Few commentators on current affairs would challenge the assertion that the present period is one of uncertainty and confusion in American foreign policy. The United States is involved with the external world to a greater extent than ever before in its history, yet at few times in the nation’s history has there been more debate and disagreement among leaders and public alike concerning the purposes of American foreign policy and the means appropriate for the realization of these objectives.

In retrospect, I believe, it will become apparent that the present debate over ends and means in foreign policy is an inevitable culmination of the post–World War II revolution in America’s relations with the outside world. Prior to the twentieth century, the internationalist and interventionist thrust implicit in the American self-vision lay concealed behind a hard-headed realism in the choice of foreign policy objectives and in the actual conduct of relations with other nations;1 hostility and conflict among real or potential adversaries coupled with a fortuitous geographic position made possible a policy of isolationism or, more accurately, nonalignment, which concealed from the American people the importance of an effective foreign policy to the survival of nations in a world of anarchy. Thus it was, as Charles Burton Marshall has noted, that the United States “came to maturity without having, in Whitman’s phrase, to ‘learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled and sullen hymns of defeat.’”2 Neither did the various international adventures of the early twentieth century or even Wilson’s “great crusade” of 1917 mark any significant departure from the earlier tradition. There is little evidence suggesting that the nation as a whole fully appreciated the significance of the Spanish-American War, especially the territorial acquisitions which followed in its wake; and surely neither Mr. Wilson nor his constituents viewed World War I as marking a permanent commitment by the United States to active participation in international politics. Indeed, for Wilson himself, as his critics are fond of noting, America fought the Great War out of a conviction that “the world must be made safe for demoracy,”3 and in order to usher in a new era in world history in which an institutionalized rule of law would replace war as the final arbiter of disputes among nations.4 The rapidity and fervor with which the nation re-embraced nonalignment when it became apparent that Wilson’s dream bore little relationship to reality is fitting testimony to the twentieth-century strength of the isolationist tradition, however transmogrified in inspiration that tradition may have become since its origins in the eighteenth century.

It was not until after World War II, therefore, that the United States came to regard its own vital interests, not to mention its ultimate hopes and expectations for mankind, as depending upon the nation’s assumption of an active role in world affairs. This was the ultimate significance of the much-discussed “revolution in American foreign policy:”5 the operational vistas of United States policy began to encompass the globe. The contrast with the decade of the thirties was particularly sharp, as more than one commentator has observed:

In the 1930’s the United States had retracted into a pathological isolation: Americans had rejected even the non-compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court, made the decision to retire from the Philippines, refused to build up fortifications on Guam, and abandoned their neutral rights at sea. . . . Yet during the following decade Americans fought a global war, led the mightiest coalition in history, became deeply involved politically in all parts of the earth, made the pivotal decisions that affected the future everywhere, and an American President bestrode the world like Caesar Augustus of old. In the light of its traditional foreign policy this stridden stupendous global influence of America constituted a veritable revolution, one of the most dramatic in history.6

The consequences of this rather sharp change in the operational pattern of America’s relations with the external world have been many, and in fact are only beginning to be understood. But surely among the most important is one which until recently has been little observed: For the first time in its history, the United States has been compelled in recent decades to act on the basis of its traditional, imperfectly examined and articulated understanding of international politics, and for the first time as well has been forced to confront the consequences and implications of its classic definition of national purpose. Is the United States in its principles and behavior fundamentally different from the other national units which participate in international relations? Is the American political system the embodiment of the natural rights of man, and thus of a set of political values felt to be the legitimate political inheritance of all mankind? Is the United States destined to help other men to achieve that inheritance? How—by what means is it to accomplish this end?

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Needless to say, these are difficult questions, involving ultimately nothing less than the self-vision of the nation itself and the relationship between the vision and the nation’s behavior in world affairs. It was therefore inevitable that as the United States sought to implement its newly assumed global role in the late 1940s there would be errors at the level of design and reverses at the level of execution; and it was no less inevitable that these errors and reverses would stimulate a reaction at home. Indeed, from the beginning of the nation’s postwar involvement in international relations there have arisen frequent charges that our policymakers have acted unwisely in one particular or another, and dissatisfaction with the results of policy has also led from time to time to a questioning of the general sweep of the nation’s global strategy itself. Resistance to the postwar “revolution” in American policy, it is worth remembering, came from both ends of the political spectrum.7 The Henry Wallace Democrats of the middle and late ’40s, rejecting the mounting evidence that Roosevelt’s “grand design” for postwar cooperation with the Soviet Union was doomed, bitterly denounced the gradual development of the containment policy, and anticipated as well the central thesis of later New Left critics in insisting that the United States bears the principal responsibility forthe onset of the Cold War. Taft Republicans, on the other hand, although harboring few illusions concerning the goals of Soviet foreign policy, strongly opposed any advance military guarantees to the nations of Western Europe, while appearing to suggest at the same time that the United States ought to have done more to prevent Mao’s accession to power in China.8 The discontent in both camps was fed by the rather ambiguous outcome of the Korean War, and it is clear that public dissatisfaction with our initial efforts to “contain” communism in Asia had a considerable impact on the foreign policy of the Eisenhower-Dulles Administration: the much-maligned policy of “massive retaliation” included within its operating assumptions the thesis that native forces should be used wherever possible in conflicts abroad, with the primary American role to be that of providing ancillary sea and air power.9 If American foreign policy during the Eisenhower years seemed to suffer—as many critics from all points on the political spectrum have charged—from a severe case of muscle paralysis, it is not only the faulty understanding of the nation’s leaders which must be blamed: that faulty understanding only mirrored the state of mind of the nation at large. Indeed, there is little indication that matters have improved much in the interim.

