Not the quiet city on a hill.

• Author: Hornblow, Michael
• Position: Dangerous Nation - Book review

Book Reviwed: Dangerous Nation, by Robert Kagan (New York: Knopf, 2006)

In his Washington Post review of Michael Oren's new history of the United States in the Middle East, Robert Kagan wrote "We often hear that Americans know too little about other nations; a bigger problem is that we know too little about ourselves, our history and our national character. When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, in particular, we were all born yesterday, unaware of how present policies and attitudes fit into persistent historical patterns."

Dangerous Nation provides this missing knowledge. It is the first of a two volume history of American foreign policy and is essential reading. The book begins with the Puritans and ends with the outbreak of the Spanish-American war. It is a brilliantly written and carefully researched (a twenty five page bibliography with over 500 titles listed and 63 pages of detailed notes) history accessible to the general reader as well as useful for students and scholars. The book is most noteworthy for debunking a cherished myth about American history, a myth most of us were taught at a young age and have embraced ever since.

Ronald Reagan contributed to this myth by frequently quoting the famous words of Puritan father John Winthrop that early settlers sought to establish a "city upon a hill" to be emulated by others. In school we were taught that George Washington's farewell address restated an isolationist core of American foreign policy, while the Monroe Doctrine reconfirmed our tradition of isolationism, separation and passivity until provoked into action. According to this myth it was not until the Spanish-American war that this reluctant Hercules, spurred on by a yellow, Hearstian press, broke its shackles, lost its innocence and virtue and emerged with a new identity as an important player on the world stage. Clark Kent had suddenly become a dangerous Superman.

Some of Kagan's critics have charged that Dangerous Nation merely topples straw men, that the myth he debunks is no longer widely believed. These critics are mistaken. The belief that the American founding fathers were utopian children of the Enlightenment; that they much preferred their Eden-like playground to the game of international power politics; that they lived in a splendid isolation until the sinking of the Maine and then stepped onto the world stage in the early twentieth century as new world liberators of Old Europe is deeply held, and revered.

Kagan argues...