A recently translated chapterfrom my book on the American idea from Revolution to Reagan, Friare kan ingen vara, The Mission of Freedom or The Foreign Policy of Innocence
In the beginning, there was isolationism. Even George Washington himself had, in his Farewell Address of 1796, warned the Americans of getting involved in European dealings and intrigues. America should grow liberty and democracy on their own home turf, develop necessary trade relations with the rest of the world, but in other things let the Europeans burn in their own political inferno. He polemized implicitly, but clearly, against the Jeffersonian radicals that for a time wanted to join forces with the French revolution and free the world. After a few years and some Napoleonic battles, Jefferson's opinion was the same as Washington's. Isolationism was the original and the natural impulse in the American republic. The Monroe doctrine came (in 1823) from isolationism, not from ambitions for a territorial empire. A line was drawn in the sea between the old world and the new; on the eastern side war and corruption, on the western side peace and liberty. Jefferson wrote about the Monroe doctrine that it would divide the world such that "on the hither side of [the line] no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe, the lion and the lamb within our regions shall lie down together in peace." (1) The American founding created an utopia concerning the ends and means of foreign policy. In the old European monarchies with their balance of power, the foreign policy had been governed by abstract interests of the state, visible and interpretable only to a initiated fraternity of aristocrats and diplomats, always inclined to plotting and war. In the new republic, on the other hand, the foreign policy was to be a concern of the people, an extension of the internal autonomy. The relationship with other nations was to be governed by the same principles as relationships between individuals. Individual moral and virtue was to guide America in the world. Its foreign policy was to be that of innocence. Innocence means, in its deepest sense, a lack of evil or evil intents. It also signifies a lack of worldly experience, a sort of naivety towards existence. In some areas, innocence is regarded as a resource. In other areas, for example in cases that concern war and peace, life or death, it may be a liability. Today, a lot of people would say that American foreign policy isn't innocent in any way whatsoever. They would describe it as cynical, calculating, imperialistic and completely immoral. At best, they would call it hypocritical. In that, there is at least an admittance that morals exist as a theory. A large part of European anti-Americanism presumably originates from irritation with the rift between conceited morals and actual actions. In part, it also originates from the insight gained through the centuries that the relationships between nations has nothing to do with morals, nor with democracy. Nations are not individuals and cannot act as such. In Europe, the morals of foreign policy have always been Jesuitic; in America, they have been something else. What? Early on, Jefferson developed the idea that a democratization of foreign policy must lead to a fusion between [i]realpolitik[/i] and moral politics. With obstinate autocrats and tyrants removed and the people in power, countries would behave decently towards each other, democracies would never go to war with each other. War and conquests were simply not in the interests of self-governed peoples. "No nation," Madison warned, "could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." (2) Wars were political sources of infection, wounds laid open to the still uncorrupted heart of the American republic. In Jefferson's world, it seemed for a short but conclusive time that there actually was an American way out. After the French-American victory against England, no realistic threats against the American states existed anymore. Instead, with the European powers still busy fighting each other, a space had been left on the American continent in which there was room for a diplomacy that could accomplish great things with small and peaceful means. Through a peculiar combination of intuition and luck Jefferson managed to carry out important political conquests without really having to use the traditional military and diplomatic tools of the realpoliti trade. In 1803 he simply bought the then French Louisiana from a money-starved Napoleon. That is to say, he more than doubled the territory of the United States without having to fire a single shot, and hence got the idea that "peaceful pressure" was the panacea of democratic foreign policy, and therefore standing armies would no longer be necessary. To the very last moment he refused to see that his lingering ideological sympathies for the republican France and his likewise lingering antipathies for the monarchistic England counteracted the the American interest of staying out of the European power struggles. He thought himself able to use "just" demands to force Great Britain to relinquish its dominance of the trade with America, and possibly its Canadian presence as well. For that purpose he forced through a series of trade embargoes against London, that for one thing caused heavy damage to the fragile American domestic economy, and for the other completely ignored the fact that Britain was involved in a life-or-death struggle against Napoleon's expansive France, which in the end resulted in a completely pointless American-British war in 1812. The English attempts