Continuity and Change in the U.S. Responses to Threats to Security
A pattern of continuity and change in the American response to threats to national security established itself in the early 19th century with the British attack on Washington, and reverberated throughout the 20th-21st centuries outlasting two world wars, a war of mutual vulnerability, and a war against terrorism. Beginning with John Quincy Adams unilateralist reaction to threats to American security on August 24th 1814 and continuing through George bush’s multilateralist response to the attacks of September 11th 2001, a cycle of continuity and change has shifted throughout American history reflecting changing contexts for protecting continuous American ideals from the destruction of an ever-changing “something worse”.
One might argue that George W. Bush’s response to the September 11th Attacks on American soil reflected a momentous change from the unilateralist stance reflected through the foreign policies of such former presidents as John Quincy Adams. Adams policies reflecting Washington’s Farewell address were enacted to avoid situations in which the United States would be obligated to support another nation in conflict or collaborate their interests with another nation, thus preventing the need for American responsibility for / involvement in future conflicts. Adams policies regarding his seemingly isolationist ideals for American diplomacy are exemplified in the Monroe Doctrine, in which the American desire to avoid unforeseen conflicts through restraint from foreign involvement was made clear. Whereas Adams wished to use Unilateralism to secure America as the greatest power in North America to avoid potential security threats from its identified close neighbors, President George W. Bush is faced with a global war in which multilateralism is necessary to establish the United States as a global superpower to prevent security threats from often unidentified global enemies. Just as Adams wished to retain American power as a spherical superpower of North America to prevent security threats, George Bush wishes to retain American status as a global superpower to remain “beyond challenge” of foreign authority. Although both Bush and Adams wished to protect American soil from foreign security threats, their means of doing so and the context of their diplomacy differ greatly. Best exemplified in the words of John Lewis Gaddis,
A nation that began with the belief that it could not be safe as long as pirates, marauders, and the agents of predatory empires remained active along its borders has now taken the position that it cannot be safe as long as terrorists and tyrants remain active anywhere in the world (Gaddis 110). | |
The 20th century saw a change in policies reflecting a more multilateralist philosophy in keeping with the policies of George W. Bush in the War on Terror. Beginning with the December 7th 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, American politics shifted with the realization that natural borders like the Pacific Ocean no longer serve as an adequate defense against global powers, and turned towards a multilateralistic, pre-emptive, and globally hegemonic focus. Based on the hegemonic assumption of there being something worse than a nations current system of operation, policies such as President Wilson’s League of Nations, President Roosevelt’s Grand Alliance, President Truman’s NATO, and President G.W. Bush’s collaboration with other nations allied in the war in the Middle East reflect the American realization that threats to national security are now a global concern, not a border control concern; America has reached out to other nations for a collaborative effort in combating threats to it’s national security. In contrast to Adams’ unilateralist refusal to become entangled in foreign affairs, more recent presidents have found interaction with foreign powers essential for the protection of American national security.
In keeping with Adams’ policy of hegemony, Presidents have continued to use hegemony to protect American security against foreign influence. Just as James K. Polk annexed Texas to prevent western European influences from contaminating America’s expanding western territories and President Truman wished to prevent the spread of communism by spreading American influence over vulnerable countries, George Bush is arguably attempting to spread American ideologies such as democracy and capitalism to the Middle East to prevent the weight of Islamic Fundamentalism from influencing vulnerable sovereign states in the Middle East. Also in keeping with previous presidents’ methods of protecting national security, Adams’ hegemony by consent has been neglected in Bush’s actions in the Middle East. Just as President Jackson attempted to remove the threat of Native American Indians to national security, and President Lincoln attempted to remove the threat of the evils of Slavery from threatening the Union, George bush wishes to “construct a formal empire against the wishes of those to be included in it”(Gaddis 108). Whereas the nations compliant with American Hegemony during the Cold War were willing to consent to American influence to prevent influences of a less desirable nature, Native American Indians, the southern states which seceded from the Union, and much of the Middle East have failed to see the American superpower as holding preferable conditions to the influences the United States has deemed to be “something worse”.
In keeping with the American tendency to hold a monolithic view of the threat to national security, the George W. Bush emphasis in the war on terrorism has been on an enemy of Islamic Fundamentalism, just as President Truman’s emphasis during the cold war was the threat of Communism. Whereas the modern threat of Fundamentalist Islam has no sovereign state to which it may attach its name, no set location on a map, no flag of representation, and no single leader to direct it’s course of action, Communism and other threats of the past did have the aforementioned courtesies. The Soviet Union and China were identifiable nations diplomatic action could be taken to constrain, whereas Fundamentalist Islam is found globally within many nations, and cannot always be pinpointed to a certain location. The war George W. Bush has waged in the Middle East is one in which the enemy cannot always be identified. Like hegemonic policies of the past, President Bush’s War on Terrorism has relied on the acceptance of the people it is meant to benefit that there is an influence of an “evil other” to take on the role of enemy. Although this evil other cannot always be identified as a sovereign nation, it reflects the continual trend in American politics that American ideologies are superior to those it has deemed as threats to its national security.
The acceptance of American values such as democracy and capitalism as being superior and more civilized than American enemies has been reflected through the 20th and 21st centuries in Presidential speeches. Just as President G.W. Bush has pursued the war in the Middle East to protect “the fate of human freedom”, such sweeping notions have been used by such presidents as FDR and Harry Truman to increase a sense of global concern for an American national security interest. The continual perseverance of hegemony with an increasing lack of consent, the decreasing identifiability of threats to national security because of their lack of political affiliation, and the cycle of presentation of national security threats as “something worse” to elicit action against them has been continuously identified in a time span of over two hundred years. This stretch of time has seen policies based in continual concepts as the context of the situations from which the threats to American security has changed significantly because of the ambiguity of the acknowledged enemy. President Bush’s response to the threat to national security posed by Islamic Fundamentalism has echoed the policies of former presidents, yet the context of the conflict between America and the entity deemed to be “something worse” remains unprecedented.
End Notes
Gaddis, John Lewis. Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Harvard University Press. USA.
Hunt, Michael H. “In the Wake of September 11th”. Major Problems in American History since 1945. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 2007
Footnotes
Gaddis, John Lewis. Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Harvard University Press. USA.
Hunt, Michael H. “In the Wake of September 11th”. Major Problems in American History since 1945. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 2007
Works Cited
Gaddis, John Lewis. Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Harvard University Press. USA.
Hunt, Michael H. “In the Wake of September 11th”. Major Problems in American History since 1945. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 2007
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