The discussion about the United States (U.S) as an Empire has reemerged since the end of the Cold War, for many, the concept of an American Empire is both new and worrisome, for it has a negative connotation and in opposition to what the United States political system is all about. However, the term American Empire is rather not new; it has been used many times in history starting with the American Revolution.

At the early period of the American history, the term ‘Great Empire’ was used to describe the newly independent American Republic, but that republic of thirteen colonies was neither great, nor an empire. One can argue that the creation of an empire is the last thing in the mind of founding fathers, bright students of European history and political philosophy. So what aim were they trying to achieve, patriots and framers who purposely used the term empire to describe the young American nation?

This paper traces back to the origin of the term American Empire, examines important writings and speeches of American patriots, from the time of George Washington, taking in consideration both the circumstance and the historical frame work, argues first that the term American Empire was used by the framers for many purposes but primarily for a nationalist objective of to unite a fragile and young nation and to give a sense of ‘Grandeur’ and unity to citizens of the thirteen colonies. In founding fathers’ expression, the Union is a great rising empire, unique in human history and in agreement with God’s will. Subsequently, the term American Empire was used by the Federalists to discredit Anti-Federalists who opposed to the scheme of a strong Union. In their defense, the Federalists claimed that a confederacy based Union would be disastrous facing foreign threat. Finally, this paper argues that this political strategic assessment about potential foreign threat has de facto produced a long-term impact regarding American foreign policy, and ensued two schools of thought on foreign policy, isolationism and expansionism to compete ever since, rendering U.S. foreign policy capricious.

I. How and why the term empire was used

For many Patriots, the post Revolution United States was a young rising empire of an exceptional national character with respect to human history. In the very introduction paragraph of the Federalist Paper No.1, Alexander Hamilton who was heavily influenced by Edmund Burke in terms of law argued that the Union is the most interesting case of empire in many respect in the world. Interesting because this is an empire where people are finally of showing to be capable of establishing good government based upon reflection and choice. In his Circular to the States of June 1783, President Washington who had used many times the term “great empire’ in describing the American Republic explained why it is an exceptional case of empire in human history. “The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period” wrote the American Cincinnatus. With a strong pious taste, founders contented that the creation of American Empire seemed to be a prerogative reserved to the American people by God; underlining tacitly people ought to follow the holly fate. “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force,” argued the Federalist Paper. Many nationalists echoed this holly belief. “The Almighty … has made choice of the present generation to erect the American Empire, bids fair, by the blessings of God, to be the most glorious of any upon Record.” Claimed Henry Drayton of South Carolina.

Another major purpose for the framers to borrow the term empire from history was to demonstrate the deficiency of confederacy and to advocate a strong Union; scholars point out that for many Americans of the late 18th century, the expression ‘empire’ was used in a sense referring to any large territory governed by a strong centralized government. As a matter of fact, as early as 1775 John Adams was calling for a second Continental Congress to write “a constitution to form for a great empire.” Many Federalists used cases of historical empires in writings to justify the need for a strong government, a fundamental discrepancy between the latter and the Anti-Federalists, who argued that the Federalist movement was sacrificing the liberty for empire. This is a historical irony, for all contenders sponged thinking from a handful European thinkers including Montesquieu, Burke, Locke, Blackstone and Algernon Sidney regarding separation of powers, effective checks and balances and positive law. In defense, Federalists used the term empire to explain why a Union, at large national level, emphasizes on the Republic rather than states would serve American people better than Anti-Federalists’ Union emphasizing on individual state.

For example, a strong Union can be successful at thwarting foreign threat, to achieve cooperation between various states, to establish an efficient fiscal apparatus, an army and an efficient government under one executive power. In order to back this belief, Hamilton used cases of the British, the Ottoman and the Roman Empire as ipso facto of strong government over large extensive territories. For Hamilton, the Union is an empire with one government, and confederacies are the subdivision of empire. But he also pointed out a lethal frailty about Anti-Federalist position, an empire composed of different confederacies would be incapable of regulating its own body, using the cases of the Germanic empire of Charlemagne, Hamilton justified the need for an executive power under one strong Union.

