What America Owes the World The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy [Hardcover]

This book, first published in 1998, is an intellectual and moral history of US foreign policy.For two hundred years, Americans have believed that they have an obligation to improve the lot of humanity, a belief which has consistently shaped U.S. foreign policy. Yet within this consensus, there are two competing schools of thought: the exemplarist school (Brands' term) which holds that what America chiefly owes the world is the benign example of a well-functioning democracy, and the vindicationist school which argues that force must sometimes supplement a good example. In this book, H.W. Brands traces the evolution of these two schools as they emerged in the thinking and writing of the most important public thinkers of the last two centuries.For two hundred years, Americans have believed that they have an obligation to improve the lot of humanity, a belief which has consistently shaped U.S. foreign policy. Yet within this consensus, there are two competing schools of thought: the exemplarist school (Brands' term) which holds that what America chiefly owes the world is the benign example of a well-functioning democracy, and the vindicationist school which argues that force must sometimes supplement a good example. In this book, H.W. Brands traces the evolution of these two schools as they emerged in the thinking and writing of the most important public thinkers of the last two centuries.For two hundred years, Americans have believed that they have an obligation to improve the lot of humanity, a belief that has consistently shaped U.S. foreign policy. Yet within this consensus, there are two competing schools of thought: the exemplarist school (Brands' term) which holds that what America chiefly owes the world is the benign example of a well-functioning democracy, and the vindicationist school which argues that force must sometimes supplement a good example. In this book, H.W. Brands traces the evolution of these two schools as they emerged in the thinking lCÇ