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The statesmen of our revolutionary era espoused the
cause of nonintervention. In his celebrated Farewell
Address in 1796 George Washington urged Americans to
avoid taking sides in foreign quarrels. America should
maintain liberal and impartial commercial relations
with the rest of the world while having “with them
as little political connection as possible.”
By maneuvering to avoid war with France, despite strong
pressure from within his own party, President John Adams
successfully practiced nonintervention. In his first
inaugural address President Thomas Jefferson called
for “peace, commerce and honest friendship with
all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Our
geographical position, British traditions of insularity,
and preoccupation with expansion into contiguous lands,
reinforced nonintervention as a premise of U.S. foreign
relations. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) perhaps signaled
U.S. pretensions to hegemony in the Western Hemisphere,
but did pledge that the United States would stay out
of European quarrels. In the 18th and 19th centuries
it was nonintervention which was the norm – in
contrast with our situation today.
John
Quincy Adams summed up the noninterventionist outlook
in his oft-quoted Fourth of July Address in 1821: “America
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. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance
of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners
than her own, were they even the banners of foreign
independence, she would involve herself beyond the power
of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue,
of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume
the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. The fundamental
maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty
to force.”1 This still
seems like sound advice.
Nonintervention
remained an important element of U.S. public opinion
and policy up to 1898 and even 1917. After the disillusioning
experience of World War I, noninterventionist ideas
underwent a revival in the 1920s and '30s, only to be
buried by World War II and subsequent events.
LANDED
EXPANSIONISM AND REPUBLICAN THEORY
Americans
decided, very early, that absorption of contiguous land
areas was desirable, convenient, even imperative, for
the American Republic. As historian William Appleman
Williams observed, James Madison, “father of the
Constitution,” made an especially persuasive argument
for landed expansion. Classical republican political
theory, as understood by Antifederalist opponents of
the Constitution, held that free, representative institutions
were weakened by territorial growth. Madison stood the
argument on its head, reasoning – in the Tenth
Federalist Paper – that territorial expansion would
lessen the evils of “factions” by diluting
them geographically and thereby make Constitutional
government safer.
The
implications of Madison's reasoning were not lost on
succeeding generations of Americans bent on having the
land adjoining their own. Territorial expansion as such
does not, of course, involve a nation in the same problems
that “salt water” or overseas empire does.
Expansion overland could in principle be undertaken
by peaceful means such as the (possibly unconstitutional)
Louisiana Purchase. Nonetheless, the characteristic
use of force to take land, as in the Mexican War and
innumerable Indian Wars, early affected the institutional
balance of the Republic. In maneuvering U.S. troops
into an incident with Mexico, President James K. Polk
set a precedent for executive war making whose results
haunt us today.
The struggle between North and South to control vast
western territories obtained by purchase and war set
up the War for Southern Independence, a circumstance
which renders Madison’s argument about the dilution
of faction somewhat suspect. Northern victory, in turn,
drastically shifted the American institutional balance
away from that of the original Union and Constitution.
Landed expansion helped bring on “civil war,”
which in turn strengthened federal power (and neo-mercantilism
with it) – with tariffs, excises, paper money,
and conscription. All that said, 19th century American
expansion into new territories, which were quickly organized
into self-governing states, did leave us with republicanism
– until it broke down – and did not involve
us with those issues which arise when one state governs
unrepresented foreign subjects across the water.
THE LURE OF OVERSEAS INVOLVEMENT
This
changed when US statesmen and businessmen came to believe
that American prosperity depended on unlimited access
to foreign markets for “surplus” American
production. They took the depressions of 1873 and 1893
as proof of that proposition. Taking into account Say’s
law of markets – still intact despite the Keynesians
– there was little merit in this “overproduction”
hypothesis. As for the economic crises, prior federal
fiddling of the monetary system is the likeliest causal
suspect. Thus the case for world markets secured by
imperialism rested on faulty economic analysis and the
self interested claims of specific businesses.
Progressive
reformers, who sought broad departures from America’s
(relative) economic liberty, also wanted a more vigorous,
imperial foreign policy. Very close in their ideas to
English and European “social imperialists,”
Progressives, who included businessmen seeking “regulation”
they could manipulate, sought the strong state at home
and abroad as their chosen instrument. The political
labeling has thoroughly confused the picture. The Progressives’
“liberal” reforms strengthened many interests
– big business, big labor, big government, the
military, defense contractors, and the like, whose main
worries were not republican liberty and classical liberal
values.
Asserting
that the US economy must expand as a system, American
leaders shoved on into hemispheric interference and
“world leadership.” In 1898, they sidelined
the Cuban Revolution, making Cuba a virtual US colony,
and won the Philippine Islands as a stepping stone to
Asian markets. This first leap into formal colonial
imperialism soon led to a guerrilla war the Philippine
Insurrection in which US forces ultimately prevailed
through massive firepower and atrocities. Overwhelming
firepower became a hallmark of US “strategy”
in the 20th century.
The
Open Door Notes (1899, 1900) bespoke the American claim
to dominate world markets, whether anyone wanted to
trade on these terms or not. Aimed at problems in China,
the Notes reflected US policy toward the world as a
whole – hence the term Open Door Imperialism. Note
that the supposed “open door” only swung one
way and did not imply equal foreign access to US markets.
This was before the American leadership redefined “free
trade” so as to sail under that flag, too.
Firmly
convinced of the rightness of securing foreign markets,
by force if necessary, administrations from the late
19th century onwards subsidized exports, lobbied for
overseas business, brought down “unfriendly”
governments, and went to war against threats to the
Open Door. This has been the inner meaning of “liberal
internationalism.” The Central Powers, the Japanese
and Germans, the USSR, China, as well as Third World
revolutionary movements, all somehow failed to play
their assigned role and had to be “contained,”
smashed, and shown their errors. Thus these conflicts
show a more-than-accidental continuity in spirit and
method. Opposition to intervention has shown a complementary
continuity whose moral and ideological substance was
essentially classical liberalism – with its ideals
of “peace, retrenchment, and reform” –
and classical republicanism.
