Finally, there has emerged of late still another class of critics whose attacks on foreign policy are far more comprehensive than any which have received a serious hearing in the past. These critics, most of whom are associated with the New Left, have challenged at the foundation the entire sweep of recent American diplomacy,¹¹ denouncing both the definition of national purpose and the view of international reality which inspires it. Not only are the issues thought to be vital by the nation’s leadership said to be false issues, but our historical view of national purpose and even our traditional self-image are asserted to be false as well. There are no universally valid moral principles which constitute the basis for action in international politics, nor is there a vision of political life which provides a meaningful standard against which to measure the behavior of other nations and political movements. Attempts to conduct foreign policy on the basis of such principles and standards, therefore, constitute exercises in futility and self-delusion. Indeed, far from pursuing noble motives in a benevolent manner in its international relations, the United States has commonly acted the part of an imperial state of a rather classic type, trampling on the rights of small nations in pursuit of economic and political power. According to these critics, then, the nation needs far more than a mere change of leadership; what is required to end the crisis of American foreign policy is nothing less than a radical change in the very lifestyle of the nation itself. The radical critics appear by no means certain, incidentally, that such a change is possible.

In any event, it is clearly a mistake to believe that the present debate and discontent over the American role in world politics is a totally new phenomenon. While some of the current criticism may be more far-reaching in scope than has been the case in the past, debate over American policy has occurred throughout the postwar period, and even earlier. Moreover, it remains uncertain just how widespread and how deep is the current discontent among the citizenry at large. As many commentators have observed, there is no clear tradition of public involvement in foreign policy decision-making in the United States. Americans are normally quite content to allow “politics to stop at the water’s edge,” and to trust the national leadership to define and implement the nation’s international policy. The public, in fact, has rarely joined in any of the “great debates” over foreign policy, except perhaps to protest a real or apparent defeat or to object to the protracted or costly nature of some of the nation’s international involvements. Several reasons have been suggested to explain this fact, from the enduring appeal of the isolationist tradition to the political immaturity of the American people {which may be another way of saying the same thing).

But there may be deeper reasons, related to the traditional American understanding of world politics and of the nation’s place in it. Until our series of confrontations with the many faces of international communism after World War II, there was little reason to question the two-fold conviction of the Founding Fathers that the political systems of the world were destined to evolve over time in a democraticdirection, and that the United States was intended to make a significant contribution to that end. At the same time neither the thinking of the nation’s early statesmen, however internationalist-interventionist its thrust, nor the American diplomatic tradition itself, until the twentieth century largely isolationist in character, offered much guidance concerning the means and methods through which this contribution would be made. Considered in this light, the reluctance of the public to become deeply involved with foreign policy issues becomes more understandable: such involvement did not appear necessary, nor, given the general uncertainty concerning how the nation was to fulfill its international destiny, did it seem possible for the citizenry to make a relevant contribution to the process. What would be a new phenomenon in the history of civic discourse in the United States, therefore, would be a penetrating re-examination of the fundamentals of American foreign policy which involved large segments of the body politic, and which extended beyond means and tactics to embrace the ends and purposes of foreign policy itself in a world of anarchy. It is far from certain that the pervasive dissatisfaction with the outcome of our Southeast Asian policy will stimulate such a debate; indeed, the evidence thus far would appear to be to the contrary. Should it do so, however, the war in Vietnam might indeed come to be regarded as a turning point in American foreign relations, but not for the reasons considered important by most of the war’s critics.

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A debate of this kind, it would surprise most Americans to learn, took place at the very beginning of our history as a unified national state, during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. A brief analysis of that debate is instructive for the light it sheds both on the foreign policy concerns of the Founding Fathers and on the whole problem of defining purpose in the making of foreign policy.

The exchange referred to involved Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and the redoubtable Alexander Hamilton of New York, and arose as part of the Convention’s debate over the nature of the upper house of the national legislature. Pinckney opened the discussion by expressing his concern over proposals to create an upper house similar to the British House of Lords. Such a step would be disastrous, he argued, because it would do violence to the principle that a government “must be suited to the habits & genius of the people it is to govern, and must grow out of them.”¹² The people of the United States, he asserted, are “the most singular of any we are acquainted with”:¹³ they are “not only very different from the inhabitants of any State we are acquainted with in the modern world,” but moreover “their situation is distinct from either the people of Greece or Rome, or of any State we are acquainted with among the ancients.”¹⁴ The reason has to do with the equality of station characteristic of social life in America. Among Americans, there are “fewer distinctions of fortune and less of rank, than among the inhabitants of any other nation.¹⁵ And this social fact, Pinckney believed, was of singular significance for American political institutions:

Every freeman has a right to the same protection and security; and a very moderate share of property entitles them to the possession of all the honors and privileges the public can bestow: hence arises a greater equality, which is more likely to continue—I say this equality is likely to continue, because in a new Country, possessing immense tracts of uncultivated lands, where every temptation is offered to emigration and where industry must be rewarded with competency, there will be few-poor, and few dependent.¹⁶

Consequently, no one will be excluded by birth and few by fortune from full participation in the political life of the nation. “The whole community,” he concluded, “will enjoy in the fullest sense that kind of political liberty which consists in the power the members of the State reserve to themselves, of arriving at the public offices, or at least, of having votes in the nomination of those who fill thein.”¹⁷