Liberty: America’s Worldview, Now and Forever - A Deeper Dive
Introduction
The German word weltanschauung reflects a comprehensive and purposeful notion of how a country views its role in the world, its particular global perspective, and how its conceptual and operational interpretations correspond to that definition. Weltanschauung stems from strategic and political culture, geographic location, and other manifestations of state and country, including language, religion, ethnicity, history; in short the several components of a companion English word, “nationalism.”
The United Nations General Assembly is comprised of 193 state members, in turn meaning 193 competing worldviews, since all sovereignties have their own version of the term. Of course this does not mean that they compete in endless hostility, only that each one has its own developed qualities and that, say, a Peru will see the world differently and behave accordingly than, say, an Indonesia or a France. They will also join with others, in unions, pacts, treaties, and alliances, but none of these relationships have destroyed weltanschauung, any more than other instruments of mechanical structure have been able to change the conduct of human nature.
Nor is the term weltanschauung always used in perfect harmony, consistently throughout time and circumstance; only that it represents a fundamental definition of self, nation and culture, or to use still another Germanic phrase, volk (people, folk).
Liberty
Within this spectrum the concept of political liberty, of freedom, has played a pivotal role, either as an explicit recognition of the nature of American society or as an ideal to pursue, both domestically and worldwide.
While the literature on political liberty as a working conception would take a lifetime to embrace, the supreme philosopher of liberty, Sir Isaiah Berlin, has written the classic interpretation. In answering the question, “What is political liberty?” he wrote that
“We proceed on the assumption that there is a frontier between public and private life, and that, however small the private sphere may be, within it I can do as I please – live as I like, believe what I want, say what I please – provided this does not interfere with the similar rights of others, or undermine the order which makes this kind of arrangement possible. This is the classical liberal view, in whole or part expressed in various declarations of the rights of man in America and France, and in the writings of men like Locke, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Constant and John Stuart Mill. When we speak of civil liberties or civilized values, this is part of what is meant.”1
For over two centuries of American life this fire or vision of political and economic liberty, as it has been called, has served as the political compass for the moral side of policy and the connecting link between the moral and the interest side. While countless politicians, scholars, statesmen, and pundits have enshrined the place of liberty in American foreign relations, the words of political scientist Paul Seabury in the bicentennial issue of Orbis powerfully illustrates the point:
“A concern about the relation between morals and politics is not uniquely American. But few other nations take philosophic purpose in foreign affairs as seriously as Americans do. …for better or worse, since the beginning of the republic Americans have displayed strong sentiments about their country’s role in world affairs. Liberty occupies a central thematic place among them. Emblazoned on monuments, sung about in anthems, stamped on coinage and expressed on placards, it still dominates our civic thought and language. … Even as aspiration, the American view extends the hope that freedom may spill over into other lands; and from time to time this view affects America’s international activities in momentous ways.”2
In various stages or patterns of the American life-span, subsidiary themes, as components of liberty, have been asserted and defined as part of the larger picture. The principal sub-themes or deviations in American history have reflected the peculiar circumstances in the growth and shaping of its national power, circumstance, and interest. Obviously, a country of two million comprising the eastern coastal areas of North America will define its aspirations or worldview much differently than a country of 330 million with global interests and ambitions. But if liberty is the common bond, then liberty, authentically and legitimately, remains the American weltanschauung. The consistency lies within the American political culture throughout history, but the sub-themes are as multiple as the resources, threats, and interests available at any given time.
The principal sub-themes in this respect, in varying times and stages of growth, include isolationism, manifest destiny, imperialism, interventionism, greatness, business, Wilsonianism, containment, democracy, anti-communism, internationalism, rollback, human rights, legalism, moralism, militarism and, lastly, even hubris.
The principal sub-themes in this respect, in varying times and stages of growth, include isolationism, manifest destiny, imperialism, interventionism, greatness, business, Wilsonianism, containment, democracy, anti-communism, internationalism, rollback, human rights, legalism, moralism, militarism and, lastly, even hubris. At one point in time, each of these conceptual ambitions, derived from the American strategic culture in its entirety, has been undertaken as a critical component of American foreign relations. None of the supportive strains, however, would make sense or even share a bare coherence unless they were supported by a powerful cultural and political root. That root is liberty, and no country on earth has embraced it more than the United States of America.