To be more precise, the Hamiltonian model of Republic is a political system based on one large Union with a centralized cost-effective authority. “Civil power, properly organized and exerted, is capable of diffusing its force to a very great extent; and can, in a manner, reproduce itself in every part of a great empire by a judicious arrangement of subordinate institutions.” However, argued Hamilton, a confederacy that stresses on a small state plan will not serve the people in their best interests; economically speaking, a Union emphasized on individual states would cost much more to the people with many unnecessary spending. Hamilton wrote, “Dismemberment of the empire into three confederacies – one consisting of the four Northern, another of the four Middle, and a third of the five Southern States will be much more costly to the people with the danger of many unnecessary advocates.”

The term American Empire was also employed with respect to foreign affairs and national security. The Federalist position was that a Union emphasizing on individual state would be weak in defense and foreign policy vis-à-vis of European empires, which had a great interest to divide and conquer the American Republic with domestic factions; thus, the United States as a rising empire must have a strong Union facing foreign threats. President George Washington, in inferring the vital significance of the Union and liberty with respect to international relations and foreign aggression, proclaimed in the Circular to the States of 1783 that, “It is only in our united Character as an Empire, that our Independence is acknowledged, that our power can be regarded, or our Credit supported among Foreign Nations.” In sum, without the power to raise an army and to levy the taxes to support it, Federalists warned the U.S. was doomed to be overrun by foreign armies of British, French and Spanish Empires.

In addition, the term empire was employed to unite the people, to ease the rising discontent, to answer the anxiety about the Republic turning into an old fashioned empire of tyranny, and most of all to establish a national character. For instance, in his General Order, to the soldiers, President Washington talked about the accomplishments of independence by the brave soldiers who have laid down “the foundation of a great Empire,” and those “who have performed the meanest office in erecting this steubendous fabrick of freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Indipendency (independency).” To ease the rising discontent within the military, Washington praised them for their sacrificed done to this great empire. To extol the American people, the Federalist Paper asserted that they are the de facto the ruler of American Empire, “The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.” Therefore, one of the major American identities is about the American people being the guardian of their liberty against tyranny. Similarly, in regard to the danger of a large and costly army in the procession of the federal government that has a potentiality to turn into a dictatorship, Hamilton used the term ‘people of an immense empire’ to ease the anxiety. “When will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of independent nations?”

Finally, similar to many cases of revolution, the framers understood in order to concretize its foundation, the ideology of American Empire should be concretized pedagogically. In the Last Will and Testament of Washington of July 1799, he complained about American youth studying abroad were learning ideas hostile to the American political values, and elaborated on the need to have an education system that teaches principles of Republican Government, “and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind … to see a plan devised on a liberal scale which would have a tendency to sprd. systematic ideas through all parts of this rising Empire.” It was clear for Washington that the values of American Revolution must be concretized as soon as possible through education.

One ought not to exaggerate the power of the abstract term ‘empire’ toward American colonial people who were practical, religious, and economic. To their credit, the political aim underneath the framers’ American Empire was rather concrete and appealing; in summary, it was to promote the Assembly, a common economic market, a national dignity, a strong defense and foreign policy along with an executive power, and lastly about promoting a federal Union rather than a confederate Union.

Interpreting the intellectual products of founding fathers, one can ask if the term ‘empire’ had not been used for a psychological aim? Living under an empire underlining a greater magnitude, for an empire is a strong political entity capable of providing vital needs such as dignity, pride, prosperity and security to the ruled; therefore, the Union based upon the thirteen colonies as the American Empire is a great political achievement for the interested; however, the dismantle of the empire on the other hand, through confederacy, would be disastrous; thus, if the people want to have a great empire along with all the benefices, it is crucial to enhance the power of the Union. Madison cautioned that if the people reject the Constitution and the Union, not only this would make a flourishing empire to vanish, but the ‘happiness’ of the people would be undermined. “The disunion will affect the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire.”

II. In practice

• The need for protection and its dilemma

Two general consensuses existed among founders; the first is about the potentiality and the exceptionality of the American Republic. The founders were also cognizant that the U.S. was a young ‘rising empire’ that faced internal division and external threat from European imperial powerhouses. The need for protection constitutes the second consensus. Nonetheless, although the needs for protection was undisputable, a fundamental quandary existed regarding how to protect the ‘empire of liberty,’ such difference of strategic approach to national defense and foreign relations was a divisive cause of disagreement between the founders; Federalist, Anti-Federalist, and among the Federalist; in a long run, it has also doomed the principle of American foreign policy to be inconsistent ever since.

