America's Grand Strategy: A Pattern of History

Byline: James Kurth

In recent years, there have been many proposals about what should be the future direction, even the grand strategy, of American foreign policy. Among them have been the enlargement of democracy or the market, the containment of Islamic fundamentalism or Chinese expansionism, and the protection of human rights or the global ecology. In recent years, too, American foreign policy in practice seems to have been a matter of frantically dashing around the world, engaging in a new confrontation or intervention every six months or so. During the
Clinton administration alone, the
United States has been successively engaged with
Somalia,
Haiti,
North Korea,
Bosnia, and
China. And with every confrontation, the speculations and debates about the direction of
U.S. foreign policy begin anew.

This article will make some such proposals of its own. It will argue, however, that the course of American foreign policy in the future has already been largely set by its legacy from the past. In most respects, the grand strategy of the
United States has already been composed by the historical tradition and trajectory of American foreign policy and by the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the American nation.

The
United States has experienced three great cycles in its foreign policy. The first two cycles were each about eighty years in length, and we now are about fifty years into what appears to be the third.

Each cycle commenced with a decisive victory by the
United States in its epic war of the century--the Revolutionary War in the eighteenth century, the Civil War in the nineteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth. From each war and victory,
America drew lessons that would define and drive
U.S. foreign policy for the next several decades. In the course of these decades, the
United States at times interpreted these lessons with wisdom and discernment to expand and consolidate the legacy from the great victory. The results were major successes, and great and lasting achievements.

At other times, the
United States was driven by a misreading, even an idolatry, of the past achievements to go beyond what Clausewitz called "the culminating point of victory" and to engage in what Paul Kennedy has termed "imperial overstretch." The results were major failures and damaging disasters. From these failures, the
United States then drew new lessons, which became the basis for a more discerning and more focused version of the national project of expansion and consolidation. And from the disasters, it drew new and even deeper lessons that then became the basis for the next great victory and the beginning of the next great cycle.

We are now in the 1990s and near the end of the third cycle. At the equivalent phase in the previous two cycles, the United States had recently experienced a major success in its foreign policy (i.e., the Mexican War, the First World War), but it had then entered into a time of division and disorientation that, in the end, issued in disaster (the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the onset of the Second World War). After its great success in the Cold War, the challenge for
U.S. foreign policy in our own time is to rise above this fatal pattern from the past.

The First Cycle: Territorial Annexation

After the achievement of its independence in the Revolutionary War, the new American nation focused its foreign policy upon the goal of expansion across the North American continent. The strategy--territorial annexation--was obvious and simple, but American tactics were often extremely subtle, even by the standards of the long-experienced powers of
Europe.

There were grand achievements in this national project of continental expansion, especially the
Louisiana Purchase, which was accomplished through the extraordinary diplomatic virtuosity of the
Jefferson administration, but also the southwestern annexations, which were achieved later on through
U.S. military victory in the Mexican War. In the former case, the
United States took advantage of the fact that the greatest European powers,
Britain and
France, were then engaged in their own epic war against each other. In the latter, the
United States similarly took advantage of the fact that
Britain and
France were disrupted by serious internal turmoil. But it was also crucial that the arenas of expansion did not contain modern and organized societies equivalent to the
United States and that the
U.S. expansion did not directly threaten the vital interests of any great power.

The situation was different in regard to the
U.S. effort to carry its project of continental expansion into
Canada, and this resulted in one of the two major failures of the first cycle, the way that the
United States fought the War of 1812. In 1812, the
United States thought that it was continuing its great national enterprise by its invasion of
Canada. As
British North America, this was a major pillar and vital interest of the empire that the British had reconstructed after the loss of their thirteen American colonies, but the
United States thought that
Britain would be distracted by its continuing war with
France. This proved a grave miscalculation. Canada was an organized society comparable to the United States and capable of offering stout resistance, and with Napoleon's defeat in Russia the British were fully able to deploy enough military forces to put the American experiment in mortal danger (and in 1814 to put Washington to the torch).