To be sure, the Kennedy era was to have changed all this. The torch of leadership, we were told, had been passed to a new generation, more wise and more able than that which it had succeeded, and we could thenceforth anticipate in the period ahead a foreign policy at once relevant and efficacious. The rhetorical seeds of the 1961 Inaugural rather quickly fell on the stone ground of Cuba, Laos, and the Vietnam quagmire, however, and it soon became apparent to most interested observers that the seemingly vast military and economic power of the United States was succeeding neither in improving American security nor in promoting international order and stability. Increasingly, then, a new kind of criticism of American foreign policy began to beheard: the motives and intentions of our policymakers began to be called into question, and a gap discerned between the end desires of the national leadership and those of thepeople at large—or, at least, of the more informed and intelligent among them.10 Our elected officials, according to these critics, have betrayed the national purpose. They have been corrupted by exposure to power, and turned arrogant in its exercise. Indeed, in many respects they have become only mirror-images of the adversaries whom they oppose, and consequently their policies have not only helped create enemies where none exist, but moreover constitute a significant cause of disorder and war in contemporary world politics as well. Such criticism, of course, logically should culminate in a call to replace that leadership with a new group more in harmony with both the desires of the populace and the ultimate purposes for which the nation stands. Some such view as this seems to have constituted part of the inspiration of both the Robert Kennedy and the McCarthy presidential campaigns prior to the Democratic convention of 1968.

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Finally, there has emerged of late still another class of critics whose attacks on foreign policy are far more comprehensive than any which have received a serious hearing in the past. These critics, most of whom are associated with the New Left, have challenged at the foundation the entire sweep of recent American diplomacy,11 denouncing both the definition of national purpose and the view of international reality which inspires it. Not only are the issues thought to be vital by the nation’s leadership said to be false issues, but our historical view of national purpose and even our traditional self-image are asserted to be false as well. There are no universally valid moral principles which constitute the basis for action in international politics, nor is there a vision of political life which provides a meaningful standard against which to measure the behavior of other nations and political movements. Attempts to conduct foreign policy on the basis of such principles and standards, therefore, constitute exercises in futility and self-delusion. Indeed, far from pursuing noble motives in a benevolent manner in its international relations, the United States has commonly acted the part of an imperial state of a rather classic type, trampling on the rights of small nations in pursuit of economic and political power. According to these critics, then, the nation needs far more than a mere change of leadership; what is required to end the crisis of American foreign policy is nothing less than a radical change in the very lifestyle of the nation itself. The radical critics appear by no means certain, incidentally, that such a change is possible.

In any event, it is clearly a mistake to believe that the present debate and discontent over the American role in world politics is a totally new phenomenon. While some of the current criticism may be more far-reaching in scope than has been the case in the past, debate over American policy has occurred throughout the postwar period, and even earlier. Moreover, it remains uncertain just how widespread and how deep is the current discontent among the citizenry at large. As many commentators have observed, there is no clear tradition of public involvement in foreign policy decision-making in the United States. Americans are normally quite content to allow “politics to stop at the water’s edge,” and to trust the national leadership to define and implement the nation’s international policy. The public, in fact, has rarely joined in any of the “great debates” over foreign policy, except perhaps to protest a real or apparent defeat or to object to the protracted or costly nature of some of the nation’s international involvements. Several reasons have been suggested to explain this fact, from the enduring appeal of the isolationist tradition to the political immaturity of the American people {which may be another way of saying the same thing).

But there may be deeper reasons, related to the traditional American understanding of world politics and of the nation’s place in it. Until our series of confrontations with the many faces of international communism after World War II, there was little reason to question the two-fold conviction of the Founding Fathers that the political systems of the world were destined to evolve over time in a democraticdirection, and that the United States was intended to make a significant contribution to that end. At the same time neither the thinking of the nation’s early statesmen, however internationalist-interventionist its thrust, nor the American diplomatic tradition itself, until the twentieth century largely isolationist in character, offered much guidance concerning the means and methods through which this contribution would be made. Considered in this light, the reluctance of the public to become deeply involved with foreign policy issues becomes more understandable: such involvement did not appear necessary, nor, given the general uncertainty concerning how the nation was to fulfill its international destiny, did it seem possible for the citizenry to make a relevant contribution to the process. What would be a new phenomenon in the history of civic discourse in the United States, therefore, would be a penetrating re-examination of the fundamentals of American foreign policy which involved large segments of the body politic, and which extended beyond means and tactics to embrace the ends and purposes of foreign policy itself in a world of anarchy. It is far from certain that the pervasive dissatisfaction with the outcome of our Southeast Asian policy will stimulate such a debate; indeed, the evidence thus far would appear to be to the contrary. Should it do so, however, the war in Vietnam might indeed come to be regarded as a turning point in American foreign relations, but not for the reasons considered important by most of the war’s critics.

