Walter Russell Mead: Relax, America will survive George W. Bush
[Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World.]
Nothing in the field of international affairs is as scandalous and as perplexing as the fact of American power. From Revolutionary times to the present, virtually all observers foreign and domestic have agreed that Americans don't do foreign policy well. Moralistic, uninformed, unsubtle, alternately isolationist and hyperactive, hamstrung by a clumsy constitutional process and a public that oscillates between fatuous idealism and ignorant bellicosity, U.S. foreign policy has been shocking the world for more than 200 years.
And, worse still, we win. For two centuries, the United States has astounded critics with its bad foreign policy--and, for two centuries, the United States has steadily risen to an unprecedented level of power and influence in the international system. Why does the team with the worst skills in the league end up with so many pennants?
The spectacle is often surreal. The United States seems to wander nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another--like a version of the chronically oblivious cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Thomas Jefferson's embargoes against Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars crippled U.S. trade and lowered our prestige; the episode remains a textbook example of moralistic illusions effecting poor foreign policy choices. But Jefferson's America escaped a generation of devastating world conflict with few scratches, and no country emerged with gains that truly matched the Louisiana Purchase. The pattern continued, as a blundering, often racist foreign policy allowed the United States to expand to the Pacific Ocean and assert a hemispheric hegemony that endures to this day, overcoming the opposition of European powers that had larger armies and navies, better-organized policy- making, a more nuanced view of the world, and a less cumbersome political structure.
The pattern continued in the twentieth century. Historians--notably George F. Kennan--have justly excoriated the profound ignorance, moralism, and wishful thinking of American statesmen in the last century. A strong commitment to the European balance of power before World War I would probably have prevented that terrible conflict; Germany would have realized that a well-armed United States, prepared to support Britain and France, made victory impossible. Wilson's disastrous conduct at Versailles, the Washington establishment's equally contemptible failure to integrate the United States into the interwar global security system, the passive and mindless acquiescence in Franco-British containment of Hitler--America's contribution to the suffering of World War II is much greater than most of us even now are willing to acknowledge.
But, devastating and horrible as the two world wars were, the net result for the United States was surprisingly benign. We sustained serious casualties and we spent a lot of money, but Mr. Magoo suffered far less than either his allies or his enemies; indeed, economically, technologically, and politically, the United States emerged from both world wars stronger than when we entered them....
[HNN Editor: This article extends for 10 web pages.]
Read entire article at New Republic
Nothing in the field of international affairs is as scandalous and as perplexing as the fact of American power. From Revolutionary times to the present, virtually all observers foreign and domestic have agreed that Americans don't do foreign policy well. Moralistic, uninformed, unsubtle, alternately isolationist and hyperactive, hamstrung by a clumsy constitutional process and a public that oscillates between fatuous idealism and ignorant bellicosity, U.S. foreign policy has been shocking the world for more than 200 years.
And, worse still, we win. For two centuries, the United States has astounded critics with its bad foreign policy--and, for two centuries, the United States has steadily risen to an unprecedented level of power and influence in the international system. Why does the team with the worst skills in the league end up with so many pennants?
The spectacle is often surreal. The United States seems to wander nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another--like a version of the chronically oblivious cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Thomas Jefferson's embargoes against Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars crippled U.S. trade and lowered our prestige; the episode remains a textbook example of moralistic illusions effecting poor foreign policy choices. But Jefferson's America escaped a generation of devastating world conflict with few scratches, and no country emerged with gains that truly matched the Louisiana Purchase. The pattern continued, as a blundering, often racist foreign policy allowed the United States to expand to the Pacific Ocean and assert a hemispheric hegemony that endures to this day, overcoming the opposition of European powers that had larger armies and navies, better-organized policy- making, a more nuanced view of the world, and a less cumbersome political structure.
The pattern continued in the twentieth century. Historians--notably George F. Kennan--have justly excoriated the profound ignorance, moralism, and wishful thinking of American statesmen in the last century. A strong commitment to the European balance of power before World War I would probably have prevented that terrible conflict; Germany would have realized that a well-armed United States, prepared to support Britain and France, made victory impossible. Wilson's disastrous conduct at Versailles, the Washington establishment's equally contemptible failure to integrate the United States into the interwar global security system, the passive and mindless acquiescence in Franco-British containment of Hitler--America's contribution to the suffering of World War II is much greater than most of us even now are willing to acknowledge.
But, devastating and horrible as the two world wars were, the net result for the United States was surprisingly benign. We sustained serious casualties and we spent a lot of money, but Mr. Magoo suffered far less than either his allies or his enemies; indeed, economically, technologically, and politically, the United States emerged from both world wars stronger than when we entered them....
[HNN Editor: This article extends for 10 web pages.]