We are facing a bunch of thugs, and the only theory a thug understands is a gun and a bayonet.
—Senator Harry S. Truman
One man deserves more credit than any other for laying the foundations of our modern world: the thirty-third president of the United States, Harry S. Truman. Truman is a deeply paradoxical character: a leader and visionary who tried to bridge the divide between and within his country’s political parties, yet left office as the least popular president America has ever seen. He steered the Western world through the end of World War II and the outbreak of the Cold War. He led the United States, and the free world, in responding to the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the North Korean invasion of the South; he oversaw both the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the founding of the United Nations. In the United States, he is remembered for the woeful approval ratings with which he left office. But he deserves to be remembered as the man who paved the way for the rise of liberal democracy, despite all the challenges from authoritarian forces.
Thanks to Truman’s leadership in America, and American leadership in the world, the half-century following World War II saw the United States successfully establish, protect, and advance a liberal order, carving out a vast free world within which an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity could flourish in Western Europe, East Asia, and the Western Hemisphere.
Although tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union sometimes rose to dangerous levels, the period was characterized, above all, by a lack of direct armed conflict between the great powers. While local and regional conflicts occasionally developed into delimited proxy wars, including two hugely costly wars in Asia, the United States and the Soviet Union overall kept the Cold War cold. Just as important, the American presence in Europe and East Asia put an end to the cycles of war that had torn both regions since the late nineteenth century.
The number of democracies in the world grew dramatically. The international trading system expanded and deepened. Much of the world enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. The Western model was largely successful—so much so that the Soviet empire finally collapsed under the pressure of the West’s political and economic success. The liberal order expanded to include most of the rest of Europe and much of Asia.
All of this was the result of many forces: the political and economic integration of Europe, the success of Japan and Germany, and the rise of other successful Asian economies. But none of it would have been possible without a United States willing and able to play the abnormal and unusual role of preserver and defender of a liberal world order, and a US president willing to lead from the front.
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Harry S. Truman grew from a modest background to become one of the greatest American presidents. He was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. Although the young Harry was an excellent student, his parents could not afford to send him to college, and following his high school graduation Truman worked at a variety of jobs, including farming, oil drilling, and banking. He opened a haberdashery shop that eventually went bankrupt. After failing in the haberdashery business, Truman decided to seek a political career, serving as a county official from 1922 until his election to the US Senate in 1934. He was to serve as a senator for the next decade.
Growing up in modest circumstances had a significant effect on Truman’s whole character and behavior. He was known as a plain and blunt-spoken man of the people. Some of the phrases he coined passed into everyday speech and have remained current to this day: “The buck stops here,” “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and “It sure is hell to be president.” While his main interest as a senator was in domestic issues, his foreign-policy focus and attitudes intensified as Nazism and Fascism gained ground in Europe and Asia during the 1920s and 1930s.
During the First World War, Truman served in the American Expeditionary Forces, which were deployed to Europe after the United States entered the war in April 1917. The experience of the twentieth century’s first great man-made catastrophe had a lasting impact on him.
Sent to France with the National Guard of Missouri, Truman served as commanding officer of a field artillery battery. Captain “Harry” was highly regarded by the nearly two hundred men of Battery D under his command. In his great Truman biography, David McCullough describes how Captain Truman worked his men hard, “insisting on strict behavior, making them ‘walk the chalk’ (stick to the straight line of discipline), and driving himself no less.” McCullough writes that Truman transformed what had been generally considered the worst battery in the regiment to what was clearly one of the best. On a personal level, Captain Truman was a friendly and obliging man. He took a personal interest in his men and would talk to them in a way most officers would not. McCullough quotes one of Truman’s men: “Harry had such warmth and a liking for people. He was not in any way the arrogant, bossy type, or Prussian type of officer.” While under Truman’s command in France, Battery D did not lose a single man.
The war was a transformative experience for Truman in three ways: leadership, attitude toward Germany, and worldview. Truman had entered military service in 1917 as a family farmer with very little education and a record of unsuccessful business ventures behind him. But during the war he achieved a positive record and acquired valuable leadership skills that benefited his political career after the war.
