For most of our history, Americans have viewed their country as a bold democratic experiment born in the wilderness of the New World, one that could be a model for others — but in keeping with George Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances,” not a participant in the quarrels of the Old World.
This long-standing pattern changed dramatically during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), who not only established progressive conceptions of democracy as an enduring element in American politics, but also led America’s decisive intervention in World War I. This transformed the United States from a relative diplomatic backwater into a world-altering force driven by Wilson’s determination to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Following the allied victory, Wilson led the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, where he successfully fought for the adoption of a League of Nations, the vehicle he believed to be the indispensable guarantor of the new world order he envisioned. However, Wilson’s refusal to compromise with opponents of the League — who believed it was an unconstitutional sacrifice of American sovereignty to an unelected international authority — led to the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the peace treaty.
The clash of geopolitical worldviews represented by that Senate vote has powerfully resonated through American history ever since.
Wilson’s vision of an America-led world organization lay dormant for a generation, but it was successfully resurrected by his political heir, President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-45), in the form of the United Nations. However, like the League of Nations, the UN ultimately proved to be an ineffective instrument for deterring aggression. That task would then devolve directly upon the United States, which alone had the military and economic might to undertake it.
This role and responsibility would gain new energy and commitment with the administration of President John Kennedy (1961-63), whose inaugural address remains memorable for its eloquence and idealism. Kennedy offered an expansive vision that summoned his countrymen to “combat tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself,” while pledging to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
Clearly implicit in those words was not just a reaffirmation of Wilson’s vow to “make the world safe for democracy” but also a willingness to commit unlimited resources to “assure the survival and success of liberty.” After having been the decisive factor in winning two world wars, and having built a firewall of military alliances across Europe and Asia — NATO, CENTO, and SEATO — to contain communism, and with no economic rival, such vaulting ambitions seemed within the realm of possibility. Retrospectively, this moment in time was the zenith of the American century.
Before long, however, America met its nemesis and the common denominator was a long series of ill- advised and poorly-executed foreign interventions. Despite intermittent interludes of realism and restraint, the dominant trend was a growing propensity for ever-expanding financial and military commitments. Beginning with the calamity of the Vietnam War, and stretching through wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, to the twin proxy wars of Ukraine and the Middle East that are hugely diminishing our military capacities today, the United States has demonstrated a lamentable susceptibility for getting into quagmires — and utter ineptitude in getting out of them.
Over time, these conflicts have drained our resources, undermined domestic priorities, weakened the currency, demoralized our military, alienated allies, and polarized our citizenry. The United States has gradually ensnared itself in a familiar historical trap described by British historian Paul Kennedy in his 1987 book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, as “imperial overstretch” — a circumstance that occurs when a nation enters into a period of decline because of an untenable mismatch between obligations and resources.
Adding poignancy to this American tragedy is that it greatly derived from an abandonment of the virtues and principles that made the United States a nation apart and a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world.
On July 4, 1821, Secretary of State (and future President) John Quincy Adams addressed Congress on the topic of benefits the United States might offer to mankind. He noted that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
How far we have strayed from that sage counsel.
William Moloney, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied history and politics at Oxford and the University of London, and received his doctorate from Harvard University.