But the gravest failure of the first cycle occurred in the aftermath of the Mexican War, when the national project of continental expansion mutated into the two competing sectional projects--Northern and Southern--of the expansion of liberty and the expansion of slavery. In the late 1850s the
United States was torn, as
Britain and
France had been in the late 1840s, by serious internal division, which in the American case even went to the fundamental question of national identity. In this context, the preceding territorial annexations became vital stakes in an escalating conflict between two sections, even two nations. This was one of the fundamental causes of the greatest disaster in American history, the Civil War.

The Second Cycle: The Regional Sphere

After the achievement of reunion in the Civil War, the renewed American nation again focused its foreign policy upon the goal of expansion--now really consolidation--across the North American continent. In fulfilling this great national project, the
United States experienced almost unalloyed success. But this focus and this success were based upon some lessons learned from the previous failures. Now the United States drove straight westward, turning away from annexations of territories to the south and to the north, which were either populated by peoples of a different culture (the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico) or protected by a great power (Canada).

When in the 1890s the
United States neared the completion of its national project of continental expansion ("the closing of the frontier" then observed by Frederick Jackson Turner), the obvious question was what kind of national project would come next. The equally obvious, and simple, answer was more territorial annexations beyond the continent, even further to the west (e.g.,
Hawaii, the
Philippines, and beyond) and even to the south (e.g.,
Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and beyond). The subtle, and ultimately more sound, answer was to create a new and different mode of expansion that better suited both these new arenas and the character of the United States itself, i.e., to replace the strategy of territorial annexation with the strategy of a regional sphere of influence.

The new arenas to the west and to the south of the continental
United States had much larger and denser populations than had the territories gained through the
Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War. But unlike
Canada, their societies were less modern and organized than that of the
United States. It would be difficult to annex and troublesome to rule such peoples, but easy to influence them. A regional sphere of influence was accordingly the suitable strategy. Further, a good number of the territories in these new arenas were not part of the empire of a European great power, but merely remnants of the empire of a decrepit
Spain or, as nominally independent countries, part of no empire at all. This meant that the European great powers had no vital interest in these territories. But because of their proximity to the United States as an emerging great power, the United States could easily persuade the European powers that it did have a vital interest in them. This asymmetry between a
U.S. vital interest and the absence of a European one in most of the
Caribbean and
Central America meant that the
United States could easily establish a sphere of interest in that region and have it accepted as legitimate by the European great powers.

After its victory in the Spanish-American War, the
United States thus established a secure sphere of influence and interest in the
Caribbean and
Central America. This was the second major success of
U.S. foreign policy in the second cycle. It went beyond the first success of continental consolidation, not only geographically but conceptually, by creating a new strategy of expansion.

At the same time, however, the
United States made major errors resulting in problems that would only be fully revealed decades later. The annexation of the
Philippines immediately gave rise to the costly Philippine Insurrection and eventually contributed to the long-term conflict with
Japan. The quasi-annexation of
Cuba eventually resulted in Castro's revolution and
Cuba's alliance with the
Soviet Union.

In short, the grand national project of expansion and consolidation continued in the second cycle, but certain distinctions now became important for the national strategy. Expansion through annexation had reached its natural limit with the end of continental expansion westward and the closing of the traditional frontier. The further annexations westward and southward were at best anomalous and unassimilable. As for annexations northward, these were out of the question, ruled out by the consistent opposition of the Canadians and by the vital interests of the
British Empire.

Instead, expansion would now take place through the projection of influence and interests, specifically with the construction of a regional sphere of influence. This became the American strategy in the
Caribbean and
Central America in the 1900s-1910s and in
Latin America more generally in the 1920s-1930s. But in this cycle the
United States only cast its sphere of influence over societies that were culturally different from itself and much less economically developed. And it only cast it over one region, which was an immediate neighbor.

The
United States was now a great power, and when a Great War broke out between the European great powers, the
United States also became involved. The
U.S. participation in the First World War was crucial in breaking the stalemate on the Western Front and tipping the balance in favor of beleaguered
France and
Britain. The results were the decisive defeat of
Germany and
Austria-Hungary, and the apparent triumph of the American ideals of democracy and self-determination.

