“Dangerous Nation”: The American Power Exception

Lechner, Frank J.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58720-6_4

Frank J. Lechner²

215 Accesses

Abstract

If anything has inspired faith in America’s exceptional qualities, it is the country’s extraordinary power. Its early leaders envisioned the nation’s growth to unrivaled strength. In the 1830s Tocqueville already thought that Russia and the United States seemed called, as if by a design of Providence, “to hold in [their] hands one day the destinies of half the world” (Tocqueville 2010: 656). Throughout the nineteenth century, the expansion of the American continental empire fit that expectation, enabling the U.S. to take on a distinctive global role around 1900.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 79.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

Adams, John Quincy. 2016 [1821]. Speech on Independence Day. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-on-independence-day/. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Allison, Robert J. 1995. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Anderson, Fred, and Andrew Cayton. 2005. The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000. New York: Viking.
Google Scholar
ARB [Accountability Review Board]. 2012. Accountability Review Board Report [on Benghazi]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State.
Google Scholar
Arjomand, Said Amir. 2015. The End of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/end-of-iran-islamic-revolution-by-said-amir-arjomand-2015-08?barrier=true. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Bacevich, Andrew J. 2002. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. 1934. Washington’s Farewell Address: A Foreign Policy of Independence. American Historical Review 39(2): 250–268.
Article Google Scholar
———. 1950. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Google Scholar
Boot, Max. 2015. The Dawn of Iranian Empire. Commentary, July 14.
Google Scholar
Brands, H.W. 1998. What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Brennan, Richard R. Jr., Charles P. Ries, Larry Hanauer, Ben Connable, Terrence K. Kelly, Michael J. McNerney, Stephanie Young, Jason Campbell, and K. Scott McMahon. 2013. Ending the U.S. War in Iraq: The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces-Iraq. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Google Scholar
Bush, George W. 2002a. The National Security Strategy of the United States. Washington, DC: The White House.
Google Scholar
———. 2002b. President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2005. Second Inaugural Address. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/gbush2.asp. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Chollet, Derek. 2016. How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World. New York: PublicAffairs.
Google Scholar
CNN. 2010. Larry King Live Interview with Vice President Joe Biden. February 10. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/10/lkl.01.html. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
Cohen, Eliot. 2008. The Military. In Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation, ed. Peter H. Schuck and James Q. Wilson, 247–273. New York: PublicAffairs.
Google Scholar
Cox, Michael. 2005. Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States. International Affairs 81(1): 15–30.
Article Google Scholar
Dueck, Colin. 2015. The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 1961. Farewell Address. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
Ferguson, Niall. 2004. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. New York: Penguin Press.
Google Scholar
Filkins, Dexter. 2008. The Forever War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Google Scholar
Fleitz, Fred. 2015. Obama’s Iran Deal Is the Opposite of What He Promised the American People. National Review, July 14.
Google Scholar
Garrity, Patrick J. 2009. She Goes Not Abroad, in Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Dispute Between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay over the South American Revolutions. http://www.classicsofstrategy.com/She%20Goes%20Not%20Abroad.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. 2016. The Obama Doctrine. The Atlantic, March 10.
Google Scholar
Gordon, Michael R., and Bernard E. Trainor. 2012. The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. New York: Pantheon Books.
Google Scholar
Hannigan, Robert E. 2002. The New World Power: American Foreign Policy, 1898–1917. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Google Scholar
Hendrickson, David C. 2009. Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789–1941. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Google Scholar
Herring, George C. 2008. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Hixson, Walter L. 2008. The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Howe, Daniel Walker. 2007. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Hunt, Michael H. 1987. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
IISS [International institute for Strategic Studies]. 2016. The Military Balance 2016. London: IISS.
Google Scholar
Immerman, Richard H. 2010. Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Indyk, Martin, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael E. O’Hanlon, eds. 2012. Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Google Scholar
Irwin, Ray W. 1931. The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with the Barbary Powers, 1776–1816. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Google Scholar
JCPOA. 2015. Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. U.S. State Department. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Jefferson, Thomas. 2016. Empire of Liberty (Quotation). Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/empire-liberty-quotation. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Joseph, Robert. 2015. JCPOA: Non-Proliferation, Inspections, and Nuclear Constraints [Testimony, August 4]. Washington, DC: United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert. 2006. Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Google Scholar
Kane, Tim. 2004. Global U.S. Troop Deployment, 1950–2003. The Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/10/global-us-troop-deployment-1950-2003. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
Kaufman, Burton Ira, ed. 1969. Washington’s Farewell Address: The View from the 20th Century. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
Google Scholar
Kaufman, Robert G. 2016. Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Book Google Scholar
Kennedy, Paul M. 1988. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House.
Google Scholar
Kissinger, Henry. 2014. World Order. New York: Penguin Press.
Google Scholar
Kramer, Lloyd S. 1994. The French Revolution and the Creation of American Political Culture. In The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution, ed. Joseph Klaits and Michael H. Haltzel, 26–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter Google Scholar
Kramnick, Isaac, eds. 1987. The Federalist Papers. New York: Viking Penguin.
Google Scholar
LaFeber, Walter. 1994. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar
Lambert, Frank. 2005. The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World. New York: Hill and Wang.
Google Scholar
Leiner, Frederick C. 2006. The End of Barbary Terror: America’s 1815 War Against the Pirates of North Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Lostumbo, Michael J., et al. 2013. Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Google Scholar
Maier, Charles S. 2006. Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 2003. Incoherent Empire. London: Verso.
Google Scholar
McCartney, Paul T. 2006. Power and Progress: American National Identity, the War of 1898, and the Rise of American Imperialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Google Scholar
