NEITHER A WILSON NOR A HAMILTON BE :

Santayana Syndrome (a review of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World by Walter Russell Mead) (James P. Rubin, 03.26.02, New Republic)

Mead's approach is to offer an even-handed analysis of the emergence and the endurance of what he calls Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Jacksonian, and Wilsonian foreign policies. If nothing else, his account serves two important purposes. It debunks the myth of an America in eternal pursuit of "virtuous isolation," and it explains why the ideas and practices of "realism," the diplomacy commonly associated with Talleyrand, Bismarck, and Metternich, among others, have enjoyed so little appeal in America. [...]

He begin with the Hamiltonians. This school is built on the conviction of the primacy of international economics. To ensure America's independence and prosperity in its early years, the United States had to protect the freedom of the seas, open the door for our exports around the world, and prevent any other power from challenging these principles. [...]

Jefferson's school, according to Mead, was (and is: again, Mead believes that these types persist to this day) concerned mainly with protecting American democracy against the dangers of executive power and limiting the costs and the risks of whatever foreign policies were necessary to protect our independence. Idealism at home, realism abroad: this was the Jeffersonian motto.

The Jeffersonians, beginning with Jefferson, feared that Hamiltonian engagement abroad would lead to a standing army and navy, and new powers for the president, and a weaker congressional oversight role, and a greater degree of secrecy in government. When the Hamiltonians looked around the world, they saw opportunity. The Jeffersonians saw danger. They were the early deficit hawks, believing that wars or conflicts abroad aimed at opening markets would increase the national debt, and benefit mainly the bankers, and oppress the citizenry with higher taxes. Eisenhower's concern about the rise of a military-industrial complex was a supremely Jeffersonian concern.

As to the morality of foreign affairs, Jeffersonians had their hearts in the right place. They did see the United States as a "city on the hill." But they did not believe that America should promote freedom and prosperity by exporting our way of doing things. Instead the United States was to teach its values and its successes by example. John Quincy Adams expressed this view definitively when he remarked that the United States "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."[...]

The Wilsonian grand strategy became clear during the extraordinary debate over the League of Nations. It was this modern American school of thought about international affairs that was the first to argue what is accepted wisdom today: that democracies make better, more reliable, and more predictable partners than dictatorships. Like the Jeffersonians, the Wilsonians believed that monarchies and dictators did not reflect the enduring national interests of their countries, but were the egregious causes of needless wars provoked by petty personal quarrels and wild policy swings when governments fell.

This notion of democratization as a goal of foreign policy led to the Wilsonians' most important contribution. In seeking to make the world "safe for democracy," they placed the United States on the right side of history as democratic change and independence slowly and fitfully swept across the globe. While Hamiltonians and Wilsonians broadly agreed on issues such as anti-colonialism and a stable world order, it was Wilson who promoted Jefferson's declaration of independence, with its ringing articulation of the natural rights of man, into a document of American foreign policy, and made the promotion of those same rights into a guiding principle of American actions abroad. [...]

The Jacksonians, in Mead's account, arose out of the frontier and the folk culture that Andrew Jackson most perfectly and noisily represented. This view of American foreign policy remains most popular in the Southwest, the Deep South, and parts of the Midwest, where the frontier experience was crucial to the development of local politics. The Jacksonians are the warriors of American society. While they prefer to avoid conflict with the rest of the world and often rail at the complications of economic engagement, they believe that if war comes we should deploy all our power in ruthless pursuit of total victory. The Japanese admiral who was said to describe the United States as a "sleeping giant" was referring to America in its Jacksonian mood, a country slow to anger but fearsome in anger.

The Jacksonians, as Mead describes them, are somewhat uncomfortable with representative government. They prefer a populist, Perot-style democracy at home and simple solutions abroad. They are protectionist in opposition to the global trade strategies of the Hamiltonians, and highly critical of the complexities in the patient diplomacy of the Jeffersonians, and contemptuous of the Wilsonians for the naivete of their attempt to promote democratic values abroad. For obvious reasons, this is the American school that Europeans least understand, the American taste for effective action that they regard as crude cowboy diplomacy.

Mead rightly points out that it is this school that provides the political support for the high levels of spending that have made our military so successful. And it is the Jacksonians who are prepared to make the sacrifices in blood and treasure to achieve victory when war breaks out. They are decidedly not isolationist. While they may have a limited view of America's global interests, they are prepared to act--and act decisively--if those interests are threatened. Whether it is in defense of the lives of American citizens and missionaries abroad or the right of continental expansion, or in response to the sinking of American ships in World War I and Pearl Harbor or the loss of vital oil in the Persian Gulf, the Jacksonian impulse has made America's military supreme and our rise to global power possible.

The wife saw Mr. Mead on FOX News the other night and was very impressed. Although the titles of the classifications are discomfiting , I'd tend (as I suspect would most conservatives) to be a Jeffersonian (basically an isolationist) until we're challenged by an enemy and then a Jacksonian (a unilateralist).

Certainly, the most counterproductive and dangerous of these philosophies has been Wilsonianism, which has created instability and exacerbated ethnic violence by laying the intellectual groundwork for demands of self-governance by every single ethnic group across the globe. The disintegration of Yugoslavia into warring tribes represents the bloody realization of Wilsonian ideals and amply indicts such idealism.

Hamiltonianism is just too expensive and ultimately unnecessary. In war after war (Civil War and WWII in particular) we've demonstrated how easy it is for us to catch up to "better prepared" enemies. In fact, it's arguably the case that our relative unpreparedness has been a boon, because we approach armaments manufacture with fresh and innovative minds and tend not to be locked into set ways of doing things.

At any rate, the book sounds interesting. Hopefully, Brian Lamb will snag Mr. Mead for Booknotes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 29, 2002 8:50 AM