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A debate of this kind, it would surprise most Americans to learn, took place at the very beginning of our history as a unified national state, during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. A brief analysis of that debate is instructive for the light it sheds both on the foreign policy concerns of the Founding Fathers and on the whole problem of defining purpose in the making of foreign policy.

The exchange referred to involved Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and the redoubtable Alexander Hamilton of New York, and arose as part of the Convention’s debate over the nature of the upper house of the national legislature. Pinckney opened the discussion by expressing his concern over proposals to create an upper house similar to the British House of Lords. Such a step would be disastrous, he argued, because it would do violence to the principle that a government “must be suited to the habits & genius of the people it is to govern, and must grow out of them.”12 The people of the United States, he asserted, are “the most singular of any we are acquainted with”:13 they are “not only very different from the inhabitants of any State we are acquainted with in the modern world,” but moreover “their situation is distinct from either the people of Greece or Rome, or of any State we are acquainted with among the ancients.”14 The reason has to do with the equality of station characteristic of social life in America. Among Americans, there are “fewer distinctions of fortune and less of rank, than among the inhabitants of any other nation.15 And this social fact, Pinckney believed, was of singular significance for American political institutions:

Every freeman has a right to the same protection and security; and a very moderate share of property entitles them to the possession of all the honors and privileges the public can bestow: hence arises a greater equality, which is more likely to continue—I say this equality is likely to continue, because in a new Country, possessing immense tracts of uncultivated lands, where every temptation is offered to emigration and where industry must be rewarded with competency, there will be few-poor, and few dependent.16

Consequently, no one will be excluded by birth and few by fortune from full participation in the political life of the nation. “The whole community,” he concluded, “will enjoy in the fullest sense that kind of political liberty which consists in the power the members of the State reserve to themselves, of arriving at the public offices, or at least, of having votes in the nomination of those who fill thein.”17

It follows, then, that the United States cannot draw any useful lessons in constructing a political system from the experience of Great Britain: The English Constitution, although in many respects “the best Constitution in existence”18 has its roots deep in the history of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and in the political institutions which arose during the course of their social development. There are no “orders” nor rigidly distinct social classes in America comparable to those of England, and hence the basis for establishing a system of checks and balances on the British model did not exist. The architects and builders of American political institutions, therefore, must look elsewhere for their inspiration, and keep foremost in mind the goal of “preserving that equality of condition which so eminently distinguishes us.”19

The distinctive nature of America’s social and political situation, Pinckney was moreover persuaded, had great significance for the conduct of foreign policy as well. The republican simplicity of one nation’s social mores, he argued, was the very antithesis of “the military habits & manners of Sparta”; and this in turn meant that our policy would be “perfectly different” as well:20

Our true situation appears to me to be this—a new extensive Country containing within itself the materials for forming a Government capable of extending to its citizens all the blessings of civil and religious liberty—capable of making them happy at home. This is the great end of Republican Establishments. We mistake the object of our Government, if we hope or wish that it is to make us respectable abroad. Conquest or superiority among other powers is not or ought not ever to be the object of republican systems. If they are sufficiently active and energetic to rescue us from contempt and preserve our domestic happiness and security, it is all we can expect from them,— it is more than almost any other Government ensures to its citizens.21

In Pinckney’s view then, the purpose of American foreign policy ought to be the preservation of the nation’s domestic political institutions. Asserting the political and moral uniqueness and superiority of the American people and their way of life, he argues that our social mores render us unsuitable for the pursuit of glory in world politics, and implies that if, in defiance of all reason and logic, we pursue an adventuresome policy abroad, our own social system will be endangered.22 “We cannot pretend to rival the European nations in their grandeur or power,” he asserts, and in any event when we secure “civil and religious liberty” at home, “wesecure everything that is necessary to establish happiness.”23

The Pinckney speech stimulated several replies, most of them dealing with his thesis concerning the equality of condition which he asserted was characteristic of social life in America.24 Hamilton, however, took up directly his views concerning the goals of foreign policy in a democratic republic. He begins by asserting that foreign nations were already observing closely the political difficulties of the new nation. “Foreign nations having American dominions are and must be jealous of us,” he stated. “Their representatives betray the utmost anxiety for our fate, and for the result of this meeting, which must have an essential influence on it.”25 Unless the thirteen former colonies can solve the problem of unity in diversity and avoid the dissolution of the confederated state which many were predicting, involvement in the wars of Europe and possible reconquest were real possibilities. These facts, in turn, pointed to the more basic problem confronting the nation:

It had been said that respectability in the eyes of foreign Nations was not the object at which we aimed; that the proper object of republican Government was domestic tranquility and happiness. This was an ideal distinction. No Government could give us tranquility and happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.26

