James Carter

Spring 2000

War, Revolution

Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Pp. Xi-198 + biblio & index.

A historian of American foreign policy once said that ideology is like halitosis, it is something the other guy has.⁽¹⁾ For historians of U.S. foreign relations, this pearl has unfortunately guided much of the literature and, in large measure, defined the parameters of debate. America, so the story goes, does not have an identifiable ideology. Its international role is, more often than not, thrust upon it, placing American policymakers in a defensive role. The story of America's international affairs is the story of "the brave and essential response of free men" to quote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.⁽²⁾ Under the banner of freedom and the tenets of trade liberalism, the United States moves to make the world safe for democracy. Michael Hunt's book, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, is a much needed attempt to correct this shortcoming.

Professor Hunt goes about defining U.S. ideological imperatives in a fairly systematic manner. The core of his analysis is that three fundamental ideas have and continue to shape America's foreign relations. Those "core ideas" are (1) an inexorable national aggrandizement (2) a definite but necessarily fluid racial hierarchy, and (3) a skepticism and hostility toward revolution. The author then proceeds by dealing with each concept in the three successive chapters. Not surprisingly, he traces the genesis of these notions back to the very origin of the republic. From Winthrop's self-conscious statement that the world is watching to Thomas Paine's declaration that the colonists "have it in [their] power to begin the world all over again," albeit in purer form, Mr. Hunt makes clear the relationship between such powerful intellectual attributes and the propensity toward paternal and imperious relations with others.⁽³⁾

National aggrandizement is the most logical pattern on the part of a people convinced of their own righteousness. To have done otherwise would have essentially been to deny lesser peoples the fruits of civilization. The non-white world proved especially vulnerable to the consequences of such a belief. As the author states, "the idea of a racial hierarchy proved particularly attractive because it offered a ready and useful conceptual handle on the world." The belief in the racial superiority of Americans/whites also dovetailed nicely with prevailing cultural realities. As Hunt points out, racial hierarchy was a "central point of cultural reference" that had been imbued through successive generations at home, school and the workplace.⁽⁴⁾

In order to demonstrate American trepidation about revolution, the author uses the opposing views of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The former was quite distrustful of revolution while the latter believed in the potential of revolution to purify society and stem tyranny. Hunt then discusses three successive "waves" of revolutions from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and the way in which these waves slowly shaped American views of revolution away Jefferson and toward Adams. Not surprisingly, the opinions of American leaders became more and more disapproving. They came to believe that the only good revolution was the American revolution and that time seemed to prove that type of revolution was not possible outside the American context. They tended, instead, toward the political left, a leveling of society and a diminution of private property. These features were anathema to the American experience.

Though at times a bit contrived, Hunt analysis is insightful. Although, one wonders whether it is necessary to demonstrate abhorrence of revolution as an American characteristic. What state embraces revolution? Hunt also makes some rather sweeping statements that beg substantiating. For example, he declares that Americans in the Midwest were not as bothered by the Paris Commune as folks in the South and in New England. Further, he states that large American cities were a kind of middle ground where immigrants, who possessed a certain radical political tradition, came up against entrenched Eastern elites and challenged their hegemony.⁽⁵⁾ These both may be true, but surely they are known as the result of tremendous research. These shortcomings are really details. Hunt is aiming at something larger than this.

As he makes clear in the opening chapter, the author seeks to move discussion of foreign relations away from the traditional keepers of the field: George F. Kennan and William Appleman Williams. Both are important figures, "neither of these worthy and thoughtful interpreters, however, deals with ideology in a way that would help the policy critics out of their conceptual tangle and provide the fresh insights on the problems of U.S. policy that we seek."⁽⁶⁾ Hunt criticizes Kennan for his dismissing an ideological framework and then creating his own: "realism." Realism promised to divorce bothersome legalisms and moral absolutes from foreign policy considerations and to move unencumbered toward the realization of the nation's own real interests. Hunt rightly points out, however, that legalisms and moral absolutes are deep expressions of culture and not superficial preoccupations. Kennan had created his own moral boundaries under the guise of realism.

Hunt's criticism of Williams is even more thorough. Williams' focus on open door imperialism pointed out the extent to which "the guiding hand of economic interest and an interlocking business and political elite" influenced policy. For Williams, "ideology was functional, a tool used by the grandees of American capitalism to maintain their economic power and with it their sociopolitical control."⁽⁷⁾ Even though Williams drew from Marxism in a "freewheeling way," all is well until Hunt begins to discuss the limits of such an approach.

Though Williams emphasized the relationship between the economy and policy formation, Hunt does not believe he actually demonstrates that this was or is the case. He even points out that Williams had (and "fair-mindedly") rejected a "clear-cut economic determinism." That is a bad thing that we all can agree needs rejecting. Williams argued that just because ideas originate from specific interests, they may likely evolve into broad "ideological" and "moralistic" conceptions of the world that create and perpetuate a "kind of expansionism" that is both economic and cultural in the way Mr. Hunt defines that term.⁽⁸⁾ But rather than making this relationship clear, Hunt accuses Williams of being ambiguous and confusing. Inexplicably, Williams both rejects that ugly economic determinism (and is confusing and ambiguous for it) and yet remains guilty of an excessively "narrow conception of ideology" due to his focus on economic imperatives. Hunt's attempt at post-revisionism ends up, not unlike John L. Gaddis, et al., rejecting the structural interpretation of Williams.⁽⁹⁾

Though he explicitly recognizes the merit of economic interests in policy formation in the opening chapter, his book completely ignores it. Instead, Hunt focuses on Woodrow Wilson and both Roosevelts in the twentieth century and how they sought to expand because of the historical need for national greatness, racism, and fear of revolution. Hunt even points out prominent Republicans such as Elihu Root, William Howard Taft, Philander Knox, Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Evans Hughes, Frank B. Kellogg, and Henry L. Stimson, their Groton and Harvard educations, their tendency to move with freedom between the corporate world and the arena of national politics. This American political aristocracy ran in "elite social circles, in exclusive schools, and in establishment clubs and organizations, of which the Council on Foreign Relations was to be the most important."⁽¹⁰⁾ Yet, based on Hunt's telling, they have no overwhelming material interests; no concerns about export markets, sources of cheap labor and raw materials, trade barriers such as tarriffs, regional instability affecting wages and prices, or protection of private investment. Hunt has not compromised Williams, he has rejected him outright.

1. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction. (London, 1991), 1-2.

2. Quoted in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 448.

3. Hunt, Ideology, 19.

4. Ibid., 52.

5. Ibid., 106.

6. Ibid., 5.

7. Ibid., 9.

8. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of America Diplomacy, 3^rd edition. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1972), 57.

9. Bruce Cumings, "'Revising Postrevisionism,' Or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History," Diplomatic History 17, (Fall 1993): 47.

10. Hunt, Ideology, 137.