Truman’s active military service in Europe contributed greatly to shaping his view of the world and America’s international role. He experienced firsthand the horrors of war, and these experiences contributed to his negative attitude toward Germany, which he viewed as the aggressor. But first and foremost, Truman became more of an internationalist than most of his compatriots. His participation in the war and stay in Europe had given him an international outlook that came to characterize his political career. While his constituents at home in Missouri tended to be mildly isolationist, Truman cautiously followed President Roosevelt’s internationalism. In the 1930s, Senator Truman voted for the Neutrality Act, which severely impaired the ability of the United States to help the Allies in Europe. However, this vote was more an expression of a calculated, pragmatic, and tactical maneuver to satisfy the traditional isolationist tendencies in Missouri than a reflection of Truman’s true attitudes. His speeches, especially in the late 1930s, showed that he feared the spread of Fascism and Nazism, and that he believed the United States needed to be prepared.
In a speech in Larchmont, New York, in 1938, he warned that “conditions in Europe have developed to a point likely to cause an explosion any time.” He called for the establishment of an air force “second to none,” arguing that no one could be more mistaken than the isolationists, and that America had erred gravely by refusing to sign the Versailles Treaty and refusing to join the League of Nations. His condemnation of this policy was fierce, portraying it as a moral failure: “We did not accept our responsibility as a world power.” In Truman’s eyes, America could not pull back and hide from the world. America was blessed with riches and wanted peace, but “in the coming struggle between democracy and dictatorship, democracy must be prepared to defend its principles and its wealth.” In a letter to one of his constituents in early 1941, he explained why America might review her noninterference policy, stating with typical bluntness, “We are facing a bunch of thugs, and the only theory a thug understands is a gun and a bayonet.”
In retrospect, this period in which he struggled against the deep-seated urge toward isolationism can be seen as having defined his future vision and policies. Indeed, for the American isolationists, the 1930s were the high-water mark of their political dominance. The 1930s witnessed the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931; Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933; Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935; Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland and the German and Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War in 1936; Japan’s invasion of central China in 1937; Hitler’s absorption of Austria, followed by his annexation and conquest of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. None of these events was considered a reason for the United States to get involved. Even after the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland in 1939 and the Nazi crushing of traditional US allies such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway in 1940, it was still the dominant view that the United States shouldn’t get involved. A prominent and leading isolationist, the Republican senator Robert Taft, argued that the United States should not range “over the world like a knight-errant, protecting democracy and ideals of good faith, and tilting, like Don Quixote, against the windmills of fascism.” Truman found himself in strong opposition to the isolationist senators.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a wake-up call: a reminder that even the world’s greatest power is not protected by two large oceans. The Japanese attack and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war led to America’s full-scale entry into the war in both Europe and Asia.
But even before that attack, it was clear to the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that American inactivity could not be sustained forever. In his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1941, Roosevelt presented his case for American involvement, arguing for continued aid to Great Britain and greater war production at home. In helping Britain, Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed. He spoke about “the four freedoms”—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. As America entered the war, these four freedoms became the lighthouse for American political leaders and the American people.
The recognition of the need for a strong American involvement in world affairs to defend American security interests was reflected in the Atlantic Charter, a pivotal policy statement that Roosevelt drafted together with British prime minister Winston Churchill in the fall of 1941. Churchill had been appointed prime minister in 1940. A staunch and outspoken opponent of the appeasement policy that had been pursued unsuccessfully by the British government led by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during the 1930s, Churchill had the moral authority and rhetorical power to rally his country against the Nazis in a way that no other leader could have done. But after the fall of France in June 1940, Great Britain was in a desperate situation, standing alone in Europe against triumphant tyranny, bearing the full brunt of Hitler’s air war, and living with the daily threat of invasion. Churchill was determined to obtain assistance from the United States. However, President Roosevelt had severe difficulties in winning political acceptance for assistance to the British. The isolationists were quick to insist that the United States should avoid being involved in a foreign entanglement that could lead to American engagement in the war. Churchill alternately begged and encouraged the Americans to help in the fight against the Nazis. In a radio address, he ended the broadcast with an explicit message to Roosevelt with a heartfelt plea: “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
Roosevelt was responsive and intensified contacts with the embattled British prime minister. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met off the coast of Newfoundland, aboard their respective warships, to formulate a common strategy, although the United States would not officially enter the war until four months later. The objectives of the war were conveyed in the Atlantic Charter. The charter included President Roosevelt’s four principles and stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; self-determination; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as the disarmament of the aggressor nations.