Hamilton is arguing, then, that nations do not exist in a vacuum. It is perfectly unexceptional to assert that among the essential purposes of foreign policy is the preservation of the nation’s domestic political institutions and the happiness and tranquility of its people, although in fact few of the Founding Fathers believed that this was the sole purpose of diplomacy; but even if this point is conceded, the discussion has at that point only begun. How in fact are the security of the state, the integrity of its institutions and the quality of its way of life to be preserved in an alien international environment? To what extent is a foreign policy which focuses primarily on domestic ends possible, even if desirable? The answer, of course, depends on the changing contingencies of time and place, on the particular threats to its national interests which arise to challenge the state in given historical periods. It is instructive to observe that Pinckney nowhere asserts that, if subject to serious threats from external sources, the United States should pursue a policy of self-abnegation; he merely fails to reflect sufficiently upon the consequences of the fact that the United States exists in a world populated by other political units, each pursuing interests of its own which may run athwart those of the American nation. His definition of the purposes of foreign policy in short is an effort to define away the problem of foreign policy. To Hamilton’s credit, he confronts this problem head on, if failing—at least here—to provide much direction toward its solution.

To be sure, neither Pinckney nor Hamilton in their arguments deal, at least directly, with the moral dimensions of policy of so much concern to others among the Founders.27 Neither was this a public debate, engaging large segments of the citizenry in a common quest for answers to one of the great questions of politics. To a far greater extent than most debates since, however, Pinckney and Hamilton directly confront one of the most fundamental problems of foreign policy, and their discussion is thus of relevance still.

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What, then, may be said of the quality of the current debate over ends and means in American foreign policy? In particular, what of the critics of recent United States activities in world politics: Have their analyses illuminated the essential dilemmas involved and in the process assisted in the quest for purpose in foreign policy, or are they guilty of fundamental errors of their own, errors which in many cases bear striking similarity to those inherent in the policies which they so vigorously denounce? This, of course, is a large question, which can only partially be dealt with within the scope of an essay such as this. By selecting a few of the more prominent opponents of contemporary American policy for brief analysis, however, it is possible to indicate the principal analytic categories in terms of which the critics can be classified, and thus to examine the “models” of international politics and foreign policy on which their positions rest.

Few schools of thought have had more influence upon the teaching of international politics in the United States than the so-called Realist school, which first achieved prominence in the years immediately following World War II and is generally associated with men such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans J. Morgenthau. The Realists, indeed, spearheaded the revolt against moralism and legalism in thinking about problems of interstate relations, and contributed significantly to deepening and also popularizing the attack on the Wilsonian era in American foreign relations which was already gaining currency in academic circles.28 Among Wilson’s most bitter Realist critics, in fact, has been George F. Kennan, whose lengthy career has combined both theory and practice and whose work, therefore, offers us an especially valuable opportunity to study the Realist position.

Kennan attacks Wilson in terms familiar to most students of twentieth-century American diplomacy. Wilson, he tells us, ignored the effects of human weakness and frailty upon the realm of politics, and failed to appreciate the largely intractable nature of conflict among nations. He thus fell victim to a naïve utopianism which led him to define the purposes of American foreign policy almost exclusively in moral terms, and which inspired his belief in the efficacy of legal and organizational solutions to the problems of world politics.29 Ultimately, Kennan argues, such an “idealist” approach to international relations leads inexorably to a crusading internationalism which is as futile as it is dangerous for even the most powerful of states under modern international conditions.30 Over against the constellation of idealists, internationalists, and utopians whose policies he believes are primarily responsible for the misfortunes and disasters which have beset American diplomacy in the twentieth century—and most of the nation’s statesmen fail to meet his standard in one way or another—Kennan proposes a foreign policy seemingly rooted, Burke-like, in an understanding of politics as the art of the possible. Given the world as we know it, it is quixotic to postulate either perpetual peace or universal democracy as the purpose of American diplomacy, he argues; rather, we require a foreign policy which is “modest and restrained,” with “its sights . . . leveled on fixed and limited objectives, involving only the protection of the vital processes of our life.”31 There is “no room in such a policy” for either “international benevolence” or “lofty pretensions,” but plenty of room indeed for an understanding of power realities and a willingness to manipulate them in the service of national interests.32 In terms reminiscent of passages from Burke’s Reflections, hesets forth his analysis of international conflict:

The sources of international tension are always specific, never general. They are always devoid of exact precedents or exact parallels. They are always in part unpredictable. If the resulting conflicts are to be effectively isolated and composed, they must be handled partly as matters of historical equity but partly, also, with an eye to the given relationships of power.33

Surely, one rushes to respond, here is analysis in the finest tradition of the conservative statesman; here is wisdom in the classic manner of a Metternich or a Talleyrand. The mind boggles: Why has his writing not found an honored place in the pages of National Review, or at least Modern Age? For an explanation it is necessary to look much deeper than conservative opposition to Kennan’s often-expressed belief that the Cold War with the Communist bloc is a fading memory, and that the time has long since arrived for decisive action on the part of the United States to set Soviet-American relations on a new course. Neither does it stem essentially From Kennan’s bitterly critical attacks on recent United States policy in Southeast Asia.34 Keenan cannot place himself or be placed in the ranks of conservatism because he does not accept, at the level of philosophy, the validity of the Western ethical-political tradition:

We Americans have evolved certain concepts of a moral and ethical nature which we like to consider as being characteristic of the spirit of our civilization. I have never considered or meant to suggest that we should not be concerned for the observation of these concepts in the methods we select for the promulgation of our own foreign policy. Let us, by all means, conduct ourselves in such a way as to satisfy our own ideas of morality. But let us do this as a matter of obligation to ourselves, and not as a matter of obligation to others But let us not assume that our moral values, based as they are on the specifics of our national tradition and the various religious outlooks represented in our country, necessarily have validity for people everywhere. In particular, let us not assume that the purposes of states, as distinct from the methods, are fit subjects for the measurement in moral terms.35

He concludes with the observation that “I doubt that even for individuals there are any universally applicable standards of morality.”36

For Kennan, therefore, what is wrong with American foreign policy is not merely that it has been inspired by a moralism divorced from the world of reality and by a legalism which ignores the intractable nature of international conflict; what is ultimately wrong with American foreign policy is that it has presumed to aspire to moral purpose and the defense of ethical-political values at all. Kennan’s political philosophy is that of the ethical relativist, who can find no basis on which to propose action in the political realm, except personal or group preference. The latter, appropriately transformed and dressed in the language of the great practitioners of the continental tradition in statecraft, is Morgenthau’s concept of national interest.

The logic of such a position, in Kennan’s view, leads directly to an assertion of the primacy of domestic over foreign policy, except when serious threats to the survival of the nation compel us to give attention to the world beyond our borders. 37 Thus, students of American foreign policy who were familiar with Kennan’s thought should not have been surprised at the essentially reactive and defensive nature of the containment policy as Kennan conceived it: Containment was not likely to lead to the defeat of the Communist enterprise because, in his view at least, it was not necessary that it do so. Never as persuaded as many students of international affairs that ideology in and of itself is a factor of great importance in shaping Soviet behavior, he believed that an essentially minimal effort on the part of the United States would be sufficient to persuade the Soviet Union to assert the primacy of domestic over foreign policy also, and thus bring to an end the East-West confrontation which had begun implicitly with the revolution of 1917.

These observations bring us face to face with aspects of Kennan’s thought which his philosophic outlook alone cannot explain. There is surely nothing inherent in a relativist epistemology which necessarily blinds a man to the power realities of two decades of world politics, and which makes him impervious to evidence that the goals of Soviet foreign policy have remained essentially unaltered throughout the postwar period. For all of his professed skepticism, for all of the idiom of Machiavellian hardheadedness in which his positions are couched, Kennan remains at heart a Wilsonian, who dreams of the day when the world will be transformed in his own image of the good society.38 Interestingly enough, when he contemplates the mode of transformation his thinking is, if anything, even more magical than Wilson’s. Soviet power, he tells us, “is something we have it in our power to counteract by the quality of our leadership and the tone of our national life generally.”

If these were what they should be, they would radiate themselves to the world at large, and the warmth of that radiation would not only represent the best means of frustrating the design for further Soviet expansion—it would also be the best means of helping the people behind the Iron Curtain to recover their freedom.39

By the power of example, then, the United States can change the world. Jefferson at his most utopian was never more irrelevant: A policy of skepticism and moral despair, sufficiently scratched, is discovered to conceal yet another example of the American penchant for “talking of foreign policy in a frame of reference akin to the wishful tales of childhood.”40

I have dwelled at length on Kennan’s philosophy of foreign affairs not only because of the significant position he has occupied both as theoretician and practitioner in the postwar history of American foreign policy, but also because of the highly representative character of his thought. Considered superficially, the attacks mounted from the Left on America’s Vietnam policy appear imbued with the same “realistic” spirit which is found in Kennan’s critique of Wilsonianism. The United States, these critics argue, has mistakenly become involved in an interminable conflict in an area of the world only tangentially related to the nation’s vital interests; indeed, our global strategy itself is rooted in the same false assumptions about the nature of world politics and the purposes of foreign policy as animated the “Great Crusade” of 1917. As a result, a worsening imbalance exists between our international commitments and our power capabilities, and retrenchment is essential it the nation is to avoid clisaster.41

It is a mistake, however, to assume that the contemporary liberal critics of American policy have been any more able than Kennan to abandon either the vision of the world’s future which is so essential a component of their weltanschuung, or the traditional view concerning America’s role in the creation of that future. What is renounced is not America’s global mission, but rather the means recently adopted in order to fulfill that mission.42 A careful analysis of the statements of the man usually denounced on the Right as the leader of the Senate “neo-isolationists” makes this point perfectly clear. Even more explicitly than Kennan, Senator William Fulbright has attempted to identify his analysis of the purposes of foreign policy with those of the great European practitioners of statecraft. “The kind of foreign policy I have been talking about,” he writes, “is, in the sense of the term, a conservative policy. It is an approach that accepts the world as it is, with all its existing nations and ideologies, with all its existing qualities and shortcomings. It is an approach that purports to change things in ways that are compatible with the continuity of history and within the limits imposed by a fragile human nature.”43 His “realistic” demand that American foreign policy rest on an understanding of the world as it is, however, has not destroyed the Senator’s belief that the United States should continue to seek the political regeneration of mankind. It is through the power of example, however, and not the power of arms, that the regeneration can best he achieved. “The world has no need,” he has written, “in this age of nationalism and nuclear weapons, for a new imperial power, but there is a great need of moral leadership—by which I mean the leadership of decent example.”44 And that kind of leadership will be sufficient to accomplish great things:

Favored as it is, by history, by wealth, and by the vitality and basic decency of its diverse population, it is conceivable, though hardly likely, that America will do something that no other great nation has even tried to do—to effect a fundamental change in the nature of international relations. It has been my purpose . . . to suggest some ways in which we might proceed with this great work. All that I have proposed . . . has been based on two major premises: first, that, at this moment in history at which the human race has become capable of destroying itself, it is not merely desirable but essential that the competitive instincts of nations be brought under control; and second, that America, as the most powerful nation, is the only nation equipped to lead the world in an effort to change the nature of its politics.45

In Senator Fulbright’s definition of the purposes of foreign policy none of the millenarianist hopes of Woodrow Wilson—or the Founding Fathers—concerning the American role in world affairs are lacking. What has been abandoned is the conviction, which Wilson and the Framers both shared, that the exercise of power might at some point be necessary if these goals were to be achieved. Neither the Senator nor any of the other prominent liberal critics of American policy have faced up to the problems involved in defining and achieving purpose in the complex world of international relations.

SUCH is also the case, it should be unnecessary to add, with the critics located further leftward along the ideological spectrum. One of the symptoms of the utopian mentality is the continued reaching for the scapegoat, upon whom is to be fixed all blame for the failure of the world to progress in accordance with the millenarianist theory of history. Periodically during the course of America’s transformation from isolationist nation to global participant in world politics, observers disappointed with the inability of the United States to create the millennium have focused on something called the military-industrial complex as the cause of our—and thus the world’s—ills. There is, in fact, little to distinguish the contemporary attack on American policy from this perspective from the long-discredited “devil theory of imperialism,” so beloved of liberal isolationists during the 1930s, which sought to fasten the blame for World War I upon the so-called “merchants of death,”

One of the more sophisticated variants of this thesis now current is that offered by Richard J. Barnet, of the New Left–oriented Institute for Policy Studies, in a series of widely published articles and a much-publicized book,46 Barnet’s particular fixation is someone called the “National-Security Manager” and his largely autonomous role, free from accountability to either legislature or people, in the nation’s foreign policy-making apparatus. According to Barnet, the National-Security Manager (the term is meant to archetypify the State or Defense Department functionary) views the world through a series of prisms, the product of his World War II–shaped political “socialization,” which renders him incapable of dealing effectively with the realities of the present. “Coming to power in the midst of World War II,” states Barnet, “he formed his view of international politics from his experience in the struggle with Hitler. The primary problem is aggression. The principal cause of aggression is weakness and instability.”47 Thus, the National-Security Manager takes it as an article of faith that the purpose of United States foreign policy is conflict management on a global scale, especially in the so-called Third Wor1d.48 The United States has assumed the mantle of Rome in the modern world. and has become “increasingly outspoken in claiming the unilateral right to make a determination whether a conflict anywhere in the world constitutes a threat to its national security or international order and what should he done about it.”49

But the National-Security Manager, according to Barnet, is motivated by drives more fundamental than concern about American security or fear of the consequences of international disorder. Whether because he has become jaded or corrupted due to overly long exposure to the responsibilities and temptations of power or due to his inherent psychological make-up (here Barnet appears uncertain, and in any event is not deeply concerned about the problem), the American decision-maker believes that “the acquisition of power is both a necessity and an end in itself.”50 Barnet here presents us with the Hobbesian vision of man: Absorbed with the potential of the instruments at his disposal, he seeks opportunities to employ them, regardless in the last analysis of the necessity to do so:

The ultimate bureaucratic dream is the perfect freedom of unlimited power. It is the ability to push a button, make a phone call, and know that the world will conform to your vision. The capacity to control, or, as he might put it, to have options, is a much clearer objective for the professional statesman than the purposes to which he would put such power. The guiding stars of the working bureaucrat are not cosmic goals.51

It is on this basis that Barnet explains the various American involvements in Greece, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Guatemala, and especially Vietnam.

While he has never spelled out in any detail his own prescriptions for American policy, his thesis appears to be that our quest for power has distracted us from a larger vision of politics, and prevented us from paying true homage to moral principle and the rule of law on the one hand, and assisting with the economic and social development of disadvantaged peoples on the other. Like Kennan and Fulbright, Barnet accepts the view that if the United States leaves the world alone, not only will the world be a better place, but the United States itself will be more secure. He resolves the problem posed by attempts to reconcile force and justice by asserting that the occasions on which it is necessary for a nation to use force are few, and that in any event the use of force is self-defeating. In his single-minded search for an explanation of the evil which he sees about him as he surveys international politics, moreover, Barnet’s simplism far exceeds that of Kennan and Fulbright.

