A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.

• Author: Sachs, Jeffrey D.

A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism

Jeffrey D. Sachs

New York: Columbia University Press, 2018, 274 pp.

American exceptionalism means different things to different people. As the term is used in our political lexicon, there are at least four distinct versions of it, each of which blends into the other in some way. The traditional version harkens back to the famous 1630 exhortation from the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, that "we shall be as a city upon a hill" with "the eyes of all people" upon us. Originally intended more to encourage adherence to the Christian doctrine as it was then interpreted by the Puritans, Winthrop's language was passed on through the political generations to mean something different: that we are exceptional because America is a nation guided by God's Providence, an example unto the world.

Another related version lauds the principles of the American Founding and locates our exceptionalism in our peculiar beginnings as the first country to throw off the chains of colonialism and establish a government based on enlightenment ideas. There is also a version that came of age in the post-WWII era, perhaps articulated most eloquently by Ronald Reagan, that we are the last best hope of man on earth, a haven of democracy and freedom in a world of tyranny.

And then there's the most recent version of American exceptionalism. Though it has antecedents deep in our history, its heyday arrived in the post-Cold War era--the so-called unipolar moment in which America faced no geopolitical enemy that could hold a candle to our power and influence. This version says that we are exceptional in that we have exclusive prerogatives and special responsibilities for global governance that no other country possesses.

The figurehead of this version is not John Winthrop, but Madeline Albright, President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. As she put it, "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future." We are not just a nation among nations, according to this doctrine. We're indispensable for global peace and security and, to carry out these responsibilities, we have the right to act in ways that others would be punished and condemned for.

These are all ahistorical nationalist myths to one extent or another. Most of the time, such narratives are used to inculcate a certain patriotic fervor, to feed the population's desire to aggrandize the nation, and to create a sense of belonging and purpose. But the version of exceptionalism epitomized by Albright's hubristic rhetoric has manifested in far more...