to negotiate a treaty prior to the war were rejected by Jefferson. He saw no legitimacy whatsoever in the English demands, only the principles in his own. Blind to [i]realpolitik[/i] he did not see that a friend had become an enemy, and an enemy a friend. Eventually, the problem for the future generations turned out to be that Jefferson's policy was perceived as successful. The foreign policy of innocence seemed to be confirmed, while the [i]realpolitik[/i], symbolized by Jefferson's opponent Alexander Hamilton, was discredited. The moral foreign policy was also the popular foreign policy. Hamilton's foreign policy smelled of powdered noses, white wigs and aristocratic intrigues. Jefferson's declarations were filled with great ideals and high principles, not necessarily as an expression of the interest of the state, [i]but rather as something above and beyond it[/i]. The extremely favorable circumstances that had led to the purchase of Louisiana were taken as a confirmation that all American expansion could be accomplished through peaceful means from here on out. From unlikely coincidences and geopolitical tossups, a doctrine was made. In foreign policy, there was no longer a need to limit the ends by the means, nor a need to make morally doubtful decisions, nor a need to risk American lives. During the period leading up to the American embargo against England, Jefferson did not once face the nation with the perspective that economical sacrifices would be necessary, that certain American interests might have to be compromised with, that war might be necessary to defend at least some of the interests at risk. In their book about the "Empire of Liberty", Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson writes regarding Jefferson's actions that "[A]lthough he refused to prepare seriously for war, he also refused to modify a position that could only have war as its outcome. In so acting, he faithfully reflected public opinion." (3) There were great inconsistencies in Jefferson's foreign policy. His expansive territorial ambitions did not go well together with his unwillingness to use the power of the state. In his chase for diplomatic conquests, he several times sacrificed constitutional as well as political principles. But the vision's power over the mind was great, and during the following century Americans stopped seeing the interests of the state as the core of international politics. The moralization of foreign policy became a distinctive national feature, writes Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Good foreign policy was hereinafter synonymous with good morals. Jefferson joked about this "Quaker system" of his, but added that "time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit". (4) The chilly power realism of the majority of the American founders (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams) was replaced with the rhetoric of evangelism. America's upcoming empire (of which one spoke gladly and proudly) would become an empire of liberty, an empire to which other peoples would long to join. The word "empire" itself did, in the American language, gain a ring of republican virtue; empire as the imperative of liberty. As long as the United State's self-imposed mission was limited to its own continent (the war against Mexico, the conquering of the West), there were few inside the country that questioned the moralistic pretensions and few outside the country that cared. Karl Marx himself defended the American conquests, sarcastically asking whether "it was a misfortune that glorious California has been wrenched from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it". (5) And Engels thought that Mexico, "in the interest of its own development (...) should be placed under the tutelage of the United States". (On the other hand Engels defended most colonial ventures). With the exception of the native Americans, there was no power that seriously could or was willing to question the American claims. For a few decades, the Americans acted with a geopolitical freedom that every European autocrat would have envied. The problem was that they themselves did not really understand the realpolitical circumstances that had allowed their successes. Jefferson's foreign policy of isolationism was, in the end, the result of his constant swinging between the dream of not having to confront the realities of the political world and the dream of blowing them away. It was this ambivalence of his that, henceforth and hereinafter, would make American foreign policy the object of confusion and contempt on the part of its surrounding world. What kind of nation regarded the world as an association to join or drop out of at its own discretion? What kind of politicians did one day claim to have the key to the future of humanity, and the next close the door around themselves and said future? What would America possibly do in the world when America grew up? What kind of empire was the United States? The Empire of Liberty Eventually, the cracks in the foreign policy of innocence became visible. The colonization of the Philippines after the Spanish-American war (1898-1899) was indeed in the name of political evangelism (the US claimed that it wanted to prevent the isles from being retaken by the undemocratic Spain) but at a human cost, maybe 200,000 Philippinian victims, that for the first time made Americans seriously protest against the hypocrisy in the conducted foreign policy. Philosopher William James wrote that America had "without blinking" sacrificed its soul, "the only thing that separated our nation from