McDougall, Walter A. 1997. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Google Scholar
Mead, Walter Russell. 2001. Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Google Scholar
Merk, Frederick. 1963. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Google Scholar
Migdal, Joel. 2014. Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson, and Robert H. Scales Jr. 2003. The Iraq War. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Nathan, Andrew, and Andrew Scobell. 2012. How China Sees America. http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/how-china-sees-america/.
Neu, Charles E. 1971. The Changing Interpretive Structure of American Foreign Policy. In Twentieth-Century American Foreign Policy, ed. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremmer, and David Brody, 1–57. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Google Scholar
Nobelprize.org. 2009. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 to President Barack Obama—Press Release. October 9. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
O’Gara, Gordon C. 1943. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Obama, Barack H. 2008. Full Script of Obama’s Speech [in Berlin]. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/24/obama.words/. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2009a. Inaugural Address. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/01/21/president-barack-obamas-inaugural-address. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2009b. A Just and Lasting Peace (Nobel Lecture). http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2009c. Remarks by the President on a New Beginning. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2009d. Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2011. Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/14/remarks-president-and-first-lady-end-war-iraq. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2012. Remarks by the President to the UN General Assembly. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/remarks-president-un-general-assembly. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2013. Remarks by the President at the Brandenburg Gate—Berlin, Germany. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/remarks-president-obama-brandenburg-gate-berlin-germany. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. 2016. Fiscal Year 2017 Budget of the U.S. Government: Historical Tables. Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget.
Google Scholar
Onuf, Peter S. 2000. Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Google Scholar
Oren, Michael B. 2007. Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar
Perry, Walter L., Richard E. Darilek, Laurinda L. Rohn, and Jerry M. Sollinger, eds. 2015. Operation Iraqi Freedom: Decisive War, Elusive Peace. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Google Scholar
Preston, Andrew. 2012. Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. New York: Anchor Books.
Google Scholar
Ricks, Thomas E. 2006. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin Press.
Google Scholar
Samuels, David. 2016. The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru. The New York Times, May 5.
Google Scholar
SIPRI [Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]. 2014. The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-Producing and Military Services Companies, 2014. http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1512.pdf. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2015. SIPRI Yearbook 2015. Stockholm: SIPRI.
Google Scholar
———. 2016. SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. http://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. Accessed 31 Aug 2016.
Smith, Tony. 2012. America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Solomon, Jay. 2016. The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the Middle East. New York: Random House.
Google Scholar
Solomon, Jay, and Carol E. Lee. 2016. U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed. The Wall Street Journal, August 3.
Google Scholar
Spalding, Matthew, and Patrick J. Garrity. 1998. A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Google Scholar
Sprout, Harold, and Margaret Sprout. 1990 [1939]. The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
Google Scholar
St. John, Ronald Bruce. 2002. Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Google Scholar
Stahr, Walter. 2012. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Google Scholar
Stephens, Bret. 2014. America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder. New York: Sentinel.
Google Scholar
Thorpe, Rebecca. 2014. The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Book Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2010. Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique (4 volumes). Trans. James T. Schleifer. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Google Scholar
Todd, Emmanuel. 2003. After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. New York: Columbia University Press.
Google Scholar
Traub, James. 2016. John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit. New York: Basic Books.
Google Scholar
Van Alstyne, Richard W. 1974. The Rising American Empire. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2003. The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World. New York: New Press.
Google Scholar
Walworth, Arthur. 1977. America’s Moment, 1918: American Diplomacy at the End of World War I. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar
Warrick, Joby. 2015. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS. New York: Doubleday.
Google Scholar
Washington, George. 2000 [1796]. Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf. Accessed 31 Aug 2016.
Weigley, Russell F. 1973. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. New York: Macmillan.
Google Scholar
Wheelan, Joseph. 2003. Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror. New York: Carroll & Graf.
Google Scholar
Whipple, A.B.C. 1991. To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines. New York: William Morrow.
Google Scholar
White House. 2015. The Iran Nuclear Deal: What You Need to Know about the JCPOA. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/jcpoa_what_you_need_to_know.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
Wieseltier, Leon. 2015. The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Rut of History. The Atlantic, July 27.
Google Scholar
Wikipedia. 2016a. Protests against the Iraq War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War. Accessed 28 Aug 2016.
———. 2016b. Military Production during World War II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II. Accessed 28 August 2016.
Williams, William Appleman. 1988. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1902. The Ideals of America. The Atlantic, December.
Google Scholar
———. 1917. Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany (April 2). http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=61&page=transcript. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.
———. 1918. Speech on War Aims and Peace Terms (14 Points). http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=62&page=transcript. Accessed 30 Aug 2016.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Sociology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Frank J. Lechner

Authors

Frank J. Lechner
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Lechner, F.J. (2017). “Dangerous Nation”: The American Power Exception. In: The American Exception, Volume 2. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58720-6_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58720-6_4
Published: 11 January 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58719-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58720-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics