The United States of America has no history beyond the beginning of the seventeenth century. Starting with the Mayflower, thousands of ships have deposited free people, indentured servants and slaves on these shores. We came here in waves from Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, China, Africa and just about every other place on the earth.
What has made us different from most other countries is that we had nothing in common with our fellow Americans other than our land and its short history. That history has given us some exceptional roots like our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, a free press and the rule of law. It also gave us some exceptional stories like our Revolution, our Civil War, our involvement in two World Wars and our halting attempts to make all Americans equal.
America does not have a national cultural heritage that traces our evolution here over the millennia. We are no China, India, France or England. All we have together is our common, exceptional experience.
We believe in American Exceptionalism. That is the notion that we have the most exceptional country and system in the world. With all our faults, our history and our system have served us pretty well, well enough when compared with most of the rest of the world to persuade us that our democratic system is the best.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with feeling that way, even though in recent years the bloom has come off the rose a bit. Our lack of a long, common history makes it important for our cohesiveness that we have those feelings in common.
When stacked up against all the countries, all the cultures, all the governmental and economic systems in the world, America’s democracy is quite simply the best. That’s what they taught us. That’s what we know and believe.
This fact is clear to Americans who have traveled and lived abroad and experienced the vagaries of Communism, Fascism, monarchies, Socialism, or religious absolutism. When we make the comparison, it is crystal clear to any American that we are the exceptional people with the exceptional political, governmental and economic systems.
In the post World War Two era, we were the most promising, most powerful country in the world. In the end, we saw the demise of our main competitor, the Soviet Union. It’s worth noting, however, that during the first twenty years after the war, none of our attempts to export our democratic system resulted in much good for this country.
Today, our attention has turned to the Middle East where we are involved in an extraordinarily risky process designed to bring democracy, our exceptional form of government, through force of arms to a number of Muslim countries. We are now paying a price for that and our exceptionalism has caused us nothing but problems.
During the past eight years, we have tossed all our previously held beliefs about good foreign policy out the window. We now practice unilateralism vs. international cooperation, preemption vs. negotiation, war vs. diplomacy and ideological absolutism vs. realism.
We are the best and to hell with the rest!
On the night of 9/11, the world offered us its sympathy and unstinting support. We rudely refused and everything changed. With those changes we have become one of the least respected nations on the planet. Our national interests have been trashed, our reputation besmirched and our future clouded – all with the complicity of a majority of our voting population. After all, Americans did re-elect George W. Bush in 2004.
American Exceptionalism served us pretty well for almost four hundred years, mostly when we used it intelligently. At our best, we have led by example. We have simply tried to do the right thing here at home with our social, economic and political systems to show the world that we had a pretty good system that others could emulate if they chose to. We have tried to be John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill”.
It’s when our American Exceptionalism prompts us to force our system on other countries, as we recently have in Iraq and soon will in Afghanistan, that we get into trouble. Some people, most Muslims for example, are perfectly happy with their system, irrespective of how we feel about it.
Although any country in the world can voluntarily import our democratic system, it doesn’t export well, least of all militarily. We really need to step back and learn. Maybe we will be able to do that under President–elect Obama.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.