Policy
While it may seem at first glance that the above list of foreign policy concepts are at odds with each other, a closer study will reveal that such contradictions are surface manifestations and indicate only a circumstantial or tactical deviation from the central theme which has guided Americans since their inception as a nation in 1776. It will also be shown that this central message has been applied in several manifestations by leaders over the full political spectrum and in ways that also at times have served multiple and often contradictory purposes. Dissenters against certain U.S. foreign policies, moreover, have usually been inspired by what they have defined as actions which have contradicted liberty (excluding domestic ideologues, Marxists, Fascists, etc.).
Thus, liberty is the core raison d'état behind America’s worldview but this alone cannot dictate national security or geopolitical strategies. These will deviate from time and place and according to the perceptions and circumstances of the moment. This is nearly a universal truth.
To cite a few cases: While Nazism forced Hitler’s anti-Communist worldview it did not prevent the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. In the same vein, Stalin’s contempt for the Capitalist West did not stop him from accepting billions of U.S. aid dollars in the same war. Nor did it stop a deeply anti-Communist America from providing it. After the war the rivalry between the U.S. and Communist China was long and bitter but this did not prevent Richard Nixon from playing the “China Card” in 1972.
Between 1898 and 1933 the U.S. occupied Mexico (twice) plus countries in the Caribbean and Central America. While national security was defined as paramount, in each case there was an underlying effort to convert these societies in the name of liberty, i.e. democracy. Then, in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy abruptly abandoned this with pledges of non-intervention, motivated again by national security perceptions but with a completely different notion of how democracy would play a part in Latin American policies.
The fact that the concept of liberty has been applied inconsistently and has often been ignored by expediency does not remove its central validity any more than a dull flashlight removes the desire to see. One just needs to recharge the batteries. Liberty is the heart of the American cause regardless of how personalities and circumstances can interpret or twist its meaning, intentionally or not.
Nor can a doctrine of liberty guarantee peace or a benign foreign policy. Liberty as a doctrine can be both pacific and aggressive, depending upon circumstances and national mood. At times, liberty requires defense and at other times it will authorize and justify war. “Give me liberty or give me death,” “Remember the Alamo,” “54/40 or fight,” “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain,” still remain quintessential declarations of the American willingness to die for country and principle.
War
This reality has been borne out in hundreds of the world’s major battle sites. At one time or another in its history, the U.S. has been at war (declared or not) with most of the major countries in the world, including Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, Vietnam, Korea, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Mexico, Austria, and Hungary, to name the most prominent. Conversely, many have also, at one time or another, been U.S. allies. Today most of these are either allies or neutral with regard to U.S. interests, and it is entirely likely that today’s enemies will be tomorrow’s friends.
Does this indicate a total collapse of consistency by the U.S. or is it a reflection of the volatile nature of world politics? Certainly the latter. Does it mean that American foreign policy has no guidelines, patterns, or values which motivate policies? Not at all, but there is an apparent contradiction in the vast sway of foreign policies within the shifting sands of world politics. Eugene V. Rostow caught this in his book, A Breakfast for Bonaparte:
"We embrace contradictory principles with equal fervor and cling to them with equal tenacity. Should our foreign policy be based on power or morality? Realism or idealism? Pragmatism or principle? Should it be the protection of interests or the promotion of values? Should we be nationalists or internationalists? Liberals or conservatives? We blithely answer, all of the above."3
The term blithely, meaning cheerfully or instinctively, accurately captures the heart of the American approach to foreign relations. As we shall see, the American worldview accepts freedom as “self-evident,” i.e. minus debate. The concept of foreign relations, in turn, accepts this idea without self-doubt, in which the United States by definition represents a grounded and essential set of norms, regardless of circumstances, friends, or enemies. Whether we intervene against another regime, support it, or ignore it altogether is less important than what we represent, what we are.
