With the decline of Wilsonian foreign policy, there has been a genuine bifurcation of foreign policy between both political parties. Yet within these parties, the question is not whether they should have a conservative or liberal foreign policy but on promoting global engagement vs non-interventionism. Such disagreements are increasingly visible and bitterly intra-partisan given that the stakes can be very high. Let us take the Democrats where disagreements over foreign policy have escalated in recent years that occasionally boils over to an ugly feud. One recent feud between the two sides was on Israel a couple months ago where Biden and Wilsonians largely defended Israel’s right to defense while the left-wing criticized Israel’s actions as war crimes. We already covered the Wilsonians a week ago, but this week, we are looking deeper into the return of Jeffersonian thought that is capturing the mind of left-wing activists, academics and politicians wanting to push back against the excesses of interventionist foreign policy.
Yet with this increase of energy and attention on Jeffersonian foreign policy, little is known about this school of thought. Even Mead, who arguably defined the school of thought with Special Providence, does appear to make some misunderstandings of who would be a Jeffersonian and when did they dominate American foreign policy (if they even dominated at all). This causes issues as misunderstanding an increasingly popular foreign policy school that can harm American interests will leave us in a worse place than before. In here, we will understand this school and how the alternative it provides to Wilsonian thought will be insufficient to serve the country in the 21st century.
What is Jeffersonian Doctrine?
Of all the four schools, Jeffersonians are very hard to categorize in ideology and leadership. To understand Jeffersonian foreign policy, we must first understand Jeffersonian thought and their perception of America. In Mead’s Special Providence, Jeffersonians are revolutionaries- mainly libertarians and / or progressives - to the core seeing the battle fought against Britain as a declaration of liberty for all mankind (even if Jefferson himself was hypocritical in this regard). Whereas Mead described Wilsonians as the “Trotskyists” of the Revolution, seeing history as an arc that bends towards progress, Jeffersonians can be seen as the “Stalinists” where they believe history can be bent back towards tyranny if given the time. In a sense, Jeffersonians are pessimistic defenders of democracy believing that our freedom is so fragile we can lose it in an instant.
Jeffersonians, aware of how delicate democracy can be historically, have great concern over the concentration of power given that power can be used to tyrannical ends. They remain skeptical of big government or any institution that can have the power to limit individual liberty, a facet that is very much supported by libertarian thought. This may sound contradictory on the progressive side given their support for public options in certain areas though they also have a fear towards big government that isn’t immediately obvious. When you consider progressive fear towards big government as a means of concentrated power by elites against the people’s power, you can understand why many progressives fight against government infringement on the political and social sphere (like Defunding the Police or the ACLU’s statement against Biden’s disinformation crackdown). Their focus on preserving liberty against any force of tyranny binds them closely to Thomas Jefferson’s opinion of America regardless of how they view their intellectual godfather’s.
Taking this mindset, we can now see the contours of their foreign policy. Jeffersonian foreign policy is in its nature a liberal reaction to both Hamiltonian doctrine historically and Wilsonian foreign policy currently. Jeffersonians believe that foreign policy does begin at home seeing that foreign and domestic policy cannot be siloed off from each other. Their key focus is the avoidance of war as interventionism abroad may not only fail to meet our objectives, it can harm the country in the long term. To prove their point, Jeffersonians point to a martial-focus on our foreign policy that leads to over-militarization domestically and the events on January 6th. Furthermore, they’re staunchly anti-imperial and will condemn any intervention they see as one that expands the government to the point of making a mockery of the Constitutions. One can find such calls from anti-imperialists in the Spanish-American war to progressives calling an end to the war powers resolutions for Iraq and GWOT. Instead of interventionism, Jeffersonians prefer diplomatic approaches though they still tend to limit diplomatic missions for fear of creating a push towards engagement as desired by Wilsonians. In summation, Jeffersonians are similar to their Wilsonian counterparts in their belief of liberalism but prefer to be more non-interventionist given their skepticism of our republic’s durability.
It is also important to note that, like Wilsonian foreign policy, there are two sub-groups that make up Jeffersonian thought. The more traditional, and arguably smaller, side are the libertarians who dislike government intervention on the grounds that war inevitably leads to more government and executive authority. They point to the size of the federal government budget and the armed forces which- save for the 1990s - continuously increased. As war leads to “the largest and most far‐reaching of all statist enterprises”, such foreign policy should emphasize restraint ensuring federal power is limited. The other (arguably larger) side are the progressives, who are against most forms of intervention given their belief interventionism helps the “military industrial complex” and other corporate entities. Progressives are also against multilateral institutions that tend to promote neoliberalism, such as the TPP and the WTO, believing it undermines human rights or other priorities in favor of profit. Some Jeffersonians go so far as to say the U.S. should leave NATO, though this idea doesn’t seem to be a major talking point among progressives. Regardless of which subgroup one might land in the Jeffersonian camp, both personify Jefferson’s deep mistrust of government overreach and his desire to keep America exceptional by remaining above the fray in international politics.
