Charles W. King

For decades now the United States’ European allies have been criticized by some American politicians and policy-makers for failing to maintain their defense spending at 2% of Gross Domestic Product, as stipulated by NATO. These countries are derided as ‘Free Riders’. Some Americans complain about subsiding European nations by taking on their defense burden for them. The United State has in effect taken much of Europe’s defense burden upon itself, but that is not a reason to be critical. Like the Marshall plan, American defense spending was essential for Europe to become a healthy market for American goods after World War Two. The burden of defending themselves from the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact after 1945 could easily have been too cumbersome for Western Europe, and it certainly would have crowded consumer spending out of the economy for defense. The United States has let its European allies flourish under its defensive umbrella for decades and has flourished because of it, and it is not the first superpower to benefit from such an arrangement.

When the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 the United States did not possess the naval strength to enforce it. The US Navy had grown significantly from the original six frigates laid down in 1794, but would still be no match for the naval forces of a European great power like France, Spain, or Great Britain. Throughout much of Europe the doctrine was received with disregard and contempt. Its saving grace was British insistence upon Freedom of the Seas. The nineteenth century was the height of Pax Britannia, and the British economy of was booming as a result of increasing industrialization and trade. Spanish re-conquest of Latin America would have been detrimental to British interests. The United States and its still nascent Navy did not have to invest in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, because the Royal Navy already was. In a very real way the Monroe Doctrine was an American declaration of an existing British policy. From the War of 1812 to the Spanish American War in 1898 the US was a ‘Free Rider’ on the Royal Navy and British maritime and free trade policy. The British did not implement these policies or invest in the Royal Navy for American benefit. They were beneficial to Great Britain itself.

American policy-makers who are critical of the defense burden that the US bears for its European allies should consider how this spending benefits the United States. Investing in defense abroad makes a war in the American home waters or continent less plausible. The American government spends the money on American made equipment and the training of American personnel, developing domestic industry and increasing readiness in ways that would not be pressing without forward deployed troops. Allied nations who rely on the United States for defense also purchase American made goods and American services. The ability of foreign markets to afford American consumer goods is what made the Dollar the reserve currency of the world for the twentieth century. There may be ‘free riders’ on American defense spending, but that does not mean that it is a waste of money. The British Empire, and the early United States, would not have prospered if not for the Royal Navy and Freedom of the Seas. Investing in ‘free riders’ will protect American prosperity into the twenty first century.

Charles W. King

Taxation without representation, the presence of the Royal Army in colonist’s homes, and the suspension of trade and English Common Law are the most well-known of the grievances levied by the Continental Congress against King George III. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was another, and like the statutes against trading with foreign powers and their colonies it was violated repeatedly by American colonists. Issued after the French & Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years War, the Proclamation forbade American settlers from expanding past the Appalachian Mountains, establishing the Ohio River Valley and the lands beyond at native territory. For many Americans access to the other side of the Appalachians was the point of going to war against France and her native allies. The British Government had promised large swathes of land west of the Appalachians in exchange for American service against the French, which the Proclamation nullified without compensation. The Crown sought to avoid another war by forbidding further encroachment by the Thirteen Colonies against neighbors, which is understandable even if how they thought they’d enforce such a measure is not.

The tension between adventurous trappers, prospectors, and settlers and the government was one of the enduring tensions of for the Thirteen Colonies and the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Settlers’ going beyond the lands that the central government intended to protect was not exclusive to the colonial period. It would happen repeatedly and was the cause of conflicts between the United States and Mexico and dozens of Native American tribes whose lands were promised protection by the government only to be violated by settlers. Knowing that if they needed to they could rely on the protection of the Royal Army or the US Cavalry, Americans continued to push west ahead of their governments.

Neither is this phenomenon unique to the United States. Deriving from English Common Law principle of ‘Improvement’ that facilitated the Enclosure of common lands in the United Kingdom, this kind of settler colonialism was typical of the British Empire’s possessions in Africa and Australia as well. The British Raj is the exception; its history has much more in common with French methods of colonization. In Australia, South Africa, and Kenya the British Empire was drawn into repeated conflicts by settlers expanding past the established borders of imperial rule and turning to the Empire when conflicts arose.

The story of settler colonization is to a straightforward one of government sanctioned expansion into native lands. The history of the Thirteen Colonies and of other British settler colonies demonstrates an ongoing tension between settlers and their governments. It may appear to modern-policy makers that these tensions have little bearing on a world that has been blanketed with human civilization. This is not the case; there remain important swathes of land that humanity is only just beginning to explore. Brazilians are getting deeper and deeper into the Amazon jungle, against the wishes of their government. The possibility of creating new lands out of sand and steel in the oceans is becoming closer and closer to reality. As people reach deeper into the unpopulated places of the world and make previously inhospitable places prosperous policy-makers will have to be cognizant of how their own citizens and those of other nations will not only push the envelope, but beyond it.

Further Reading

John C. Weaver, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900 (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003)

Charles W. King

The second major continuity of American foreign policy is its focus on trade, and the specific terms under which it prefers to trade. Not only is the United States a 'Free Trade' evangelist today, it has always been one. This consistency illuminates how the United States has historically approached diplomacy. Understanding that can help policy-makers through a more complete understanding of the history of American foreign policy and how the American perspective and method in foreign affairs and international trade differs from other countries'.

