Special Providence - Walter Russell Mead

Written and published in the Summer of 2001, this book takes a historical view of American Foreign Policy. The author sets out to answer a question which I would loosely paraphrase thus: 'Why, with its wavering foreign policy, has the United States been so successful in the international system and risen to such global prominence at the end of the 20th century'.

A main feature of the book is the author uses a multi-level analysis of the Unisted States' past international actions, with relatively strong emphasis on economic and trade issues, and the way that they interact with great-power strategy. He posits that the strong emphasis on trade by the United States has allowed it greater flexibility in its international policy, regardless of which of the four 'schools' which he describes had principal control over the international actions of the United States. The United States' relatively nuanced foreign policy approach contrasts with various other schools of international relations, such as Continental Realism and Idealism, which focus mainly on great-power politics and which have a relatively centralized elite foreign-policy decision maker.

According to the book, the schools of American Foreign Policy vary greatly in their approach to both trade and international intervention, with the influence of each school waxing and waning depending on system, state, and substate level factors. Briefly, the Hamiltonian school focuses on big business and high-level international trade, the Wilsonian school on spreading human rights and other values which enhance the standard of living of non-American peoples around the world, the Jeffersonian school focuses on protecting American democracy, which is easily compromised when the United States overextends itself around the world, and the Jacksonian school focuses on the standard of living and honor of the American people.

In many ways I feel that the book comes across as somewhat a product of its times, those being the early months of the George W. Bush administration, when the United States had not yet become fully mobilized in what we now entitle the Struggle Against International Terrorism. The author wrote that the US should emphasize a Jeffersonian approach in the future. However, interceding events have led to nearly a tide of Wilsonian/Jacksonian action that the current administration does not seem to have fully abandoned.