U.S. relations with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is only the most recent case in point. The U.S. supported Saddam in his eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. Then we toppled his government as the epitome of evil and on behalf of the spread of democracy. What does this say about principles and policy? Are we any more democratic now than before? Was Saddam any less autocratic then? Which of the two policies best represent American values, one, both or neither? Such confusions reveal the quixotic nature of doctrinal concepts, which blithely change policy positions over time without reservation, hesitation, or questioning.
Values
Thus, the quest for political order and stability has often trumped the quest for either consistency or values in the pursuit of national interests. This is true for “domestic tranquility” as well. As a first principle, order must be the foundation for any political regime. The goals proclaimed for the new America in the Declaration of Independence, for example, were arranged in perfect harmony: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Implicit in this concept was the notion that life represented order and that liberty required order as well. Thus, the libertarian nature of the Articles of Confederation eventually had to be replaced by the more Hobbesian system established in the Constitution. But the attendant Bill of Rights demonstrated the intrinsic importance placed by the Founders on human rights and liberty.
Liberty is the a priori essential, without which neither democracy, prosperity, growth, civility, justice, nor charity could prosper.
Either as an implicit or explicit guide to the American worldview, the U.S. historically has placed liberty, both its defense and growth, as the top priority. Liberty is the a priori essential, without which neither democracy, prosperity, growth, civility, justice, nor charity could prosper. In short, liberty is the foundation political virtue and remains the essential sine qua non for human progress, both material and spiritual. Critics will inevitably cite aspects of U.S. history, such as slavery, intolerance, inequality, and injustice, as contradictions of liberty, but an ideal, by definition, remains an attainable if unfulfilled conceptual design. But this virtue cannot guarantee equality nor success, both of which are products derived from other areas of human endeavor. Liberty does define what Americans seek even if they do not all share it equally or at once. In foreign relations, liberty defines how Americans see others and how they interact with them, even if these dealings contain inner contradictions.
As an idea, liberty remains the foundation for the American dream, both its real and mythical sides. As an ideal, it remains a pursuit, a revolution in motion, without end. The United States embodies both of these qualities and has used them both in rhetorical and substantive areas of public life. In this respect, the United States is entirely unique among the world’s great powers, both now and historically.
Consider the antagonists against this concept which have left their mark on the political globe since the birth of the Republic. Usually they have been enemies of America, sometimes they have been allies for expediency, and often they have been kept at arm’s length lest their cancers spread. But at all times they have been the main opponents of political liberty, especially the American brand.
Enemies
We can begin with eighteenth century Britain, Parliament, George III, the Redcoats, and two centuries of British rule over North America. Then there are the British and French navies, which confiscated hundreds of American ships in the Atlantic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Barbary pirates did the same in the Mediterranean for decades during the same period. In the mid-nineteenth century we have Santa Ana, the Alamo, and the French puppet, Maximilian of Austria, on the Mexican throne. After losing Central and South America by 1823, the Spanish crown held Cuba and Puerto Rico for another 75 years, but not after 1898. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the imperialism which once governed North America spread throughout Africa, the Far East and Southeast Asia with Japan joining in on the spoils alongside Belgium’s King Leopold, the French, British, Dutch, and others from the Old World.
But it was the twentieth century when the enemies of liberty really poured forth: the Kaiser, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mussolini, Tojo, kamikazes, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi-Minh, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-Il, the Somozas and Sandinistas of Nicaragua, all other Latin American dictators (but especially Castro and Che Guevera), Hugo Chavez, Haiti’s perpetual dictators (especially the Duvaliers), Africa’s Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, apartheid, Muammar al-Quaddafi, and all rulers of Islamic countries in history, with special emphasis on Saddam Hussein and more recent global terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden. Completing the list would be the following lesser known contemporaries: Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), Xi Jinping (China), King Abdul- lah (Saudi Arabia), Than Shwe (Myanmar), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Sayyid Ali Khamenei (Iran), Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Equatorial Guinea), King Mswati III (Swaziland), Isayas Afewerki (Eritrea), Aleksandr Lukashenko (Belarus), Choummaly Sayasone (Laos), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Paul Biya (Cameroon) and finally, one who has invaded Ukraine and threatens nuclear war, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
There are more, but the picture should be clear. This should suffice to recall why at times Americans have jealously guarded their freedom, even to a point approaching paranoia.
