Preface

This is a little book about a big and slippery subject: the place of ideology in U.S. foreign policy. It ventures into a complicated realm where con­ ceptual confusion often reigns. Much like imperialism and liberalism, other protean concepts frequently bandied about in serious historical and political discourse, ideology is hard to pin down. I should make clear at the outset that my own efforts to make sense of the intellectual underpinnings of foreign policy have convinced me of the value of a broad and common­ sensical working definition of ideology, which I view as an interrelated set of convictions or assumptions that reduces the complexities of a particular slice of reality to easily comprehensible terms and suggests appropriate ways of dealing with that reality.

Readers will no doubt have their own widely varying and sometimes quite pronounced views on what ideology is and how it relates to policy. I have been aware from the start of the difficulties posed by this inherent complexity of my subject and the diverse preconceptions of my readers. At the end I am no less aware of those difficulties and am thoroughly convinced of the truth of Gordon Craig's observation of over a decade ago: "To establish the relationship between ideas and foreign policy is always a difficult task, and it is no accident that it has attracted so few historians."1 But the subject is too important to be left in a state of neglect like a surly invalid relative whose justified claims to attention we honor only infrequently and even then perfunctorily.

The construction of this broad picture of U.S. foreign relations from its inception down to the present has in large measure involved assembling fragments of historical evidence and interpretation, some of it doubtless familiar to my readers, into a new pattern. The exercise was intended to provide new insights into the past and provoke fresh thinking about the present. It is in terms of those objectives that I would like this volume to be read and judged. I hope at the very least that this work, whatever its

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shortcomings, will inspire others to take the problem of foreign policy ideology seriously and perhaps even try their own hand at it.

The book begins with an introductory chapter on ideology, especially as it relates to U.S. foreign policy. By formulating the conceptual problem posed by ideology and offering a solution, it leads us across the border into the chaos-prone realm of U.S. foreign policy itself. Once there the reader should look to the following three chapters to impose order. They trace the origins of U.S. foreign-policy ideology, showing how it gained in coherence and appeal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how by the beginning of our century its elements had coalesced into a powerful, mutually reinforcing body of thought that had gone far toward dominating the thinking of those most concerned with foreign-policy issues. The last two chapters are intended to demonstrate that twentieth-century Ameri­ cans, even in our day, have carried forward the outlook of their forebears to a much greater degree than is usually conceded. That point, once made, clears the way for some final reflections on the practical policy implications of this ideological persistence. The book concludes with a discussion of the relevant historical literature.

Readers may understand this book better if they know the impulses that inspired it and gave shape to its final form. In some measure this project has been a therapeutic exercise. It has allowed this historian to vent im­ patience with the characteristic tendency of Americans to ignore the past. The remarkable continuity of our thinking on basic foreign-policy issues is not sufficiently recognized. Even that part of the public most conversant with policy is captivated by the notion that the international problems we face are unprecedented. The past is largely irrelevant, so goes the common wisdom, not only to an understanding of these problems but also to the task of devising appropriately fresh solutions. To the extent that a popular conception of our foreign-policy past exists, it pictures American leaders setting aside the self-limiting and outmoded notions of an earlier era in favor of a mature pragmatism appropriate to the nation's transformed status as a global power. From that popular perspective it is hard to imagine that older attitudes might have hastened, rather than obstructed, the trans­ formation of our international position and that those attitudes might have remained important, even fundamental, to the thinking of policymakers long after that transformation was completed.

Historians of U.S. foreign relations have unwittingly become accessories to the perpetuation of this national foreign-policy myth by reinforcing the public's fixation with the present and neglecting the role of cultural values. Increasingly absorbed in the study of the twentieth-century drama (espe-

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cially two world wars and a cold war), they too have endorsed and strength­ ened the popular notion of a contemporary break with previous policy experience. In accounting for the supposedly novel situation the United States has come to occupy, historians have focused their attention-almost invariably in narrowly drawn studies-on changes in strategic thinking, the needs of the economic system, elite interests and influence, the role of the presidency, the workings of bureaucratic politics, and the interaction of foreign policy with domestic politics. It is time that ideology, construed in broad historical terms, received its due.

Writing this book has also allowed me to work out ideas first glimpsed in my work on U.S.-China relations but not easily pursued in that context. I had become increasingly impressed by how powerfully a sense of national mission, stereotypes about "Orientals," and a dedication to a particular path of political and economic development combined to shape the Amer­ ican approach to China. Particularly intriguing, I found, was the way in whichthe open-door idea, so intimately associatedwithChina policy, "both drew from and fed back into the national fantasies of redemption and dominion."2 Formulating that phrase confronted me with the fact that I had not properly explored, and was not able adequately to explain, the larger world of policy ideas. By degrees I convinced myself that establishing that general intellectual framework was worth a try.

Finally, writing this book has allowed me to put on paper some notions that my students over the last decade-at Yale, Colgate, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill-have challenged me to develop. Like most Americans interested in foreign policy, they came into the classroom impressed as well as perplexed by the claims the world has made on our attention and resources, eager to understand how Americans have dealt with those claims, but unable to stand back and see how deeply rooted cultural values influenced the way we have interpreted those claims and responded to them. Trying to provide them with some perspective has proven a real education for me.

***

A work of this sort, marked by the breadth and temerity of its argument, is necessarily and peculiarly dependent on the aid, indulgence, and en­ couragement of others. As the thought of a book on the subject began to insinuate itself into my mind, Charles Grench at Yale University Press came along and provided an enthusiastic push. Since then many friends and colleagues have helped me. Robert Beisner, Dorothy Borg, John Coo­ gan, William Dolbee, James Fetzer, Harry Harding, Thomas Hietala, Don

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Higginbotham, Steven Levine, Donald Mathews, Leona and Ellis Simon, and Marilyn Young all deserve thanks for their good-natured response to my appeals for advice and for criticism of this work in one or another of its stages. I am also grateful to Linda Carl and Warren Nord at UNC, Carol Gluck at Columbia University, and Arthur Waldron at Princeton

University for creating opportunities for me to try out some of the ideas developed here. Finally, my thanks go to Mary Woodall for invaluable and always patient assistance in translating my scrawl into clear copy; to Linda Stephenson, Laura Edwards, and John Beam forhelp during the last stages of this project; and to Otto Bohlmann for outstanding editorial guidance. I hope all who have contributed in one way or another find enough here that is fresh, persuasive, or at least provocative to feel partially recompensed.

I also owe an intellectual debt to the many scholars whose works I have drawn on. Since it would be impossible to list them all, I shall have to let my notes and my concluding essay on the historical literature serve as partial and inadequate acknowledgement. There is but one item-a slim volume on Chinese Buddhism by the late Arthur Wright-that compels mention here. Wright's demonstration of the intellectual power and ele­ gance that a crisp synthesis could attain deeply impressed me years ago and came immediately to mind as a model at the outset of this project. Thus do the seeds that teachers sow bear strange fruit.

This work has been in several senses a family affair. Paula Hunt's critical acumen once again did much to clarify my exposition, while my daughters acted as sometime proofreaders. They also served without knowing it as a reminder of my obligations to the world they will inherit, and so this work is dedicated to them. If my efforts here make Americans a bit more self-conscious about their own thinking on international affairs and to that extent more cautious and wise in their use of power, then I shall have partially fulfilled that obligation.