Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World - Walter Russell Mead

VERY DANGEROUS AND MISLEADING

Made the mistake of buying this @ the recommendation of someone who I "thought" was a "trusted" & "reliable" source.
About the only point of honesty with the book is on the back flap where it gives the author's "vitae" of sorts. It admits he's a Council on Foreign Relations whore and, can be concomitantly adduced because of it, an intellectual subversive in the vein of FDR's Fabians; albeit having worked for some obviously big name publications from the New Yorker, to the Wall Street Journal to, worst of all, Foreign Affairs-the ultimate propaganda rag of the global elitists and fascistic imperialists; this last being one of the most anti-American, anti-Constitution publications on the planet today.
To the informed, even in the introduction(!),the author starts off with some easily disprovable bs on how we're the strongest nation in the world. At least at the time the book went to press has the author not examined the size of our combined, and growing, national debt?!?! I even remember Oliver North asserting over 10 yrs ago we were so over-extended that,if just a 2-front war opened up for us, it'd be next to impossible to sustain it for over about 30 days.
In some key ways we do have some similarities with Russia. Two big ones are our militaries, and our declining societies. Our F22 Raptors and F35 Lightnings are some of the most advanced fighter aircraft today, going against the Raphael,Sukhoi Su-27 and Mig 29 & 35 fighters. Does it matter to Mead, and other expansionistic-types, the nations producing these unbelievably awesome pieces of engineering are stone bankrupt? Or the quality of life, here in America, for most mainstream working stiffs, is aggressively declining?

Straight through to the end of the book where he talks about the "end" or "myth" of the Cold War, to anybody who believes this guy's propaganda w/o closely scrutinizing all the facts, this guy is grotesque! Not only is the behind-the-scenes war still going on, but Russia is continuing to gain ground as our infrastructure and economy are continuing to be weakened!
To anyone who really seeks to understand our expansionistic foreign policy, especially before reading this tripe, I recommend the PNAC Report,Project for a New American Century, which was distilled into form and arrived at before and independent of "W", but which he's been following to the letter; but which, due to its gravity and importance in understanding our military's roll in our continually intervensionistic foreign policy, Mead conspicuously and apparently disingenuously omits.
Bottomline, way WAY too many problems. VEHEMENT NO RECOMMEND, unless one wants to break it down for a class as some of the vilest propaganda out there today.

Very Insightful and a Fun Read

Walter Russell Mead is a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, a position which makes him more than eligible to write a definitive work on the history and essential character of United States' foreign policy. This book makes two basic claims:

1. That United States' foreign policy has historically been distinct from that of Europe. Whereas Europe's foreign policy can be characterized as Continental Realism (think of foreign policy as a chess game... "you move your piece there and I'll move mine here), the United States' foreign policy has traditionally been driven more by economics. Mead's ultimate conclusion in this matter is that historical judgment has been in favor of the United States' mode of foreign relations; even those mistakes which the United States have made aren't as bad as the mistakes of the European powers.
2. The foreign policy of the Unites States has always been driven (and continues to be drive) by four "schools" of thought. They are the: Jeffersonian (basically isolationist), Jacksonian (populist; the "sleeping tiger"), Wilsonian (liberal globalist with a humanitarian bent, i.e. the U.N.), and Hamiltonian (liberal globalist with an economic bent, i.e. the World Bank).

Mead spends the first part of his book illuminating the differences between American and European foreign policy and subsequently defending American foreign policy. He does this with a good amount of wit which makes for an entertaining read. The bulk of this book deals with the various "schools" of American foreign policy, fist explaining the schools and then dealing with the ways in which those schools relate. It should be pointed out that Mead goes to great pains to be objective when dealing with the various schools; more than once he emphasizes that all the schools have their own sets of virtues. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the character of United States' foreign policy. Mead is a good writer and very insightful. Five stars for an excellent book.

