PEW poll showed that 78 percent of those aged 18–29 opposed building a wall, as did 65 percent of those aged 30–49. Support for the wall in older age groups dipped below 50 percent. A January 2019 PEW poll found that 73 percent of those aged 18–29 and 63 percent of those aged 30–39 opposed expanding the wall, compared with 51 percent of those in the 50–64 age group and 48 percent of those over 65.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Could the United States become isolationist again? Why or why not?

2. What is the most important element in the American national style for understanding U.S. foreign policy, and why?

3. How difficult would it be for the American national style in U.S. foreign policy to change? Explain your answer.

Key Terms

· containment, 54

· deterrence, 54

· internationalism, 56

· isolationism, 56

· legalism, 63

· moral pragmatism, 61

· national style, 54

· neoconservatism, 54

· pledge system, 63

· preemption, 54

· unilateralism, 59

· Wilsonianism, 70

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Further Reading

Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are seduced by War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

The author traces the history of militarism in American political thought and argues that, after Vietnam, both the American political left and right have embraced militarism as a means of advancing their political agendas.

Judith Goldstein, Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).

This book shows how new ideas shape foreign policy decisions long after they have been introduced by becoming embedded in political institutions.

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John G. Ikenberry, et al. The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the 21st Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

This volume presents a collection of essays on the meaning of Wilsonianism and its impact on contemporary American foreign policy. Special attention is given to the Iraq War and the Bush administration.

Robert Kaplan, “Clash of Exceptionalisms,” Foreign Affairs 97 (March 2018), 139–48.

This essay argues that Trump’s America First exceptionalism is not a break from the past, calling it “American exceptionalism 3.0.” The author argues that the United States will need a new exceptionalism after Trump to guide its grand strategy.

Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy (Boston: Beacon, 1969).

This classic volume presents a “revisionist” interpretation of American foreign policy, which draws heavily on the influence of special interests and capitalism as its driving force.

Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt,” Foreign Affairs 96 (March 2017), 2–7.

The author asserts that Trump’s American populism is rooted in the thought and culture of Andrew Jackson. He states that Jacksonian populism is only intermittently concerned with foreign policy and examines its implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Henry Nau, Conservative Internationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).

Traditional foreign policy debates often stress the tension between liberal internationalism and nationalism. This book examines another perspective, conservative internationalism, and traces its development from Jefferson to Reagan.

David Unger, “A Better Internationalism,” World Policy Journal, 29 (2012), 101–10.

Liberal internationalism is pictured as having become a code language for U.S. pressure against other governments and having been reduced to a tool for crisis management. In its place the author asserts that there needs to be a policy of constructive internationalism.

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