others". Additionally, the US had for the first time intervened in an area that, regardless of how you looked at it, lay outside the natural area of expansion for the empire of liberty. Cuba and the Caribbean could possibly be discussed, but not the Philippines. The Americans had hitherto refused to accept any and all comparisons between their own colonial expansion and the imperialistic ventures of other states. Of course there had been political, moral and legal objections to the conquest of the West and the war against Mexico, as well. Here, already, writes the French historian Raymond Aron in his study of "the American empire", it was possible to perceive the pattern that would become well-known later on: public opinion lashed into a storm, political and constitutional soul-searching, sudden jerks between activism and a bad political conscience, and "an odd mix of pragmatic and moralistic moralism". (6) But essentially the Americans could, with some justification, claim that the making of the empire of liberty had been consistent with the ideals and intentions of its founders. Now, America was at the end of the road. The conflict between power and morals could no longer be settled by means of internal expansion. The US bordered the world. The affairs of the world were now the affairs of the US. Here was the opportunity for the US to either get itself a plain, old-style [i]realpolitik[/i], or adapt the moral evangelization's rhetoric to the interests and obligations of a world power. The historical problem is that when faced with this situation, the US did neither. As the indisputable leader of the western hemisphere and a world power in the making, the US persisted in its role as an innocent in foreign policy. Still drowsy with sleep, its leaders discovered that the actors on stage no longer were defenseless native American tribes or starving Mexicans but vital states with their own rights and interests to safeguard. The old map did no longer fit the terrain, and the compass needle started to swing violently between isolationism and a newly awakened determination to deliver the world from evil. The US foreign policy between 1898 and 1940, writes Raymond Aron, "is consistent only in its lack of consistency, its abrupt changes of fronts, its inability to choose a line of action and stick to it; in short, in its denial of the intergovernmental universe that has been hammered out through the ages". (7) Faced with the choice of changing either the map or the terrain, the US chose the latter. At Thomas Jefferson's heels came Woodrow Wilson. For a long while it looked like the US had only had let itself get dragged into the first World War unwillingly, but with president Wilson's magnificent Fourteen Points for peace in Europe the American Expeditionary Force of 1917 gained a Messianic significance. In the coming era, declared Wilson, relationships between states must be based on the same rules as those "observed among the individual citizens of civilized states". (8) He denied that the US had its own vested interests at stake in the war; its only interest was in universal principles. The Fourteen Points were indeed highly elevated morally; the peace should be based on the autonomy of the people, it should be just, it should respect the will of the people (as expressed in the proper democratic order). Accordingly, the principles naturally became self-contradictory, the American interests and intentions hard to interpret and the policy, in the end, impracticable. "The United States", said president Wilson, "has come to deliver the world with liberty and justice." "Negotiating with Wilson," said the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, "was like negotiating with Jesus Christ." Indeed, the foreign policy of innocence lead to the disastrous peace treaty in Versailles (that the American senate refused to ratify) from which another world war would spring. The US evangelization of liberty paused pensively, the entry into the newly formed League of Nations was rejected by Congress, the pendulum swinged towards extreme isolationism. Walls against the surrounding world were erected without regard for economical and political realities. In the midst of a beginning depression, a system of self-detrimental protectionist tariffs was passed through Congress (9), and up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US had laws that forbid American citizens from traveling on ships registered in belligerent nations. America was back at the Jeffersonian position that war was an un-American activity, and that Europeans could kill each other as much as they wanted to if they were so inclined. To the last moment, president Roosevelt seemed to have underestimated what realpolitical consequences the war in Europe would have for the US. It is probable that he was naively unaware of Stalin's real ambitions after Jalta. Still, he was the one American leader that for a fleeting moment managed to unite morals and interests of state in "the good war". With the dissolution of the World War II realpolitical alliances and the beginning of the Cold War era ideological barrages, the pendulum once more swung unchecked towards a Jeffersionian moralistic foreign policy. Isolationism was replaced with evangelizing activism. The US became the protector of the free world; the struggle against the Soviet Union assumed mainly ideological dimensions. The American principles in foreign policy grew "of the simple things Christ taught us", stated John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Secretary of State. (10) In time, Hungary 