Mead Takes a New Angle

In this book Mead argues that American foreign policy has not only changed the world, but it has changed the way the world deals with foreign policy. He says that while American foreign policy was not quite as active before the World War II it was still making headway with accomplishments including the French alignment during the Revolutionary war, The Treaty of Versailles, the expansion of U.S. territory, and the construction of the Panama Canal. He also tells us that from the beginning there were four different ideologies that shaped the political landscape of what would become U.S. foreign policy. These four different schools of thought were Hamiltonians, Wilsonians, Jacksonians, and Jeffersonians. Mead states that "While the American system is far from perfect, each of the four schools is able to combine effectively with the others...As the kaleidoscope of American foreign policy turns through the years, the schools combine recombine in one new coalition after another" (page 312). He tells us that the best way for foreign policy to function is when there is an informed public that places as much interest in foreign policy as in domestic. He says that, "...the most likely way to achieve this goal will be to cultivate an informed public opinion that understands the big sweeping picture of American foreign policy through history..." (page 97).
The accessibility of the information in this book could be quite difficult without some basic knowledge of the history of U.S. foreign policy. The recommended reader would probably be those greatly interested in politics or as a textbook for upper level undergraduate courses and graduate school students in the political science field

Mead on Special Providence

This is a clever book by an author who must be brilliant and who clearly is plugged into a great network of information and expertise. The book's identification of four flavors of U.S. foreign policy is handy and seems more accurate than its traditional two-way rivals: liberal vs. conservative, or idealistic vs. realistic.

As a "macro" theory, Mead supports the four-way approach by reference to "micro" foundations in U.S. political demography, particularly by citing the work of David Hackett Fischer. Mead's four schools are also reminiscent of the four-way Myers-Briggs typing of personality preferences: Jacksonians as SJs, Jeffersonians as SPs, Hamiltonians as NTs, and Wilsonians as NFs?

Mead's book is clever in at least two other respects.

First, Mead risks little actual analysis and advice regarding real-world foreign policy. His main point about the outside world is that U.S. foreign policy is easier to formulate and implement when the world is simple. Humorist Richard Armour made a similar point when he concluded one of his historical reviews with the observation that the American people of the 1950s were "secure in the knowledge of whom to hate." This continues to be an important point: it illustrates the current usefulness of the Arab Muslim image in building a broad U.S. political movement.

Second, Mead has something for everyone -- at least, for every American. With malice toward none, with charity for all, he has praise for all four of the U.S. schools. He has obviously struggled with his presentation of the Jacksonian school (the militant fundamentalists), which is the one that seems farthest from Mead's roots as an intellectual. Mead credits Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. with helping him be positive about Andrew Jackson himself.

But although Mead disclaims triumphalism, he implicitly evaluates foreign policy in nationalistic terms: gains of territory and other wealth for the U.S., with low U.S. casualties, is the measure of U.S. foreign policy achievement. While he regrets non-U.S. casualties, he warns against trying to make too much of the rest of the world.

By these standards, Mead proclaims U.S. foreign policy a success and thus well conceived, even in the period before the First World War, when traditionally the U.S. was not supposed to be paying much attention to foreign affairs.

This seeming paradox is partly explained by a factor that Mead does not emphasize sufficiently: the private sector's role in expanding U.S. territory. Private American colonization went ahead of the U.S. Government into a large part of what became U.S. lands: the trans-Appalachian area, West Florida, Texas, California, Utah, and Hawaii, among the successful cases.

Mead does note briefly that "before the Civil War Southerners looked to Texas, Central America, and Cuba for more slave states," but he does not tell in any detail the story of private U.S. adventurers' attempted conquests in such areas, or of the U.S. Government's official actions for and against these efforts. The case of the Philippines provides a contrasting example, where the U.S. Government took the initiative in conquering the territory without private American colonization. However, the non-governmental pattern resumed in the 1900s with private Americans' participation in Israeli colonization, creating a Texas-type, lone-star republic, which, although not annexed, has a "special relationship" with the U.S.

These examples illustrate a mechanism by which the U.S. expanded its territory with low U.S. Government troop casualties, and thus had a successful foreign policy by Mead's standard, without the U.S. Government paying as much attention to foreign policy as that success might imply.

Obviously, territorial expansion has generated blowback, which the U.S. Government has often anticipated and tried to avoid or limit. Mead also recognizes the need to deal with this downside of expansionary foreign policy. He describes very effectively how the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian schools offer alternatives for succeeding in the larger world.

We in the U.S. have family, friends, homes, businesses, and cultural interests outside our borders, which we will not want to neglect. Mead's clarifying work is a substantial contribution to helping us think about our approach.

Thoroughly non-partisan; much predictive power

The four "schools" Mead presents have compelling narratives that resonate in all of us yet are somewhat in conflict with each other: are we free traders? do we agitate for a better world? should we keep ourselves to ourselves? if we fight do we utterly destroy our enemies?

Mead has helped me understand the "other side", and be much more sympathetic to these points of view. Whenever I ponder US foreign policy questions, I now begin by asking myself how Mead's schools align on the question. Further, I find Mead's schools are quite relevant and interesting when applied to domestic issues.