A number of the Intolerable Acts passed by the British government that prompted American rebellion were indented to reinforce mercantilist policies and crack down on smuggling. Smuggling was rife in the American colonial era, as trade with foreign powers and the colonial possessions was illegal under British colonial policy. Along with the imposition of monopolies on specific goods in the colonies, these policies combined to restrict trade significantly and inflate prices. American consumers suffered and the coffers of companies like the British East India Company filled. When the Revolution broke out in 1776 it was in part a response to the British crack down on foreign goods and trade in foreign markets. Americans have been committed to free trade from their founding onward.

The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy are continuations of this commitment to these free trade principles. The Monroe Doctrine was not only a prohibition against European intervention in events in the Americas, it also insisted upon open access to colonial possessions in the Americas for trade, and freedom of navigation on the seas. Monroe declared that the United States was going to trade with Latin and South America, whether Europe liked it or not.

In 1899 American Secretary of State John Hay sent diplomatic notes to the great powers, asking them to commit to Chinese territorial integrity after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Known as the 'Open Door Notes' they formally established the mode under which the United States would operate for the next hundred plus years, and enumerated the principles it had operated under since the American Revolution.

The United States has always insisted upon free trade, and done so using language that couches it as fair, moral, and just, giving people the ability to exercise their god given rights. It must be recognized that the United States has promoted these policies because they benefit the US and its citizens. Breaking free from British mercantilism and monopolies allowed American merchants to sell their goods for more in foreign markets and lowered prices for imports to the United States. The Monroe Doctrine relied upon the fact that the British Royal Navy already enforced freedom of navigation. The Open Door Notes attempted to level the playing field in China for the United States without the commitment of troops, but it was not rebuke of European intervention in China or an insistence of Chinese sovereignty.

The United States has been a trading nation since its founding. As a trading nation is benefits from access to foreign markets and good, and freedom of navigation. The nations the United States trades with do not necessarily receive the same benefits. While there are excellent moral arguments for free trade, to imagine the United States is pursuing its own prosperity is foolhardy. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people. Since its founding that has been understood to include its economic prosperity through free trade. It is essential that American policy-makers recognize that foreign governments will, and should, resist throwing their country's doors wide open when they believe it will harm their people and their well-being. Doing so will facilitate better diplomatic and economic arrangements that benefit both the US and its trading partners and retain the moral high ground sought by liberal democracies.

Further Reading

Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion 1890-1945, (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982).

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009).

Charles W. King

Only after being attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor and very reluctantly the United States took its place on the world stage. Having retreated back to isolation on its own side of the Atlantic after the World War One; American involvement in World War Two and after marked a watershed moment in the popular conception of American history. For most America the superpower is fundamentally different in its approach to the world than America the isolationist. On the contrary, America the isolationist is a fiction, and American foreign policy has been consistent across its entire history. American foreign policy as a superpower in the twentieth century continued the priorities and methods of the United States not only during the nineteenth century, but also the eighteenth, including prior to the American Revolution.

In the decades before the turn of the twentieth century an increasing number of Americans advocated that the United States should pursue a policy of imperialism, acquiring overseas possessions like the British, French, and Germans. Theodore Roosevelt was one of imperialism’s advocates, but Alfred Thayer Mahan was its most important. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History convinced Roosevelt and others that the United States needed a strong navy to ensure its continued prosperity, and a global network of coaling stations was an essential part of that plan. In 1898 the United States declared war on Spain, under the pretext of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor. The war was swift and decisive, and as a result the US took the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico and Cuba became an American protectorate. For some the acquisition of overseas colonies after the Spanish-American War marks the change in American foreign policy, heralding how the US will engage with the world after World War Two.

The acquisition of overseas colonies was not a change in method for the United States but a change in target. The United States had been steadily expanding its territory for more than a hundred years. British prohibitions against the Thirteen Colonies expanding past the Appalachian Mountains were a major cause of the American Revolution. The Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican-American War, the California Gold Rush all continued the US’s westward expansion. In the eighteenth centuries while the British, French, and Germans sent their colonial settlers by boat to Africa, India, Asia, and Australia the US sent theirs West in covered wagons. Manifest Destiny was imperialism by another name. Westward expansion was an important engine of American prosperity, after reaching the Pacific continued prosperity demanded that American policy-makers look abroad.

From the establishment of Jamestown until the Spanish-American War the US’s mode of expansion was settler colonialism, the hallmark of European imperialism. Comparing American westward expansion with European colonization of Africa, India, Asia, and Australia runs counter to the idea of American exeptionalism. It is essential to recognize the long standing continuities of American foreign policy, of which expansion is only one. The United States continues its expansion today, no longer through settler colonialism, or imperial administration but through market access. This sobering assessment of American foreign policy and understanding of how the US continues to expand its influence today will help policy-makers to better understand why foreign nations are wary of American influence and produce better strategies to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Further Reading

Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, (New York, NY: Little, Brown, & Co.: 1890).

Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion 1890-1945, (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982).

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009).

Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, & the Philippines, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).