1956, the rift between rhetoric and power politics became evident and destructive. The Cold War fed cynicism and hypocrisy. Slowly the moral ambitions were lowered to the levels of [i]realpolitik[/i]. The world was divided into superpower spheres, and in the disputed border areas - Southeast Asia and the Middle East - a deputy game of power that could fill running meters of spy novels (and indeed did fill running meters in the CIA and KGB archives) was successively developed. Yet the anti-communism remained, even in the Cold War's most cynical CIA interventions, something more than a stalking horse for world power political ambitions. It was the moral and ideological excuse that allowed America to act in global politics at all. The US did not perceive itself as involved in a futile higgling about power and influence of any kind, but rather as involved in a defense of basic moral and political values against the evil that overshadowed them all: communism. This was what most Americans believed, this what was governed public opinion, and it was this that politically justified the series of military interventions in support of brutal right-wing dictatorships and combat against mostly completely legitimate leftist movements that came to pervade American foreign policy during the fifties and sixties. Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles were all generals in the Cold War, but they were also representatives of that foreign policy of moralism whose deep roots in American history and experience were plainly evident here. Vietnam was not the first battlefield where the ideology collapsed when it faced reality, and where the foreign policy of innocence stood naked in the ice-cold light of [i]realpolitik[/i]. From Versailles to Vietnam there is a badly lit but quite evident track. The American folly in the Vietnam war, wrote Barbara Tuchman, did not lie in trying to achieve a goal without knowledge of the difficulties, but rather in trying to achieve it despite substantial and growing knowledge that the goal was unachievable, its eventual effects lacking reasonable proportions to American interests, yes, in the end detrimental to the American society, its reputation and its power in the world. But ideology prevailed over [i]realpolitik[/i], the war gained a fundamentalist aspect, and the US committed political and military suicide on a battlefield that, in hindsight, even from a strategical power politics perspective, was completely unnecessary. From Vietnam to Kuwait With Ronald Reagan, the superpower conflict that had been temporarily toned down during the 1970's (the Détente) regained its ideological and moral dimensions, good and evil were reintroduced to global politics, and in some places, where the [i]realpolitik[/i] permitted it, the foreign policy of innocence got tangible outlets. It became a fairly limited crusade: against tiny Grenada to free its citizens from a bizarre Marxist, against Nicaragua to free its citizens from a less bizarre Marxist, against Panama to free its citizens from a formerly US-supported dope trader, and (very carefully and indirectly) against Afghanistan to free its citizens from Soviet occupation. America engaged itself in a couple of daring, but not always well thought-out hits in the Middle East (Libanon, Libya). Generally, the Reagan administration ignored dull and dreary realpolitical institutions like the UN and the International Court of Justice in the Hague, as well as its own allies, and, eventually, it increased the military pressure on the Soviet Union. It was a policy that to a large degree satisfied the public opinion's demands of high principles and low risks. The trumpets blared triumphantly, but the troops mainly marched only when the enemy, like Grenada, lacked armies, navies and air forces. At the same time, there is no doubt that the return to a more ideological foreign policy was necessary from a domestic politics viewpoint, as well as possibly realpolitically effective. Was it not Ronald Reagan, with his evil empires and his Strategic Defense Initiative, that after all arms raced the Soviet empire to death? And was it not his deeply moral view of the world, his dramatic enacting of ostensibly unthinkable futures, that at last made the impossible possible: the Berlin speech's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The carefully arranged picture together with the Soviet leader in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York. Ronald Reagan was certainly no great intellectual. As his brilliant speech writer Peggy Noonan claims, (11) it is probable that he wasn't very energetic and didn't have a great presence. But his vision was simple, deep and superbly presented. Reagan had made the same speeches, said the same things and had the same political programs since the early sixties, when he led political shows for General Electric and campaigned for Barry Goldwater. In the Goldwater speech on October 27th, 1964, all ingredients in Reagan's evangelizing message were already present: [quote]You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done. (12)[/quote] Again again the motives returned, the words, the stories, the smaller and greater factual errors. It was a rhetoric that was built on a few, plain, deep-seated landmarks in the American popular awareness. Ronald Reagan constructed castles in the air, but his castles were well-known, longed for, and, in the end, politically effective. Ronald Reagan painted mirages, but his mirages were the ones that had hitherto guided the American evangelism in the world. Hear the alluring siren song in Ronald Reagan's farewell address to the nation, January 11, 1989: [quote]Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge. An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over thirty-five or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea of the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid sixties. But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rate. It's fragile; it needs production [protection]. So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important: Why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those thirty seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the fortieth anniversary of D day, I read a letter from a young woman writing of her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, "we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did." Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do. And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. And how stand the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home. (13)[/quote] The rhetorical fireworks dazzled the senses. The reality underneath the castles in the air, the growing social rifts on America's home ground and the continuing foreign cynicism became difficult to discern. Only occasionally, like in the Iran-Contra affair, the veils were torn apart. The road to Kuwait was paved with self-deceptions. In the Middle East a great political game of power and influence had been ongoing since the fifties. Regimes were toppled, bandits were supported, international law was put aside and weapons were sold with the claimed purpose of securing strategic interests. In 1972 the Nixon administration got the idea that the balance in the area required a weaker Iraq and a stronger Iran (then controlled by the Shah), and that supporting a Kurd revolt against the Baath regime in Baghdad was in the interest of the US, on the condition that it must not be too successful! From a Congress report long kept secret, it was evident that Kissinger and the Shah agreed to only "allow a level of hostilities that was sufficient to weaken Iraq (...) This policy was not communicated to our clients, that were instead encouraged to keep fighting." (14) In 1975 the balance was restored, Iran and Iraq (whose second in command was then named Saddam Hussein) negotiated a border treaty, the American support of the Kurds immediately ceased, and Iraq could start its bloodthirsty attack on the now abandoned minority; an attack that has been continuously ongoing since then, getting its macabre culmination with the gas attack against the city of Halabja in 1988. Such was the foreign policy of innocence when it had been robbed of all its moral content. The same realpolitical cynicism guided the US during the war between Iraq and Iran, where it was judged that the balance required supporting Iraq. Maybe a small attack to "weaken" Iran; not too successful, though. Loyalties were shifted overnight, weapon deliveries were redirected. The extent of the realpolitical shadow game was revealed in the Iran-Contra affair, where it turned out that the US not only supported Iraq but also sold weapons to Iran, not only in conflict with all conceivable morals but also in conflict with its own laws. From Congress reports and court protocols rose a world filled with secret deals, organized lies at home, tiny political hints here, a few million dollars there. The affair became a peculiar symbol for Reagan's foreign policy; the secret teamwork of a Nixonian [i]realpolitik[/i] (Iran) and a Trumanian crusade (Nicaragua). It also became a symbol for the foreign policy of innocence; its arbitrariness, its sensitivity to mood swings, its inclination to end in an isolationism of disappointment and self-sufficiency. Even under Ronald Reagan, Americans were not prepared to sacrifice much more than words in order to save the world. "America loves peace more and is less prone to war than any other nation on Earth", said Reagan in 1984, and therein he was, from a historical point of view, not entirely wrong. (15) In the fall of 1989, the US completely unexpectedly won the Cold War. Reagan's visions became the text of history books. Forty years of declarations and demands were driven through in a few months. But rather than celebrations, a strange soul-searching anxiety descended over the US. Just as the empire of liberty triumphed, the jeremiads about its impending collapse started. From a realpolitical point of view, it was an incomprehensible reaction. At the start of the 90's, the US was the world's only superpower, its economy by far the most powerful, its ideals and culture completely dominating. With a gasoline tax of European proportions the US could have gotten rid of its expected budget deficiency in a heartbeat. Collapse? But the jeremiad was predictable. The jeremiad was the puritans' bread and butter. The jeremiad was the cleansing bath of the young republic. The jeremiad was the warning sign of the popular democracy. The jeremiad was the common language of the American selectiveness. The jeremiad was America's repeated trial of its own destiny. With the triumph over the evil empire, the question of how virtue could be preserved in the future was raised once more. Could the selectiveness endure under more trivial circumstances? Would America manage to complete its inner mission, now that the outer mission seemed to be completed? Could America become a nation like other nations and at the same time remain special and superior? The discussion that preceded the dramatic fall of 1990 and the following war for the freedom of Kuwait was a discussion