Is American Foreign Policy Exceptional? An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

At least since Alexis de Tocqueville's era, the only clearly articulated view of American foreign policy has been exceptionalism, which holds that Americans deprecate power politics and old-fashioned diplomacy, mistrust powerful standing armies and entangling peacetime commitments, make moralistic judgments about other people's domestic systems, and believe that liberal values transfer readily to foreign affairs. ' These dispositions, which seem to rest on the premise that war and peace are polar opposites, are at last consistent with and may help to explain America's oft-noted all-or-nothing approach to foreign commitments. This approach, in turn, is consistent with oscillations between major involvement overseas and significant retrenchment.2 According to this view, because American values are strongly inconsistent with the methods and objectives of Realpolitik, the country has a more messianic, erratic style abroad than has been typical of other great powers.