From
1898 to the present, Americans have debated the proper
foreign policy for their country. They have asked, What
are the goals of US policy and what should the United
States' role be in the larger world? At certain critical
points 1898, 1916-17, 1940-41, 1947-1952 we have gone
over similar ground, debated similar points, and discussed
much the same alternatives.
AN
UNSUNG EMPIRE
Because
of changes in ideology, terminology, and the relevant
external circumstances, most Americans have lost sight
of the continuity in this running debate over our very
destiny. They have overlooked persistent features in
the policies adopted as well as in the critiques of
them. To the extent that continuity is admitted to exist,
it has lived only within an arbitrary and misleading
framework. When mainstream historians and political
scientists seek a common thread, they invariably find
it in the foregone victory of far seeing “internationalists”
over narrow, insular “isolationists.”
This
would be all there is to say if, in fact, the mainstream
interpretation were true. It is not, and the common
thread of our episodic American debate really is, and
has been, empire. Some critics of American foreign
policy have consciously seen the issue that way. At
other times, the critics have lacked such clarity. Consciousness
of empire versus republican liberty was especially sharp
at the turn of the century when the United States acquired
distant overseas possessions. The theme persisted, more
and more muted, into the struggles over intervention
in the two world wars, and even into the early Cold
War. With the victory of the Cold Warriors, the notion
that there was, or could be, an American empire reached
its low point – airily dismissed as a delusion
of a handful of home grown Marxists. Empire and its
consequences found very small audience. This circumstance
led the veteran revisionist historian Harry Elmer Barnes
to complain in 1952 that “it is obvious that it
will probably require a tremendous shock a veritable
military and political catastrophe to bring about the
degree of disillusionment and realism required to produce
any such result”2 as a revival
of anti interventionist history and a reassessment of
US foreign policy.
Barnes's
pessimistic outburst seemed justified well into the
1960s. Then came the seemingly endless war in Vietnam.
It looked as if that ill starred adventure might at
least bring about a serious re evaluation of America's
world role. The question of empire seemed ready for
a comeback in the public arena.
A
LOST OPPORTUNITY
The
noninterventionist moment of the 1970s passed quickly.
A campaign to rehabilitate the late southeast Asian
unpleasantness got under way, orchestrated by the Trilateral
Commission and the Committee on the Present Danger.
By the middle of the Carter Administration, interventionists
were papering over the partially learned “lessons
of Vietnam.” The Reagan years witnessed the triumph
of renewed interventionist theory and practice.
Just
when US delusions of Mission Unending reached new heights,
the Soviet threat went missing – not with a whimper
but a bang. The Soviets' “Vietnam” in Afghanistan,
over-extension, and stifling bureaucratic arteriosclerosis
all contributed. The fundamental problem was an economic
system which made rational economic calculation impossible,
as Max Weber and Ludwig von Mises had predicted in the
1920s. No lessons were drawn from the Soviet collapse
other than that “we won.” The old Cold Warriors
took a bow and bragged – “now all the authorities,
they just stand around and boast” (Bob Dylan) –
about forcing the Soviets to spend beyond their means.
Our means were, it seemed, utterly without limit.
The Persian Gulf War undermined the talk of reduced
military spending, peace dividends, and the like. Cynics
have suggested that, in this, the Gulf War’s timing
was less than accidental. The new style of “humanitarian”
intervention is a further complication and a potentially
bottomless source for new overseas missions.
Clinton’s
new line as of last week – “Oh, no, we don’t
plan to intervene everywhere” – reflects
the shiftiness of the present line. Is this “seriality”?
Should postmodernists investigate? Probably not. I remember
Lyndon Johnson’s approach to justifying his war.
Every week he had a different reason why we had to stay
in Vietnam – to bring TVA to Vietnam, save our
personal belongings from sawed-off Communist burglars,
contain China, etc. You have to know what these people
are saying, but above all you must watch what they do
while they are saying it. Clearly, they will intervene
wherever the Inner Doctrine leads them and justify it
with the Outer Doctrine. This means they will intervene
all over the place; so Clinton’s disclaimer is
worth about as much as much as anything else he says
– assuming a stable meaning for “is,”
of course.
AN
“OPEN DOOR” AT HOME
One
wonders how far the debate can be widened. There are
a number of reasons why renewed debate may become possible.
Despite damage control by conventional scholars, some
historians have incorporated revisionist insights –
mostly from New Left diplomatic history – into
their work. The end of the Cold War has greatly altered
the political landscape. Anti-communism was the most
powerful prop of so-called “internationalism.”
Without it, conservatives can turn back – and some
have – to the noninterventionist posture of the
Old Right. At this juncture it is crucial for Americans
to have the chance to discuss intervention and empire
and their antitheses, nonintervention and republican
liberty.
It
is our task to reopen the debate prematurely foreclosed
in 1917, 1941, 1947, and more recently. It would be
very bad indeed if our leaders should successfully foist
on the American public new justifications for continued
imperial intervention. The American people have a right
to know their real options in this or any other possible
world – pace those political scientists
who say that it is impossible for a potential
“hegemon” (as they like to say) to renounce
the call of empire. Unlikely perhaps; impossible, no.
[1] Quoted in Harry Elmer
Barnes, ed., Perpetual
War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell, Idaho, 1953),
facing title page.
[2] Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace, 57.
ERRATUM:
Owing to a late-night typing mistake, John Paul
Vann was referred to as John Paul Vance in last week’s
column.
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