Was There a Jeffersonian Era?
With Wilsonians, Jacksonians and Hamiltonians, you can see definite eras and presidents that embody their values and mindset through their administrations. Jeffersonian thought, however, is unique that while there were periods where it did influence foreign policy, it was never fully dominant in establishing our foreign policy. Even President Jefferson, the namesake of his foreign policy school, did embrace a more active role when he became president. Defying expectations, he purchased the Louisiana territory despite his reservations, engaged Barbary pirates in his first term, and supported the Embargo Act to punish Britain for violating American neutrality (albeit at great cost to the economy). This went in direct contrast to his criticism of John Adams when he was vice president from the expansion of the armed forces to closer ties with Britain at the expense of the French alliance. Jefferson, ever the “walking contradiction,” proved to be no stranger to the practice of flip-flopping while in power leaving us in question which president was the closest to enacting a “Jeffersonian” foreign policy.
Of all the four schools, Mead’s designation of possible Jeffersonian presidents are the weakest as he confuses many Wilsonians or Hamiltonians as Jeffersonians. In an article for the American Interest during the Obama administration, he expands his thought of Jeffersonians by introducing “High Jeffersonians,” where they share Jeffersonian concerns over the ability in promoting democracy or American interests abroad. They prefer instead to develop strategic architectures that can secure our interests at minimal costs from a multilateral institution like the U.N. to NGOs like Doctors Without Borders. Mead’s analysis of High Jeffersonians is less robust in hindsight given that most of the people who he classifies in this category can fit into Wilsonian or Hamiltonian camps, whether it is Jimmy Carter or George Kennan. I would go so far to say that High Jeffersonians do not exist historically and is hard to see whether they exist in contemporary times.
Going to Barack Obama, it is true that he did display some Jeffersonian tendencies in running for the senate and presidency, from calling the 1915 ethnic cleansing of Armenians a genocide to opposing what he called “dumb wars.” But when he came into office, he proved to be a Wilsonian supporting a surge in Afghanistan, intervening in Libya and starting America’s pivot to Asia. He certainly had a more multilateral focus on certain issues such as climate and the Iran nuclear deal but his approach to trade and interventionism angered many progressives on this measure. Looking back at Obama’s administration, it’s hard to state that he was a High Jeffersonian but rather a liberal internationalist who was skeptical of the imperial projects that his neoconservative predecessor initiated.
With that said, he may have been right with identifying John Quincy Adams as a Jeffersonian president, though even then it is not entirely certain. President Quincy Adams did say that America, “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” yet it appears that he approached foreign policy from arguably a more Hamiltonian school given his focus on trade and his work in developing the Monroe Doctrine as Monroe’s secretary of state. At the same time, however, he was against the Mexican American war as it would possibly expand of slavery open as states were admitted to the union. The designation is also complicated by the fact that while he preferred a disengaged approach to European affairs, he was interested in Asian affairs as noted by Michael J. Green in his seminal book By More Than Providence. He is certainly the closest one can get to a Jeffersonian-oriented president though we can easily debate for hours whether President Quincy Adams, arguably America’s first presidential grand strategist, neatly fits in this designation.
It’s been hard to prove whether there has been a definite period when Jeffersonian doctrine has been consistently or successfully applied. Mead does state some periods where Jeffersonians were predominant such as the Monroe era and the inter-war period until 1941, though Monroe was more of a proto-Wilsonian looking to secure American interests after Spain was ousted from most of its American colonies. Our support with Britain in keeping the Western Hemisphere out of European hands was more of a Hamiltonian strategy than one that would be palatable by Jefferson and his faction. The only period where Jeffersonian doctrine came close to being implemented was right after World War One, when the Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the Senate and Warren G. Harding replaced Wilson as president. During that time, America retreated further than ever from European affairs humbled by the horrors of the Western front leading senators such as William Borah to decry Wilson’s attempt to enter the League of Nations. From there, successive governments focused on demilitarization and on remaining non-interventionist while pursuing treaties to discourage war from the Washington Naval Treaty to the Kellogg-Briand Pact (with the latter supposedly abolishing war). That said, there is a solid argument to be made it was also a time where Jacksonian thinking was dominant with “America First” making it a period where two schools were dominant concurrently. Nevertheless, Jeffersonians have long been kept out of power leaving them in a sort of permanent opposition against the three schools.
Where Jeffersonians Get it Wrong
It shouldn’t be a surprise that I don’t hold the Jeffersonian school in high regard as it would be a poor substitute for Wilsonian doctrine. There are a few fatal flaws that prevent Jeffersonian thought from ever being implemented or from being accepted by both elites and the populace. To begin, Jeffersonians suffer from the fact that they have been in opposition for almost all of their existence leaving them without the burden of government. In this critique, we must understand Max Weber’s two virtues: the virtue of conviction, which informs the need of politicians to have core virtues, and the virtue of responsibility, requiring politicians to compromise their virtues for the greater good as needed. Progressives and libertarians, for various reasons, have proven unable to being elected in large enough numbers to head any government leaving them on the side benches for perpetuity. Unfortunately, by being part of a perennial opposition, it allows them to have their convictions without the responsibility that comes in governing leaving them as the proverbial child spit balling in the back of the class.