The contention that the principle of American foreign policy was doomed to be inconsistent has some historical merit. Tracing back to the early phase of the American political history, certain American elites argued the means for protection should be isolationism, other believed in expansionism. Isolationists advanced that the young American Empire should only embrace its own nationalist idea, remain neutral and not to be entangled with the politics of Europe. Citing President Washington’s wisdom - his Great Rule, the American Empire must stay away from permanent alliances with foreign nations; the primary objective of U.S. foreign policy should be used as the armor of the Republic in defending American interests; and it should maintain good relations with all foreign nations, enemy at war, friends at peace. Finally, political alliance is only accepted during time of unusual emergencies. Subsequently, the isolationist doctrine became known as the American unilateralism, which believes that in order to protect nation’s liberty and veracity, the United States should hold preciously its freedom of making foreign policy independently, and act only when its vital national interests are at risk. Meanwhile, many Federalists dreamed of a glorious American Empire, arguing that for its protection, this empire needs to be extended concordant to its Manifest Destiny, only as such, American vital interests can be guaranteed.

The expansionism believes in an active foreign policy, it argues that if the American Empire wants to be free and independent, to remain aloof from the old world is not sufficient enough. If the United States wants to be unilateral in defending its interests, and be strong economically as a mercantile and agrarian empire, it has to expend its territory. Such political trend was enhanced by electoral victories of President Jefferson and Madison. Ironically, President Jefferson who wanted the United States to become the ‘empire of liberty,’ and asserted in his speech to Congress in October 1803 that the United States was a new kind of empire, whose citizens had to divest “themselves of those passions and partialities embarrass and embroil us in the calamitous scenes of Europe,” saw the enlargement via various channels, including an alliance with France. But many Federalists disagreed about alliance, and especially one with France. The logic of the Madison-Jefferson position was that the future of the U.S. lay in the development of the factor of land. By enlarging the expanse, and increasing the productivity of this factor, the U.S. could become a great ‘empire for liberty.’ The Louisiana Purchase from France and the War of 1812 against the Great Britain over the control of West Florida explain the expansion of the American Empire can be achieved by both peaceful and non-peaceful means. For the expansionists, this is about the natural expansion of the American Empire, a political believe embraced subsequently by many Americans.

From a theoretic standpoint, one can claim that unlike other nation’s diplomacy, the American foreign policy is doomed to be inconsistent because the American presidents have always to face two choices; being either the beacon of the world, aloof in foreign affairs, to reject power politics and the balance of power but to embrace idealism and pacifism. Or, to follow the Manifest Destiny, to get out there and defends the principles of natural law and change the world, to militate and to export human freedom around the globe. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. rightly describe such dilemma as “warfare between realism and messianism, between experiment and destiny.” The divergence of ideology among the founders ensued foreign policy doctrines of subsequent administrations to differ from each other, in the absence of a long lasting foreign policy dogma, the U.S. foreign policy can be argued as incoherent, at least in the eyes of foreigners. In order to set the score straight, we need to examine the two contenting theories, isolationism and expansionism with historical cases.

• Isolationist

First, it is important to mention that the founders were no isolationists, but the isolationism has used many founders’ dictums as platform. Major particularities of founders’ dictum are about virtue of self-restraint, order and prudence, which rendered the American political culture and even its institutional design mitigate against its acting as an effective imperial power. According to the American history, the ideals behind the founding principles concocted by the founding fathers prevented the United States from becoming an empire of old fashion but the ‘empire of liberty,’ as President Thomas Jefferson envisioned. For instance, according to the teaching of President Washington, in his Farewell Address of September, 1796, which in fact was published and not delivered as a speech, he laid down a set of principles regarding future American foreign policy that every student of American foreign policy must learn.

• First, the US should maintain friendly relations with all states, “Observe good faith and justice towds. all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all,” but should not be entangled with the depraved alliance system. “In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded … The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.”
• Secondly, the United States should organize its force effectively to protect its interests, and avoid domestic fraction and foreign seduction, for the U.S. should not become “the satellite” of foreign powers.
• Next, with foreign nations, the U.S. should only extend its commercial relations, and “to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Such distant and detached policy provides to the young republic an extraordinary leverage, “we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by our justice shall Counsel.”
• Regarding alliance with other nations, the U.S. should not tie its destiny with European politics, avoid secret diplomacy “because honesty is always the best policy,” to honor the existing engagements (with France), but “let it be observed in their genuine sense, and not to extend them.”
• Finally, the U.S. neutrality permits our merchants to trade globally, the country to prosper, and “to endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions,” making the country “the command of its own fortunes.”