The Atlantic Charter set goals for the postwar world and inspired many of the international agreements that shaped the world thereafter. It guided US and British policy in the years of war that followed, as they fought back against the forces of tyranny in the Pacific, the Atlantic, North Africa, and Europe. It provided the underpinning of values that cemented their sometimes troubled alliance; it inspired the soldiers who fought their way from the beaches of Normandy to the banks of the Rhine and the Elbe, from the ridges of Papua New Guinea to the beaches of Saipan and Iwo Jima.
It also inspired Truman, who at that time headed the Truman Commission investigating fraud in defense contracts. It was a position that brought him to nationwide prominence, and Roosevelt tapped him as his vice presidential running mate in 1944. It was one of Roosevelt’s last major decisions. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died, and after less than three months as vice president, Harry S. Truman was sworn in as the thirty-third president of the United States. Truman told reporters, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” Certainly the weight of the world’s shattered economies and societies was about to do so.
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One of Truman’s first decisions as president was also one of the hardest. Victory in Europe was declared just weeks after he took office, but the war against Japan was still dragging bloodily on. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were blasted into history as the first-ever casualties of atomic weapons. Japanese surrender quickly followed. After six years of war, many millions of casualties, and billions of dollars in war spending, Germany, Japan, and their allies had been defeated. The question that Truman dedicated the next eight years to answering was how to make sure that such a global conflagration could never happen again.
It is tempting to argue that an earlier American engagement and stronger American global leadership in the 1930s could have prevented war. That was certainly the conclusion that Roosevelt and Truman drew. Would-be aggressors had to be deterred before they became too strong to be stopped short of all-out war. Or, as Roosevelt put it, the task for America was to “end future wars by stepping on their necks before they grow up.”
It was not easy to follow in the footsteps of the highly regarded Roosevelt, but Truman overcame low expectations. He established a reputation at home for personal integrity, honesty, and efficiency. On the international stage, he strove to create a solid foundation of international organizations, structures, norms, and rules in the military, political, and economic fields to prevent future devastating wars, preserve peace, and provide progress and prosperity.
From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, it is clear that this strong network of international institutions was one of the main reasons that the postwar world recovered relatively quickly and embarked on an era of peace, growth, and abundance. The institutions reduced the postwar chaos and made up for the lack of trust among states. They helped reduce member states’ fear of one another, a crucial factor in the aftermath of the devastating world war. International institutions provided a forum for negotiation among states. They provided continuity and a sense of stability. They fostered cooperation among states for their mutual advantage.
Truman’s commitment to international institutions proved beneficial for the United States and the world. The alternative would have been a multipolar anarchy. During the Cold War, the world was characterized by a bipolar power balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The American-led international institutional system helped foster stability and economic progress within the non-Communist world; and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and international Communism, the established institutional framework helped facilitate a quick integration of the former Communist states into the already established international system and thus contributed to the stabilization of the new world order.
Among some conservatives in America, multilateral institutions are considered an impediment to American influence and leadership. Actually, the opposite is true. Thanks to the international system that was established under American leadership after World War II, the United States has been able to promote and protect the values and interests of the free world. In a very real sense, by championing international cooperation based on the balance of powers, rules, and responsibilities, Truman shaped the free world in America’s image, and the free world was better for it.
Truman backed up his commitment to multilateral institutions with the leadership and management skills he had learned in the trenches. If his aims were visionary, his policies were concrete, detailed, and highly effective. Four of his initiatives stand out as the key pillars of the international order to this day.
First was the establishment of the United Nations. Based on the negative example of the League of Nations, a weak and ineffective body that the United States never joined, Truman took the lead in establishing a new, stronger international organization, the United Nations. Signed in San Francisco in 1945, the UN Charter merged two forms of international decision making. The UN would implement collective security through the Security Council, designating five major powers as permanent members wielding veto power, together with a rotating group of ten additional countries. The Security Council was vested with special responsibility to maintain international peace and security. The General Assembly would be universal in membership and based upon the doctrine of the equality of states—one state, one vote.
While the UN Security Council has often been paralyzed due to the veto power of the five permanent members, the UN has proved useful as the only international forum where all the world’s nations, irrespective of their political system, can meet, discuss, and possibly make decisions. Born in California and housed in New York, the UN carries in its very bones Truman’s dedication to the international order.
Second, America also led the way in setting up a new global economic system. The 1930s had seen a progressive fragmentation of the international economy as nation after nation resorted to protectionism; World War II had seen the wholesale destruction of much of the world’s industrial base. To put that system back on a sustainable footing, 730 delegates from all forty-four Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, while the war was still raging, to hold the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference.
Their goal was nothing less than to agree on a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system so that it could never again be pulled apart by aggressive governments. To meet that goal, they established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which today is part of the World Bank. In order to facilitate a global free-trade system, they established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948.* They saw rules-based trade and the unhindered flow of capital as the keys to worldwide prosperity. That vision is just as true today. The Bretton Woods institutions have helped stabilize fragile states and the global economy, and facilitated global trade and economic cooperation; even China has chosen to work within this established international order. It is no coincidence that the IMF was one of the prime responders in the great financial crisis of 2009 onward. The effectiveness and representative nature of the institution may have been called into question by some, but no serious critic has questioned its importance. If it had not existed, we would have had to invent it in the middle of the crisis. It is thanks to Truman that we did not have to.
Third, in order to protect Western Europe against the military threat from an assertive Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, and ten Western European countries created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. The devastated nations of Western Europe were too weak to defend themselves, so America provided the ultimate unilateral security guarantee: a shelter under its nuclear umbrella. The core of their transatlantic commitment was the pledge that an attack on one alliance member will be considered an attack on all. In another indication of the importance of US leadership, they signed their founding treaty in Washington, DC. NATO is the bedrock of Euro-Atlantic security, and, thanks to NATO, Europe has experienced the longest period of peace in the history of the continent.
Finally, the Truman administration advanced a series of crucial initiatives to create growth and jobs, prevent social unrest on the ruined European continent, and prevent Communism from getting a foothold among the poverty-stricken and disenchanted European peoples.
One such example was the Greek-Turkish aid program. Launched in March 1947, it provided economic assistance to Turkey and to the Greek government in their fight against Communism. Turkey and Greece were seen as the linchpin of security in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Until 1947, they had been funded by Britain, but the postwar empire was no longer able to keep up its payments.
The most important initiative, however, was launched by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in a speech to the graduating class at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, three years almost to the day after US, British, Canadian, and Allied troops stormed ashore in Normandy and brought the fight against Hitler back to Western Europe. Marshall called for a comprehensive program to rebuild Europe. Fanned by the fear of Communist expansion and the rapid deterioration of European economies, Congress passed the plan in March 1948 and approved funding that would eventually rise to over $12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe, or some $130 billion in current dollars.
The Marshall Plan stimulated European industrialization and brought extensive investment into the region. It was also a stimulant to the US economy by establishing markets for American goods. It is rightly viewed as the foundation of modern Europe’s prosperity. Later, the Europeans embarked on an integration process that led to the establishment of institutions that eventually became the European Union. This regional cooperation underpinned the international order that was established under American leadership.
But the most significant feature of the Marshall Plan and the Greek-Turkish aid program was the new, engaged policy they embodied, and which Truman articulated in a historic address to Congress on March 12, 1947. While the policy of reengagement began with Roosevelt, it was Truman who became its champion, and whose name was ultimately attached to it as the Truman Doctrine.