However, in terms of the pattern of
U.S. foreign policy, there was little connection between the
U.S. victory in
Europe in 1918 and the national projects of the previous one hundred and thirty years. There was no way for the
United States to engage in territorial annexations on the European continent, as it had on the American continent. There was even no way for the
United States to construct a regional sphere of influence in
Europe, as it had in the
Caribbean and
Central America. The
U.S. strategy for
Europe would have to be a new invention, not a familiar tradition.

President Woodrow Wilson, of course, had a conception of such an invention. His proposals for the
League of Nations and for an American security guarantee to
France and
Britain were novel by
U.S. standards. Later, some American business leaders had another conception of such an invention--the Dawes Plan of 1924, to finance the recovery of the German economy. These were embryonic versions of a new mode of expansion and consolidation, one based upon American leadership in international organizations and the international economy, rather than upon regional spheres of influence or territorial annexations.

Although grand in their conceptions, the
U.S. foreign policy elite was committing the error that is fatal to any grand strategy. It was going beyond the domestic base that would be necessary to support it, one of the ways of engaging in imperial outstretch. For most Americans in the 1920s, this new strategy--with its international scope and its innovative methods--required too great a stretch beyond the old and familiar strategies. The connections with American traditions were not clear enough--and with American interests not broad enough--to sustain it. The collapse of the new strategy and the return to earlier strategies on a continental or regional scale were, as is well known, basic causes of the Great Depression, of German and Japanese aggression, and finally of the Second World War. The division and disorientation in
U.S. foreign policy that followed upon the
U.S. victory in the First World War, like the earlier division and disorientation that followed upon the
U.S. victory in the Mexican War, brought about a new great disaster.

The Third Cycle: International Order

After the achievement of its great victory over
Germany and
Japan in the Second World War, the
United States was once again ready to focus its foreign policy upon the goal of expansion, this time on a truly international scale. It had learned fundamental lessons from the great disasters of the recent past. From the Great Depression, it learned that the massive American economy--the leading industrial economy in the world--could only prosper in an open international economy, even one that included its recent enemies,
Germany and
Japan. From the Second World War, it learned that its own American continent and regional sphere could only be secure if no single great power dominated the European continent, or, more broadly, the Eurasian land-mass. The strategy to achieve these goals would now be the most sophisticated of all--American design and leadership of new international organizations, which in turn would institutionalize the opening of the international economy and the containing of any potential European or Eurasian hegemon.

There were grand achievements indeed in this national project of international expansion. It was not the United Nations, where American leadership was often checked by Soviet vetoes, that best represented these achievements, but the international organizations that helped to restore and open the international economy, especially the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the "Bretton Woods system"). Further, when the United States had to solve the problem of European security, it created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato) to contain the Soviet threat, and it added to this the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) to help implement its economic aid program (the Marshall Plan).

In NATO and the OEEC, the
United States combined its concept of international organizations with its earlier concept of the regional sphere of influence. Indeed, in its leadership of
Western Europe, the
United States perfected the regional sphere of influence to the point of including nations that were modern and organized, and not merely underdeveloped, and that were located at a remote distance, and not merely in the immediate neighborhood.

These achievements marked the "heroic age" of American foreign policy. For the rest of their lives, the men who participated in them would be proud to have been "present at the creation." But there would soon be major failures in this third cycle as well. As it happened, each involved a violation of the central norm of a regional sphere of influence, the very strategy at which the
United States had been so successful in the second cycle.

The first major failure of the third cycle occurred early in the Korean War. The error was not entering the war to defend
South Korea; this was necessary for the defense of
Japan, which was a central pillar and vital interest of the emerging American international order. Nor was it crossing the 38th Parallel to punish
North Korea; this may have been necessary to deter aggression in the future. Nor was it refusing to extend the war into
China after the Chinese intervened in
Korea. The error was carrying the war with
North Korea to the point of eliminating it as a political entity and bringing
U.S. troops to the border of
China itself.

