Mr. Mead makes the case that there are four basic schools of foreign policy thought in the United States, each of long duration, and that the rough and tumble of representative democracy has served us well by elevating the different schools as they are needed and shunting them to the side when the policies they advocate seem inappropriate. He believes, and offers some evidence for the notion, that this flexibility has made America far more successful in its foreign policy than anyone realizes. In this compelling, and perhaps overly flattering, scenario America is not a mere beneficiary of special providence but is guided instead by the wisdom of her people and the genius of her uniquely responsive political system.
Several years ago, Walter McDougall wrote a terrific book, Promised Land, Crusader State, in which he identified two main impulses that influenced American foreign policy. The first was relatively isolationist, emphasizing America's privileged position as a "promised land", which could serve as an example to all mankind, a "shining city on a hill", but would only be contaminated if it were to have too much contact with the rest of the world. Over against this was set an interventionist belief in America as a force for bettering the world, a "crusader state", with a mission to bring democracy, freedom, and human rights to less fortunate nations. Mr. Mead more or less subdivides these two impulses :
Americans through the centuries seem to have had four basic ways of looking at foreign policy, which have reflected contrasting and sometimes complementary ways of looking at domestic policy as well. Hamiltonians regard a strong alliance between the national government and big business as the key both to domestic stability and to effective action abroad, and they have long focused on the nation's need to be integrated into the global economy on favorable terms. Wilsonians believe that the United States has both a moral obligation and an important national interest in spreading American democratic and social values throughout the world, creating a peaceful international community that accepts the rule of law. Jeffersonians hold that American foreign policy should be less concerned about spreading democracy abroad than about safeguarding it at home; they have historically been skeptical about Hamiltonian and Wilsonian policies that involve the United States with unsavory allies abroad or that increase the risks of war. Finally, a large populist school I call Jacksonian believes
that the most important goal of the U.S. government in both foreign and domestic should be the physical security and the economic well-being
of the American people.
These classifications effectively split isolationism into a conservative, or at least muscular, form (Jacksonianism) and a liberal form (Jeffersonianism), one more concerned with domestic social policies. They also separate interventionism or internationalism into a mostly pro-business form (Hamiltonianism) and a more philanthropic form (Wilsonianism). This seems a useful way of viewing our politics, as it provides outlets for internationalists and isolationists within each political party, with Jacksonians and Hamiltonians, broadly speaking, making up the Republicans and the Democrats consisting, again broadly, of Wilsonians and Jeffersonians (though as we'll see later, he stacks the deck in favor of Jeffersonians to such a degree that you'd have to say that many Republicans are Jeffersonian too).
Having established these four worldviews--he calls them a new paradigm for understanding American foreign policy--Mr. Mead contends that each is valuable in its own way and that their greatest value may come from how they play off of one another
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