In his pivotal speech, Truman vowed that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reshaped US foreign policy, turning it away from its long-held stance of avoiding regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in faraway conflicts. In a stroke of rhetorical genius, Truman elevated engagement to a moral choice directly affecting every single American citizen, because it was based on American values:
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
And why should the United States take that stance? Truman’s answer remains just as true today as it did nearly seventy years ago:
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
For Truman there was no difference between Fascism and Communism. He detested any form of totalitarianism, and he made his anti-Communism clear in his inaugural on January 20, 1949:
Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is not able to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters. Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice. Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful purpose, punishment without trial, and forced labor as the chattel of the state. It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think. Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of those abilities of his. . . . Communism holds that the world is so widely divided into opposing classes that war is inevitable. Democracy holds that free nations can settle differences justly and maintain a lasting peace. . . . I state these differences . . . because the actions resulting from the Communist philosophy are a threat to the efforts of free nations to bring about world recovery and lasting peace.
In retrospect, these observations seem self-evident, because we have seen the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism. But we must remember that the situation was radically different by the end of the 1940s. The Soviet Union was seen as a strong nation with global ambitions to spread Communism to the rest of the world. And indeed, Communist dictatorships were established in Eastern and Central European countries, under severe pressure and active intimidation from the Soviet Union. Even in the West there was a strong left-wing camp, notably among intellectuals, who admired Soviet Communism. It was in this light that President Truman took up the battle against the “false communist philosophy.”
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In domestic politics, the Truman era was characterized by a stalemate between the executive and legislative branches. But he scored some notable legislative achievements in foreign and military policy, despite facing a hostile Congress. Truman tapped into the experiences of his ten years in the Senate to forge relationships with members of Congress at a difficult time. A Democratic president facing a Republican Congress and a divided Democratic Party, Truman stands as a model for other presidents during periods of divided government. His decisive leadership reoriented American politics, economics, and foreign relations. In terms of foreign policy, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in US history, setting a high standard for American global leadership and engagement. He founded a new world order through a new global economic system; a new transatlantic security alliance; a comprehensive economic recovery plan, notably the Marshall Plan for Europe; and the United Nations, though it had been prepared by his predecessor.
Truman also made some difficult decisions, none more so than the decision to use atomic weapons against imperial Japan. This was a controversial and widely disputed decision—perhaps the most far-reaching decision that any elected leader anywhere has ever had to make. On August 9, 1945, after Nagasaki was bombed, Truman made a public statement on why the atomic bombs were used: “We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” Truman and his generals had been appalled by the sacrifices made by Japan’s death-or-victory soldiers and the losses they had inflicted on the United States in defending islands such as Saipan. The thought of the deaths they would inflict if the Japanese homeland were invaded was too much to be accepted as long as any other option remained open—even the unthinkable.
In 1948, Truman recognized the new State of Israel. It was another controversial decision, partly made against the counsel of some of his advisers, who argued that it would antagonize Arab states and jeopardize American access to oil. While initially somewhat skeptical about the establishment of a Jewish state, Truman declared that he would handle the situation in the light of justice, not oil. He saw it as an act of humanity. The murder of six million Jews by the Nazis had been the worst atrocity of all time. A strong personal sympathy for the Jewish cause and an outrage at the plight of Jewish refugees post-Holocaust made Truman firm in his position to allow the Jewish people their own home: Israel.
Nazism and Japanese imperialism were defeated, but it did not mean an end to conflict—nor an end to the need for decisive American leadership. In 1948, the Soviets blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in an attempt to push the West out of Berlin, cutting all surface traffic to West Berlin. A desperate Berlin, faced with starvation and in need of vital supplies, looked to the West for help. The Americans created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Soviets backed down one year later. Berlin became a symbol of President Truman’s and the United States’ resolve to stand up to the Soviet threat.