By eliminating
China's own Korean buffer state, the American advance to the Yalu violated the central norm of any neighboring regional sphere of influence, be it the traditional Chinese order in
East Asia or the modern American sphere in the
Caribbean. The cost of this violation was a dramatic American defeat inflicted by the Chinese armies in the winter of 1950-1 and two years of military stalemate until the armistice agreement of 1953 provided
China and
America each with their own Korean buffer state.

The second major failure in this cycle involved
Cuba and was a violation of a sphere-of-influence norm in the opposite direction. The causes of Fidel Castro's revolution in
Cuba are still a matter of debate. (My own view is that it largely resulted from years of intrusive American involvement that went beyond what was appropriate for a sphere of influence.) The consequences, however, were extremely dangerous.

When
Cuba defected from the American sphere of influence into a Soviet alliance, and when the
United States allowed
Cuba to get away with it following the
Bay of Pigs fiasco, this also violated the central norm of a neighboring sphere of influence. This violation of international expectations led the Soviets into grave miscalculations--the Cuban Missile Crisis--which had the potential (President Kennedy himself put the chances as between one in three and one in two) to issue in a nuclear war and the greatest disaster in world history.

The third major failure of this cycle was the Vietnam War. From the Korean War the
United States had correctly learned the lesson not to threaten the existence of a Chinese buffer state, which in this new war was
North Vietnam. But this imposed major limitations on the ways that the
U.S. military traditionally operated, which used the American advantages in mass and mobility to isolate and destroy the enemy's army. The
U.S. military was not allowed to exploit these advantages against
North Vietnam, and it was not able to isolate the enemy in
South Vietnam, given that country's peculiar geography. The limitations on carrying the land war into the North in effect made the Vietnam War unwinnable. In a sense, the most important battle of the Vietnam War had actually been fought and lost at the Yalu, more than fifteen years before.

Under such conditions, the
U.S. error in
Vietnam was to undertake military intervention in the first place. The far better course would have been to use the different Asian communist states, especially
China and a united
Vietnam, to contain each other (as indeed subsequently happened as early as 1979). In short, the great failure, even disaster, of the Vietnam War would never have occurred if the
United States had better understood and integrated the concepts of the regional sphere of influence and the regional balance of power.

Indeed, less than twenty years after the
U.S. political defeat in
Vietnam, communist
Vietnam was doing everything it could to enter into the American-led open international economy. In some ways, the war that the
United States had once lost by an aberrant military strategy had now been won by its global economic strategy. Indeed, in this sense the really decisive battle of the Vietnam War had actually been fought and won at Bretton Woods in 1944.

The causes of the ultimate victory of the
United States over the
Soviet Union in the Cold War were many, and they have received thorough and illuminating discussion, as readers of The National Interest are especially advantaged to know. It is clear, however, that among the central causes were the dynamism of the open international economy, the inability of the Soviet system to cope with this, and the pressures that this put upon the Soviet leadership to change--and ultimately to abandon--that system.

The
U.S. victory in the Cold War certainly brought an era to an end. But it is not so clear that it brought the third cycle in
U.S. foreign policy to an end. Rather, it may have initiated that cycle's most dangerous phase.

It is possible that, after its victory in the Cold War, the
United States can now look forward to successes and achievements comparable to those after the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Second World War. More ominously, however, the
United States could experience failures comparable to those suffered after the Mexican War and the First World War. To grasp the promise of the first and to avoid the perils of the second, the
United States must construct a foreign policy that draws upon certain enduring positive features of past
U.S. strategies, while transcending other equally enduring negative ones. These two kinds of features come into sharpest relief when the American strategic tradition is contrasted with that of two other great powers.

The British and German Traditions

The American tradition of grand strategy as it developed in the twentieth century may be usefully compared with the equivalent traditions of the European great powers. In particular,
Britain and
Germany represent two great and opposing national traditions of grand strategy.

The British strategic tradition was based upon
Britain's position as an island off the European continent and its identity as a maritime power. As is well known,
Britain sought to prevent a single land power from gaining hegemony over t