about these questions. The summer of 1990 was the first peace summer after the Cold War, the first summer where [i]realpolitik[/i] appeared to offer certain possibilities of decent morals. The hope for a world order based on international law and international cooperation was lit anew. Speculation slowly started about the political and economical gains of peace. The old realpolitical higgling was confronted with the moral conviction of a Václav Havel. George Bush (senior) got to experience the fact that higher moral demands were placed on politics first-hand after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Peking, when his careful policy against China was sharply criticized domestically. In the Middle East, Israel could no longer hide behind the barricades of world power balance to justify the occupation of Palestinian territory, and in the rest of the area old frozen balances and disagreements started moving again. The great strategical question for the US leadership concerned, as was evident in a report on national security that president Bush presented in March 1990, the adaption to a world where the US military instruments of power did no longer seem to mean as much as they once had: "in a world of a more secure East-West balance, how shall we marshal the other instruments of policy to promote our interests and objectives?" (16) It was a report that mirrored a great uncertainty about where the world was heading and a great uncertainty about what role the US had to play in it. What business the US have in a free, unthreatened Europe? What would new regional great powers in the third world do when the balance of terror was no more and the distribution of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons only a question of time? And what could and should the US do about that? Which principles should guide the United States' foreign policy? And which interests? In the public debate a well-formulated and influential right had started to demand an American retreat from global politics. The former Reagan adviser Pat Buchanan raised the classic war cry "Come home, America!", and the influential Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer wrote that America's mission was certainly not to entangle itself in new, permanent alliances or to act as global police: "Our direct influence in making democracy and free market economies attractive things in the world has been limited; our example has made a greater difference. And this is what our founding fathers intended. They would never have imagined that the universal principles on which this country was founded were to be maintained by standing armies around the world." (17) Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations, observed in the same debate that America's mission in the world could only become what Americans at home were prepared to make it. The US could not defend foreign democracies or act as global police or establish new world orders, unless a majority of voters supported it. The US foreign policy could only reflect interests and ideals that were approved by the people. The world outside was too dangerous and unpredictable for anything else. "It is more important than ever that the experts who manage our foreign policy are put under the people's immediate direction and control." (18) Thomas Jefferson himself could not have said it better. There was an interventionist right wing, as well. A republican senator from the Wild West state of Wyoming stated that the American idea was inspired by God and that the mission was unambigous: "The United States has grown and matured to become the leader of the world, not a simple leader but rather a power for the good. We therefore have a responsibility, not just for our own liberty and independence, but also in some way for the rest of the world. Can a great nation just shake off its responsibilities? What do we think of a father that abandons his children or a police officer that ignores a call for help?" (19) And what could be done in a situation where the American culture had [i]de facto[/i] already conquered the world? Pack the bags and go home? Or continue to fill the world with the movies and the lifestyles and the ideas it so eagerly yearns for? "Remember this about American Purpose:" wrote political scientist Ben Wattenberg, "A unipolar world is fine, if America is the uni." (20) But the United States' role in the world was not an issue that different political parties had different opinions about. The same debate, with the same characteristics, was taking place among American liberals. It was only the tiny radical leftist movement in the US that considered debate superfluous. The tradition was, ever since Vietnam, was unambiguous and anti-interventionist. Come home, America! demanded the leftist presidential candidate of 1972, George McGovern. And Come home, America! sang the ones who now demanded a retreat from the barricades of the Cold War. How should an American foreign policy be given new goals and a moral dimension after the death of communism? What would the victor do with his victory? Such was the debate in the United States on August 2nd, 1990. (And such was also the debate on September 11th, 2001, when a new enemy blew open the space left by the vanquished communism, practically overnight. The front lines were already drawn and the debate positions already known. What nobody could yet predict was just how far the messianic interpretation of America's role in the world would come to be driven under George W. Bush.) Footnotes
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