Special providence (American Foreign Policy and how it changed the world.)
by Walter Russell Mead
This book is a look through the Foreign Policy kaleidescope of the US throughout it's history and attempts to answer the question of why U.S. foreign policy has been so “successful” in making the United States the richest and most powerful country in world history.
Mead explores the history of American foreign policy from the founding of the republic to the present. He disagrees with the myth that the United States spent the 19th century in some kind of virtuous isolation and places many of the political and economic events in a foreign policy context to prove his point.
Mead goes on to contend that there have been four schools of thought that have driven American foreign policy, named after their own respective practicioners...
Hamiltonians believe in a strong link between big business and the federal government and the pursuit of policies that reflect the interests of this alliance.
Wilsonians are the school of high internationalist ideals (e.g., the UN), believing that the United States has a duty to spread democratic values and to respect and uphold the rule of international law.
Not leave out the isolationists,
Jeffersonians fear that international entanglements run the risk of involving the United States in unsavory alliances or in war; they thus champion a cautious and limited foreign policy, preferring that the country focus its energies on enhancing democracy at home.
Jacksonians are preoccupied with the physical security of the United States and the country’s economic well-being, defining such in largely populist terms.
Mead believes that all four work together and that the US citizen applies each one in the context of their own situations.
I thought it was good read, one of the better books I've read in quite some time.
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