But does any of this imply that a foreign policy governed by the concept of political freedom is sacrosanct or mistake-proof? Of course not. Americans have stumbled in and out of wars without design; they have occupied other countries, often without an invitation and without political support, either at home or abroad. The United States has often stood by when its interests were being threatened or when its values were violated. At times the U.S. has had to swallow its own beliefs for the sake of a secular prosperity or security. American history has its share of racial and ethnic insensitivity in dealings with foreign publics and governments. Yet none of these (and other) faults in policy were sufficient to challenge core concepts.
On the other side of the ledger, the American people have demonstrated a generosity and benevolence which reflects brilliantly upon a free society. U.S. friendship to the Chinese historically was unique among the powers and led ultimately to the rift with Japan and Pearl Harbor. General Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers symbolized this integrity. Both defeated Germany and Japan owe much of their prosperity, security, and freedom to a post-1945 America. On two occasions the American people rescued their mortal enemy, Soviet Russia, from disasters and possible extinction: in 1922 with famine relief and in 1941 after the German invasion.
Just as a conceptual theme will have more than a single manifestation, so, too, will the operational aspects of the same concept be subjected to multiple directions and phases. Such interpretations (differences of opinion) have gone backward and forward throughout U.S. history and can be applied analytically to the recent period as well. In this regard, there are many reasons to critically analyze the directions of a foreign policy of liberty as defined by recent US Administrations. This is not unpatriotic any more than it denies the country’s devotion to liberty. It is an essential quality of the American weltanschauung.
At times, the spirit of imposition rather than attraction undermines the seeds of liberty and may actually retard its growth and foster chaos and strife instead. In Iraq, as one example, the United States attempted to impose a democratic regime on a population which fails to share the a priori needed political consensus. Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has made the salient point:
“For 500 years, Europe deformed the world. The irony of our times is that the United States, history’s greatest force for freedom, spent the years since 1991 maintaining failed borders drawn by the ministers of kaisers, czars and kings. We have dug our trenches on the wrong side of history.”5
Realities
Confusions and distortions have existed regarding the American purpose throughout history and continue to this day. The spectacle of the raging debate and confusions over the several “endless wars” only highlights a long and unsettling tradition. One who was vitally concerned about this reality was Walter Lippmann, who spent the first half of the twentieth century bringing attention to U.S. foreign policy, described in his most famous book as the Shield of the Republic.
Observing the record of the American attention span since the end of the Cold War until 9/11, we should recall his observance of 1943, in the midst of history’s greatest war, to be equally appropriate today:
"The spectacle of this great nation which does not know its own mind is as humiliating as it is dangerous. It casts doubt on the capacity of the people to govern themselves. For nowhere else on earth, and never before in all history, has any people had conditions so favorable as they are in the United States to proving their capacity for self-government. It will be a profound humiliation, therefore, if once again we fail to form a national policy, and the acids of this failure will be with us for ages to come, corroding our self-confidence and our self-respect."6
In 1943 Lippmann was assuming a military victory but, obviously, had grave doubts for the possibilities of a secure and just peace based upon a consensus of national will.
The issue today could be remarkably similar, but there is time for the country to adjust, as did the Truman Administration in the post-war world of 1945-49.
American society will never achieve perfection, nor will its public policies, but so long as society and policy reflect the doctrine of political and economic freedom the people can find solace that they are on right paths toward proper destinations. The emphasis for now and the future should also highlight the virtues of prudence, restraint, and discernment against mass movements or domestic ideologies. Any society defined by “racism” will have problems communicating its message to others.
The Founding Fathers knew these realities very well and, from Washington on, practiced prudence in foreign relations and refused to be drawn into the quarrels of alien and distant publics. This may have been imposed by geopolitics, but there were many in the young republic (including Thomas Jefferson and many other southerners) who demanded much more than reality could support.
A central theme of foreign policy is the point that political, economic, and military power is best employed creatively and should always reflect the original purpose of America’s conception. There has always been a critical distinction between policy and purpose, between the fleeting and the fundamental. America, in this regard, should be judged by what she is, and no amount of money, men, or material dispatched around the globe can change it. This issue has been a constant source of tension throughout U.S. history. In 1928, for example, after successive administrations used the Monroe Doctrine as justification for decades of interventionism in Latin America, the Coolidge Administration ruled that American soldiers could not occupy other sovereign countries by employing that doctrine. Essentially, the administration said that the Monroe Doctrine had a higher purpose and could not be manipulated for expediency, commercialism, or exaggerated sociologies.
Governmental policies are essentially episodic and should not be permitted to destroy underlying principles of value and public conduct, often referred to as the people. Thus, the best image of America abroad may emerge despite public policy and not because of it.
Governmental policies are essentially episodic and should not be permitted to destroy underlying principles of value and public conduct, often referred to as the people. Thus, the best image of America abroad may emerge despite public policy and not because of it. During the terminal stages of the Cold War, it was certainly the triumph of ideas and ideals— those of Solzhenitsyn, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and many others—that undermined Communist power more so than the bureaucratic, budgetary and logistical manifestations of official Washington.
The reason for this is fairly simple: the images of liberty as expressed by popular figures, popular causes and popular culture, defined the meaning of freedom and the future far more than the secular public policies conducted by the government.
Power and purpose need to work in harmony. Often, secular policies have been perceived as reckless, awkward and self-serving. Policy is also a fickle beast, changing positions as a chameleon changes colors, i.e., to suit circumstances. The earlier U.S. support of Saddam Hussein, cited above, is only one of many cases. Purpose and conviction remain constant and are derived from nature. Policies change with circumstance, as fickle as the weather.
End (of the Beginning)
If inconsistency may often seem to accompany American foreign policies and the essential weltanschauung of liberty, we can at least be assured that this is a reflection of the American character itself, and has been present from the beginning. In his masterful study of the role of the Revolution upon the legacy of American exceptionalism, Charles Royster has demonstrated how the experience of the War for Independence allowed the original Americans to embrace the unique virtue of liberty within the less savory nature of the war itself. Americans were fully aware that the victory over Great Britain contained elements of human nature that they had hoped to avoid: graft, corruption, sectional rivalry, internal dissent, terror among themselves, confiscation of property, murder, conscription, etc.
But as Royster points out, “The survival of American liberty—Americans’ self-preservation—could never be wholly separated from force, bloodshed, cheating, and selfishness wrought by revolutionaries on each other.” Thus, the essence of the weltanschauung is the compelling belief system and its ultimate absorption over material and secular behavior:
“The revolution had such comprehensive, demanding ideals that no one could match them, and few could pursue them unswervingly. But the many derelictions of wartime behavior seemed to pale beside the one essential achievement— the ideals would survive. The revolutionaries’ certainty of their superiority in the eyes of posterity suggests that they did not expect the ideals ever again to be in danger of extinction. … Those who later could only compare absolute ideals and modern conduct, always finding the conduct deficient, would never know the thrill of persevering through the one crisis when the ideals themselves seemed in danger of extinction.”7
Thus, the American worldview, through over two centuries, was present at the creation and has persevered through trials unimaginable to the men and women who carved and shaped it from the original trial.
May these guide the country for the almost-certain trials that lie ahead.
Notes
1. Berlin, Isaiah. The Power of Ideas. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 111.
2. Seabury, Paul. Orbis. (1976), p. 4.
3. Rostow, Eugene V. A Breakfast for Bonaparte: U.S. National Security Interests from the Heights of Abraham to the Nuclear Age. (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Univer- sity Press, 1993), p. 22.
4. Burke, Edmund. Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Vol. II. (Boston: John West and O.C. Greenleaf, 1807), p. 32.
5. USA Today. 18 April 2007.
6. Lippman, Walter. U.S. Foreign Policy, Shield of the Republic. (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1943), pp. 4-5.
7. A Revolutionary People At War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (University of North Carolina Press, 1979), p. 363; 367 -368.