+++

Even the preceding abbreviated survey of some of the prominent critics of recent American foreign policy should be sufficient to indicate the extent to which both the “liberal establishment” and its radical critics have failed to make a cogent contribution to the contemporary quest for purpose in American foreign policy. The “realism” of the Kennan school, when deeply probed, is discovered to consist in actuality of an uneasy combination of skepticism and optimism which ignores as many problems as it attempts inadequately to solve. The “conservatism” of Fulbright is of a similar character, amounting essentially to an undemonstrated—because undemonstrable—claim that the United States can continue to aspire to all of the magnificent dreams of the American political tradition, without fear that great effort will be required for their fulfillment. The more radical criticism of Barnet and his New Left confreres, inspired by a roseate vision even more obvious than that of Fulbright, usually amounts to little more than a search for a scapegoat, whose elimination from the scene would restore the historical process to its proper course. Political “realism” which is not grounded in an accurate understanding of the human condition is, of course, utopianism.

Contemporary critics, thus, have far surpassed Charles Pinckney in their inability to come to terms with the problem of purpose in foreign policy. Like Pinckney, the contemporary critics seek to solve the dilemma of foreign policy by denying its existence, but with far less excuse. In the late eighteenth century it was at least plausible to speculate about the possibility of escaping the problems posed by the “expand or perish” thesis by avoiding involvement in world affairs, although Hamilton had the better of that argument even in the context of that time, at least until 1823. The present period affords no such luxuries, and the needfor a “great debate” on the purpose of American foreign policy remains. That debate, should it begin, must contain a dual focus. On the one hand, it is necessary to define once again, with contemporary meaning and relevance, the content of the values of our civilization, and define them particularly in the context of interstate relations. What does the Western tradition have to tell us about the reasons for the division of man into separate political societies, about the reasons for conflict among them, about the possibilities of controlling these relations? What is the role of the “just regime” in that kind of political system? Is peace possible, and if not, how can the use of force best be limited? And on the other, it is essential that these values be related adequately to the complicated international political system which exists in the final third of the twentieth century, and a hierarchy of interests identified which does justice both to principle and to reality. What the nation needs, in short, is precisely the sort of political wisdom and awareness, grounded in the tradition of the West, which only conservatism can supply. Unfortunately, the work of elucidating a “conservative theory of international relations,” and of establishing the relevance of such a theory for contemporary American foreign policy, has only hardly been begun: The Right has largely restricted its work in this area to expounding and defending a rather uncritical anticommunism. If contemporary conservatism is to make a contribution to the forming of the national opinion on this most vital of issues, it must do much more, and do it much better—or the field will be left to the likes of those whose positions have been partially dissected in this essay.