Subsequently, President John Quincy Adams in his famous Forth of July speech of 1821 cautioned the young republic about the temptation of going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. For Adams, if the US becomes a warrior state, the nation would lose its unique characteristic, “Beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars and interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition…. she might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” Later, President Monroe laid down his doctrine, which reaffirmed the traditional American neutrality concordant to the Great Rule of President Washington. According to the original Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. will only react if its direct interests are threatened; similar to the Washington’s Farewell Address, the Monroe Doctrine introduced three major principles including no new colonization, no transfer of existing colonies to a third party, and no re-importation of colonial rule. President Monroe, and subsequently President Van Buren and Cleveland used American funding fathers’ motto to justify the self-interest and isolation oriented nonchalant position, arguing that the United States should not be involved in power politics unless its liberty is at risk. President Monroe refused to intervene in Latin America to help other American republics seeking for self-determination to fight against European imperialism; John Quincy Adams was unwilling to help the Greek insurgents of the Ottoman Empire, Van Buren refused to support rebellion in Canada, and Cleveland declined to annex Hawaii archipelago. To the merit of the isolation policy, the United States was free from foreign wars except when its direct interests was involved, such as in the case of 1801 against Barbary pirates, in 1812 against the Great Britain and subsequent conflicts with Mexico. As a result, peace, foreign trade and domestic expansion enhanced the strength and confidence of the young American Empire, which paradoxically opened the door for the US foreign expansion.

• Expansionism

The expansionism drew sources from many dogmas, except isolationism. Skeptics would claim that historically, many expansionists wanted to size strategic oversea positions for the protection of the rising young empire against potential threat from the two oceans; nonetheless, this strategic thinking had a moral claim, concordant to the saying of President Lincoln, that “the United States is the last hope of the world,” the expansionism believes that the traditional isolationism is not enough, the American Empire has a God given obligation to expand and to intervene in the world if not to change it according to the American system and ideals. Major historical figures including President McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Wilson and Captain A. T. Mahan, the father of modern U.S. Navy who claimed, “I am an imperialist because I am not isolationist.” Mahan was a typical American internationalist who had a vision on what the American Empire could accomplish. But why has it to be imperialist, which for many has a negative connotation and not concurrent with the American founding principles in theory? The explanation being that this is called the ‘Progressive Imperialism,’ which is for some, very American.

Historians point out that similar to many American political dogmas, the ‘Progressive Imperialism’ that drew its root from American expansionism had also an Anglo Saxon heritage. The British Empire, according to Winston Churchill, had a duty to provide peace to warring tribes, to tutor civil affair as well as justice to the backward nations, to free the slave, to exploit the richness from the soil, to implement commerce and education, and to provide capacities for pleasure and diminish their sufferings. In sum, it is about the ‘White Man’s Burden’ of Rudyard Kipling and the Hamitic Myth that justify European imperialism. Former President McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt embraced the same argument and used American exceptionalism as justification for their actions. For example, President Cleveland refused to annex the Hawaii archipelago according to forefathers’ motto, whereas President McKinley did it in accordance with American strategic interests, God’s will and its Manifest Destiny.

The causes behind the expansion era of ‘Progressive Imperialism,’ which occurred after a long period of isolation are many; McDougall advances two essential factors, social economic robustness and religious belief. Take the period around the Spanish – American war (1898) as example; the US acquired a series of ‘new and distant territories,’ including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawaii. Not only the United States entered into a period of fundamental social economic changes domestically, in addition, there was a question of Social Darwinist thinking. The second to none American economic production and the creation of the Great White City as well the Great White Fleet had made the US a world level power, on top of that, the idea formulated by the framers that the superiority of the American system is equal to none had also pushed the populous to believe about an actual need to tested the American power on the real ground. Furthermore, it was in the interests of the United States to secure the Pacific flank and expand its market. So it had a war, at the global scale, with the archaic Spanish empire on the ground of its colonial cruelty and defeated it at no time. In terms of religion, many Americans, and their elected representatives such as President McKinley was pious Churchman (Protestant church member). For them, it is God’s will that America arouse to the world power, for the America Empire has unequal optimism, wealth, liberty and the purest Christianity. One of the best selling books in 1885 was Reverent Josiah Strong’s Our Country, which candidly exemplified such rhetoric that it is God’s will for the U.S. to access to the global leadership. By the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, it was clear that the wish for American prominence and activism in international affairs had thrown off earlier restraint of isolationism. Woodrow Wilson, another devout president reinforced the interventionist international cause, as he phased, in his Fourth of July address even before the outbreak of the Great War, that the role of the America was to serve “the rights of humanity,” and the flag of the United States, he declared, is “the flag, not only of America, but of humanity.”