One particular consequence for their perennial particularly is their incoherence on foreign policy, particularly on interventions, which is especially seen from the ascendant progressive wing of the Democratic party. According to Ganesh Sitaraman, a long-time advisor to Elizabeth Warren, progressives claim that they are “breaking the silos” that traditionally divide domestic and foreign policy focusing how foreign policy can affect everyday Americans. Sitaraman’s states progressives view China and Russia as great threats to the U.S. Yet in the same article, he also calls for alliances based on shared values and for cutting defense spending (albeit with a higher focus on cyber and new fields of conflict). While the higher focus on cybersecurity is a great point - which we’ll leave for another time - it is puzzling how they expect to counter China’s rise without a strong national defense and nations that share our dislike for China but not our values. It is this incoherence that is pointed out by Thomas Wright as he noted that if they want to embrace restraint, they would need to dramatically cut engagements abroad including our involvement with NATO. Yet their unwillingness to do so highlights a tension as to how far Jeffersonian politicians will go to change the direction in American foreign policy.
Another flaw among Jeffersonians, which is largely responsible for their foreign policy incoherence, is that they tend to project their domestic lenses and extend them to international issues. Wilsonians also have this problem through comparing a nation’s struggles as our own, though Jeffersonians take it a step further framing our own domestic issues and using it abroad to determine who is the oppressor and oppressed. One great example is the rise of seeing foreign policy in a racial lens where the oppressed have an ideological disposition to their own struggles at home. This was seen with the recent split with Democrats on the recent Israeli conflict where progressives saw Israel as an “apartheid state” showing solidarity with Palestinians on their supposed. The biggest issue with such international solidarity is that it is both naive and contradictory given conflicts do not have an “oppressor” that fits their own domestic prisms. Because of such one-dimensional view of global affairs and conflicts, they have a tendency to disengage from wars they cannot understand. We can look at Afghanistan, where fellow blogger Antonio Garcia Martinez (whose blog is worth a follow) understood this when he wrote, “Our current elites, whether in media or politics, squint at the strange peoples and languages of whatever international conflict and only see who or what they can map to their internal gallery of heroes and villains: Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?” This isn’t an issue solely at the feet of Jeffersonian progressives but their endorsement of this narrative renders them blind to injustices that hit deeper than their faddish ideas.
Yet the greatest flaw among Jeffersonians is that they are by nature utopians, wanting to rise above the brutality that is international affairs. Unfortunately, this is just unrealistic as republics will always face threats externally that will have to be met with force or at least with an active presence abroad. In my introductory piece on this special series, I classify Jeffersonians as idealists whose ideology tends to place them on the more liberal side of foreign policy. Jeffersonians embody the idealism that he had of a republic led by a virtuous people and with minimal government. Yet even Jefferson as president realized the wisdom given by Madison on Federalist Paper No 51 “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The world is innately brutal, with states inherently motivated by power as Morgenthau understood when he wrote his Six Principles of Political Realism. Because of this, it is necessary for the state to grow larger to ensure American interests and lives are protected from a world that is increasingly facing a rules-based disorder. In the end, Jeffersonians need to acknowledge that counter to what Mead would describe as their “Stalinist” tendencies, Trotsky was right in saying that, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
A Hamiltonian’s Parting Shots
Hamiltonians have long regarded Jeffersonians in very negative terms as they are our exact opposites. We can certainly agree that the ideals of the Revolution may be unfulfilled domestically and that the excesses of Wilsonian internationalism needs to be reined in to prevent imperial overreach. Yet Jeffersonian practitioners provide a poor alternative that would replace the values-oriented approach preferred by Wilsonians. It is because of their inability to provide a coherent foreign policy that will inhibit them from being accepted en masse and by the elites.
The best image that I can think of in terms of the future of Jeffersonian foreign policy is that of the ever-eternal White House Peace Vigil. Started in 1981 by an anti-nuclear activist, the demonstration has continued for decades with almost no interruption. For over 40 years, they’ve had placards denouncing American actions abroad while also calling for causes such as freeing Burma, Tibet, Xinjiang and denouncing the Taliban. Their condemnation is laudable though their desire to restrain America in addressing these issues is puzzling given that the international community has little interest in engaging on these issues. That is not to say that this country is flawless, but frankly the only nation that will ever secure American interests and values abroad will be America itself. Because of this, I doubt that Jeffersonians will ever fully influence American foreign policy (though they will certainly provide stinging critiques over its excesses). Instead, they will find themselves largely outside like the Peace Vigil, decrying the actions of the three schools as they move in and out of the White House.