The following Bicentennial Essay is the ninth in a series that has been appearing periodically, surveying how the U.S. has changed in its 200 years.
America has perennially engaged in a search of its conscience. How does our foreign policy serve moral ends? How can America serve as a humane example and champion of justice in a world in which power is still often the final arbiter? How do we reconcile ends and means, principle and survival? Today the challenge of American foreign policy is to avoid the illusion of false choices: we must live up to this nation's moral promise while fulfilling the practical needs of world order.
OUR HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE
From its beginning, Americans have believed this country had a moral significance that transcended its military or economic power. Unique among the nations of the world, America was created as a conscious act by men dedicated to a set of political and ethical principles they believed to be of universal applicability. Small wonder, then, that Santayana concluded: "To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition."
But this idealism has also been in constant tension with another deep-seated strain in our historical experience. Since Tocqueville, it has been frequently observed that we are a pragmatic people−commonsensical, undogmatic and undoctrinaire, a nation of practical energy, ingenuity and spirit. We have made tolerance and compromise the basis of our domestic political life. We have defined our fundamental goals−justice, liberty, equality and progress−in open and libertarian terms, enlarging opportunity and freedom rather than coercing a uniform standard of conduct.
America has been most effective internationally when we have combined our idealistic and our pragmatic traditions. The founding fathers were idealists who launched a new experiment in human liberty. But they understood the global balance of power and manipulated it brilliantly to secure their independence. Franklin and Jefferson perceived that the European powers saw the conflict in North America as part of a global struggle. Their diplomacy led to the involvement of Britain's enemies−France, Spain and Russia−in ways that favored the rebellious colonies, and then cut loose from them in a separate treaty of peace by which John Jay won the British Crown's recognition and liquidated the residual problems of the Revolution.
Thus America's energies were released to populate and build a continental nation and to perfect domestic institutions. As we did so, both our pragmatic nature and our moral commitment took deeper root in the national character−but often as seemingly separate and even contrasting factors. When faced in 1802 with the attempt of France to control the mouth of the Mississippi, Thomas Jefferson was above all concerned with the future prospects of French control over trade in and out of the American heartland.