America, know thyself.

• Author: Clarke, Jonathan
• Position: US foreign policy evaluation

AFTER NEARLY A year of the Clinton administration there is still no consensus, either among the foreign policy elite or in the country at large, about America's role in the world. What are America's foreign purposes? Is America the world's leader, the global policeman, the default guardian of morality? Will America act unilaterally or only in company? Which counts more, national interest or humanitarian goals? Do economic objectives take precedence over all others? No one really knows, least of all in the White House or on Capitol Hill.

The Delphic Oracle instructed the ancient Greeks to "Know Thyself." This exhortation to self-knowledge is never more apt than today. One of the reasons for the present confusion is that the line between reality and rhetoric and the distinction between ends and means have become blurred almost beyond the point of clarification. As leaders seek inspiration to define the nation's new role, they themselves barely know whether they are drawing on fact or fiction. A look inward and into history may clarify the view outward and to the future. By returning to the historical roots of its national identity, America may be able to find a way out of its present disorientation.

This will be a formidable task. During the Cold War a set of policy assumptions and habits of thought established itself as eternally sacrosanct: projection of American values through world leadership, global responsibility, forward force deployment, and a large national security establishment. These assumptions performed as the disk operating system for three generations of American foreign policy makers. By their very success, they became second nature--in George Bush's words, "essential." In speech after speech, President Bill Clinton has shown that he is not the man to break the mold.

To combat any challenge to these assumptions, an opposite view came into being which stated that pre-Cold War foreign relations inhabited a world where, in Reinhold Niebuhr's words, "we lived for a century not only in the illusion but in the reality of innocency," or, in the more demotic phrasing of the Wabash Plain Dealer on the outbreak of World War I, "we never appreciated so keenly as now the foresight of our forefathers in emigrating from Europe."

This tradition acquired the label of "isolationism." Described by Bush as "folly" and by Clinton as "poison," it remains the trump card to be played by those who assert that the international system will collapse into anarchy unless America mounts an eternal "watch on the Rhine." Under this disqualifying rubric, it becomes possible to dismiss any deviation from the interventionist paradigm as, in the words of National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, "the rhetoric of Neo-Know-Nothings."

The fact that this factory-installed memory is seriously inadequate does not prevent it from being remarkably pervasive. UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, for example, has described American engagement in the world as a "tradition that goes back a half century." This is to suppress, distort, or forget pre-1945 diplomatic history. Self-knowledge will be impossible unless we recapture the truth of the past.

Two impediments stand in the way of this goal.

First, received wisdom teaches that prior to 1945 foreign policy wallowed in the primeval slime of isolationism. In fact, throughout its history, the nation has been fully engaged in world affairs on the basis of policies that display a consistent theme of geopolitical realism. For the purposes of public presentation, however, this realist concept has become encrusted with various universalist and absolutist ideals. This has made the tradition difficult to discern and to identify.

Today, these notions have taken on a life of their own. Like discombobulated secret agents, we have come to believe our own cover stories or legends. We take at face value McKinley's protestations that the primary purpose for his annexation of the Philippines was to encompass the Christianization of the inhabitants (who, of course, had been Catholic for three hundred years) rather than to thwart German ambitions or provide a springboard for trade. We have forgotten the vital distinction between sentimentality and reality. The direct result is the contemporary fantasy that the nation is able to conduct a "selfless" or "humanitarian" foreign policy, as in Somalia, without connection to national interest. Unless this confusion is clarified, it will be impossible to formulate a rational foreign policy.

America as Arbiter

FROM THE EARLIEST days of the Republic, its founders foresaw an intimate engagement in world affairs by the United States. In 1776 Thomas Paine advocated independence from Britain so that the United States would be able to extend relations to all European countries. Writing in 1787, John Jay advocated the advantages of a single government for the United states precisely on the ground that he foresaw extensive involvement with foreign countries: "America has already formed treaties with no less than six foreign nations and all of them, except Prussia, are maritime and therefore able to annoy and injure us."

Washington himself did not object to these treaties. He qualified his Farewell Address warning about "permanent alliances" with the (usually overlooked) proviso, "so far, I mean, as we are at liberty to do it, for let me not be understood as capable of preaching infidelity to existing arrangements." Nor do the actions of the early presidents provide any evidence of a wish to duck their foreign responsibilities. Adams expanded the navy and army to wage an undeclared war with France in defense of American commercial interests; Jefferson's first cabinet meeting in 1801 was devoted to debating whether to send a naval squadron to the Mediterranean to protect American shipping from attacks from...