Notes

  1. 1. For a somewhat unconventional analysis of the meaning of the early American diplomatic tradition, see the author’s “The Founding Fathers, Conservatism, and American Foreign Policy,” Intercollegiate Review, VII, 1–2, (Fall 1970), 31–43.
  2. 2. Marshall, The Limits of Foreign Policy (Rev. ed.; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), 53.
  3. 3. The phrase is from Wilson’s Address to Congress, April 2, 1917, Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (8 Vols.; New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1927–1939), V, 14.
  4. 4. It should be unnecessary to observe that not all Americans were so naïve. Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred T. Mahan on the one hand, and their anti-imperialist critics on the other, were fully aware that the Philippine adventure, at least, presaged something brand-new under the sun for the United States. For a perceptive discussion of the “great debate” over the purposes of American foreign policy which occurred during this period, see Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire (New York: McCraw-Hill Book Co., 1968).
  5. 5. See, e.g., William C. Carleton, The Revolution in American Foreign Policy (NewYork: Random House, Inc., 1963), Chap. 1.
  6. 6. Ibid., 17
  7. 7. For a not-altogether satisfactory analysis of post–World War II isolationist sentiment in the United States, see Selig Adler, The lsolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (New York: The Free Press, 1966), chaps. 14–16, and Norman A. Graebner, The New Isolationism: A Study in Politics and Foreign Policy Since 1950 (NewYork: The Ronald Press Company, 1956), chaps. 2–3.
  8. 8. Taft’s own views, by no means as severe as some of his fellow Midwestern senators, and thus perhaps for that reason not altogether free from ambiguity, are best found in his A Foreign Policy for Americans (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, inc., 1951).
  9. 9. The most thorough study todate of the “new look” in national security policy instituted under Eisenhower is found in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1962), 379–524. Professor Snyder, who is the primary author of this section of the volume, specifically calls attention to the isolationist sentiments that at least partially inspired some of the administration’s thinking. Incidentally, it is remarkable that almost no one has called attention to the similarities between Dulles’s “new look” and the so-called Nixon Doctrine, at least where nonnuclear aspects of national security policy are concerned.
  10. 10. To be sure, some critics of the policies toward the U.S.S.R and toward Chinese communism pursued by the United States during and immediately after World War II have attributed the disastrous nature of those policies in part to the influence of Communist agents over American decision-makers, and to the importance which certain Communists achieved in the decision-making apparatus. But the present assault on American policy, even that which emanates from the tame moderate elements on the Left, appears far more sweeping in its analyses than did that of the old Rightists of the late 1940s, it was only in the mid-fifties and later, after the intellectual maturing of American conservatism, that critics on the Right began to interpret the failures of American foreign policy as products of the Weltanschaung of liberalism itself.
  11. 11. Indeed, efforts are under way to reinterpret the whole of American history from a similar perspective. See, e.g., the essays in J. Bernstein (ed.), Towards A New Past (NewYork: Pantheon, 1968), as well the earlier treatise by WilliamAppleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1959).
  12. 12. Gaillard Hunt and James Brown Scott (eds.), The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of America (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1920), 160.
  13. 13. Ibid., 156.
  14. 14. Ibid., 156.
  15. 15. Ibid., 159.
  16. 16. Ibid.
  17. 17. Ibid. These quotations are taken from Madison’s notes. Robert Yates, in his more terse version of the Convention debates, has Pinckney merely state that “there is more equality of rank and fortune in America than in any other country under the sun; and this is likely to continue as long as the unappropriated western lands remain unsettled.” See Yates, Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention (Albany, NY: Websters and Skinners, 1921), 161.
  18. 18. Hun and Scott, op. cit., 156.
  19. 19. Ibid., 156.
  20. 20. Ibid., 159.
  21. 21. Ibid., 159–60.
  22. 22. Here, of course, is the essence of one of the more common arguments for the policy of isolationism, an argument employed from time to time by Paine, Jefferson, and John Adams: if the nation wishes to maintain the integrity of its political system, we must avoid contaminating contact with the degenerate policies of the Old World.
  23. 23. Yates, op. cit., 162,
  24. 24. Of these replies, Madison’s is far and away the most cogent, anticipating as it does many of the arguments of The Federalist No, 10. See Gaillard and Hunt, op. cit., 166–71.
  25. 25. Ibid., 187.
  26. 26. Ibid. For an analysis of Hamilton’s argument within the context of this theory of foreign policy, see Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970).
  27. 27. Thus, I cannot agree with Stourzh’s judgment that the Pinckney-Hamilton debate contained the seeds of the later great debates between “idealists” and “realists” over the purposes of American foreign policy. See Stourzh, op cit., 126.
  28. 28. For general statements of the Realist position, see Hans J. Morganthau, Scientific Man and Power Politics (London: Latimer House, 1947); In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1951); and George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). For the critique of Wilson’s foreign policy, see Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self-interest in American’s Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), and Harley Notter, The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1937).
  29. 29. Kennan, op. cit., chap. IV. Like many of the Realists, Kennan is convinced that Wilson’s utopianism represents a radical departure from the nation’s early diplomatic tradition. See, e.g., his Realities of American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 6–12. For a different view, see. Dornan, op. cit.
  30. 30. The Realists have denounced the foreign policy of the Johnson administration in similar terms. See, e.g., Morgenthau’s A New Foreign Policy for the United States (New York:Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), chap. 2.
  31. 31. Realities, 12.
  32. 32. Ibid. Cf. Morgenthau’s hyperbolic assault on the Johnson administration’s hostility to “that middle ground of subtle distinctions, complex choices, and precarious manipulations which is the proper sphere of foreign policy,” and its denial of “the existence of priorities in foreign policy which are derived from a hierarchy of interests and the availability of power to support them.” A New Foreign Policy, 14.
  33. 33. Realities, 36.
  34. 34. See Marcus C. Raskin and Bernard B. Fall (eds.), The Viet-Nam Reader (Rev. ed.; New York: Random House, Inc., 1967), 15–31.
  35. 35. Realities, 47.
  36. 36. Ibid.
  37. 37. To besure, it might be pointed out that the relativist position can cut both ways. If it becomes possible, under a given set of international conditions, for a nation to pursue, e.g., imperial grandeur without seriously threatening its own survival, and if it deliberately chooses this course of action, relativism does not offer any standard, moral or otherwise, by which to object.
  38. 38. See, for example, Realities, 104–7. “We recognize,” he writes, “that the advance of our society along the lines of its traditional ideals is no longer something that can be, realized just within the framework of our national life itself . . . we must be prepared to make real sacrifices and painful adjustments; in our domestic life for sake of the health, of our world environment.”
  39. 39. Ibid., 91.
  40. 40. The phrase is C. B. Marshall’s, in op. cit., 28.
  41. 41. See, e.g., Raskin and Fall, op. cit., Parts I and V.
  42. 42. For a perceptive discussion of this point, see Robert W. Tucker, Nation or Empire? The Debate Over American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), 130–37.
  43. 43. Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (NewYork: Random House, Inc., 1966), 255. He continues: “I think that if the great conservatives of the past such as Burke and Metternich and Castlereagh, were alive today, they would not be true believers or relentless crusaders against communism. They would wish to come to terms with the world as it is, not because our world would be pleasing to them—almost certainly it would not be but because they believed in the preservation of indissoluble links between the past and the future, because they profoundly mistrusted abstract ideas, and because they did not think themselves or any other men qualified to play God.”
  44. 44. Fulbright, “The Great Society is a Sick Society,” The New York Times, August 20, 1967, 90, quoted in Tucker, op. cit.,131.
  45. 45. The Arrogance of Power, 255–56 (italics added).
  46. 46. See especially Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1968).
  47. 47. Ibid., 25.
  48. 48. Ibid., 27.
  49. 49. Ibid., 258.
  50. 50. Ibid., 25.
  51. 51. Ibid., 29. For an even more damning indictment of the foreign policy bureaucrat—and indeed of all of recent American diplomacy—see Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969). As an exercise in sheer hysteria, this collection of essays is unrivaled in the recent history of foreign policy debate in the United States.