In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman promptly decided to do whatever had to be done to meet this aggression. War followed from 1950 to 1953, and the Americans succeeded in keeping the Communists at bay. In an address on July 19, 1950, President Truman once again outlined his view on American global responsibility:
By their actions in Korea, Communist leaders have demonstrated their contempt for the basic moral principles on which the United Nations is founded. This is a direct challenge to the effort of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in freedom and peace. This challenge has been presented squarely. We must meet it squarely . . . the fact that Communist forces have invaded Korea is a warning that there may be similar acts of aggression in other parts of the world. The free nations must be on their guard, more than ever before, against this kind of sneak attack. . . . We know that the cost of freedom is high. But we are determined to preserve our freedom—no matter the cost.
Truman’s foreign program was to combat Communist expansion and to strengthen what he called the “free world.” Supported by leading Republicans, this policy became bipartisan in its major aspects. Backed by American economic and atomic power, it was remarkably successful. The Truman Doctrine was the turning point in damming Soviet and Communist expansion because it put the world on notice that it would be American policy to support the cause of freedom wherever it was threatened.
President Truman left office as the most unpopular president in American history, but he demonstrated a brilliant example of American leadership and effective conduct in building a new international order after World War II. More than any other individual, he deserves to be remembered as the architect of the international order in which we live and are struggling to preserve.
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While Truman’s internationalism is indisputable, views vary on whether his policy of active engagement in the world was a break with or a natural continuation of the American foreign policy tradition. One view of history emphasizes American isolationism. This school of thought typically quotes George Washington’s Farewell Address: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Other favorite reference points include John Quincy Adams’s famous statement that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy” and Thomas Jefferson’s warning against “entangling alliances.”
Historians who emphasize the isolationist tradition typically view Theodore Roosevelt as the first internationalist president, followed by Woodrow Wilson and then Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. An alternative view, however, notes that the United States has always been a strongly internationalist and universalist nation motivated by a deep sense of mission beyond narrow geographical boundaries. Robert Kagan advances this interpretation of history persuasively in his book Dangerous Nation, arguing that “the pervasive myth of America as isolationist and passive until provoked rests on a misunderstanding of America’s foreign policies in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.”
Kagan shows that the American founding generation was, in fact, highly internationally oriented and by no means isolationist. In fact, George Washington faced geopolitical realities remarkably similar to the challenges of the twentieth century. In Kagan’s interpretation, Washington’s warning against permanent alliances was, in fact, a specific and unique attempt to maneuver America away from its alliance with France at a time when French expansionism had become reminiscent of the subsequent German expansionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In both cases, the United States opted to align with Great Britain, reasoning that if a continental power subjugated the British, America would likely be next.
Kagan also draws an interesting parallel to the Cold War in a discussion of Washington’s Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton:
Prefiguring the argument advanced a century and a half later by George Kennan about another revolutionary despotism, Hamilton argued that French leaders were driven to expansionism abroad by fear of their own lack of legitimacy at home.
Besides the first president, no other president did as much to shape early American history as did the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery and kept the Union intact. And like Washington and Hamilton, Lincoln prefigured many of the challenges faced by modern-day decision makers.
During a private visit to Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, in September 2009, I came across a powerful quote from Lincoln that I included in a speech that same month at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC:
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
Lincoln spoke these words on a symbolic date: September 11, 1858. Exactly 143 years before the terrorist attacks of 2001, Lincoln already knew what President George W. Bush subsequently described as the key lesson of 9/11: “The human condition elsewhere matters to our national security.”
The historical interpretation is important because history often creates a sense of legitimacy that can be influential in present public policy discussions. If one accepts the view that the American founders were isolationists at heart, then it is easy to conclude that Truman’s internationalism was an aberration fostered by the unique circumstances surrounding the beginning of the Cold War. Now that circumstances are different, the temptation will be to fall back on the original ideas of the founders if at all possible. If, on the other hand, we believe that America has always been internationalist at heart, then the case for continued internationalism in the present age becomes much stronger.
I personally find Kagan’s interpretation of American history very convincing. I believe Truman carried the mantle of Washington and Lincoln, but as we shall see in the next chapter, it fell to another Cold War president to truly rise to the rhetorical level of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.