George Kennan rightly points out that many Americans of that period liked the idea of empire, and saw an urge for the United States to be recognized as one of the world imperial power. On a theoretical ground, one can legitimately argue that the meaning of American Empire was no longer what it was after the founding fathers, but about an expanding new colonial world power. The defender of expansion can rightly claim that that was not in violation of American tradition and founding motto, because the acquisition of territory and political involvement, for instance, in Alaska, China, Columbia, Cuba, Guam, Samoa, Santo Domingo, Japan, Hawaii, Panama, the Philippines, Venezuela, Virgin Islands and finally the Great War in the European theater was for the preservation of Monroe Doctrine, commercial trading, unchain people from tyranny and against imperialism; so the U.S. took initiatives necessary to defend its vital interests and to promote American moral values and American system abroad. Moreover, according to McDougall, the expansionism or imperialism of 1898-1917 had a distinctive difference; the United States sized no interior chunks of continents like the European had, but rather ports and islands, which facilitated US merchant navy and defense against threat from the two oceans.

Conclusion

Plato had thought of the ideal state as a partnership in wisdom and virtue, the center of all human aspiration, governed by the idea of Good. Aristotle had hoped for a state that would be a community of friendship, through moderation and balance reconciling classes and private interests. For St. Augustine and St. Thomas, realists, the state is rather a product of men, subject to sinful appetites such as the lust for power and men’s pride. Although on the theoretical ground the idea underneath the founding principles is to be the beacon of the world, or the ‘empire of liberty,’ and American revolution was product of human intellectual progress as well as the European enlightenment; the American foreign policy, nonetheless, is the conduct of human beings, which is flawed, obsessed with personal interests, faith, national egotism, money, justice and the pursue of the balance of power.

From the very early time of the United States, the creation of an American Empire was a dream of many. As state previously in his Circular to the States of June 1783, President Washington elaborated on the nature of the American Empire. Other patriots like Hamilton, Jay and Madison via intermediary of the Federalist Paper explained why that the American Empire is the most interesting case of empires in many respects. However, the framers’ concept of a great American Empire was much straightforward and simple in purpose. It was about America being the harbinger in forming a democracy; to prophesy about a large territory governed by a strong government; to warn about domestic factions and its nefarious consequence facing foreign threats, and to declare that the American Empire is ruled by the people not by lords. Yet, in terms of foreign affairs, as Walter McDougall rightly points out, the framers “were not ‘isolationists,’ but neither did they seek to impose their values beyond the lands and waters staked out for them by Nature – or Nature’s God.” So why forefathers’ motto were rightly claimed by both isolationism and expansionism regarding different foreign policy options?

In the natural progress of the young rising American Empire, U.S. foreign policy at the early stage endorsed isolationism because the nation was too weak to be entangled with war against foreign countries, the primary national agenda was to developed domestic economy, expand within the continent and increase export – as a de facto Mercantile Empire and Agrarian Empire.

The meaning of American Empire changed, however, once its strength and confidence had matured with time and patience. Due the fact that Isolationist nonchalant foreign policy expanded American interests abroad via its merchant navies, with political prudence and an untested force, the United States actively reacted when its vital interests were challenged in overseas by the European powerhouses. In fact, neither isolationism nor expansionism was contrary to the motto of founding fathers since they only claimed that the young rising American Empire should intervene where moral, economic, and strategic interests intersect. This is a prudent foreign policy and both moral and realistic, but as founders’ principles are flexible, thus can also be interpreted in many ways under different political attentions through diverse doctrines. This is the reason why that policy in regarding protection of American Empire can be seen as inconsistent; as former Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko pointed about American foreign policy, “too many doctrines and concepts proclaimed at different times” causing the US government inability to have “a solid, coherent, and consistent policy.”

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