America as a Realist Power Motivated by Self Interest

Many historians, I am afraid, come from intellectual backgrounds in which insufficient attention is paid to the Social Sciences. In part this is because of standard course combinations at high schools, for example for Britain A levels, the final exams; for my generation, this was generally History, English (i.e., English Literature), and a foreign language, most commonly French. I was unusual in doing Geography at A level.

At university and post-university levels for History, the standard approach in Britain is source-based, and notably for the special subject and dissertation at the undergraduate level, and for dissertations thereafter, with sources understood as primaries, manuscript or printed, and not as secondary sources. This is not the standard approach in some Social Sciences, and, classically, the latter have been more focused on methodology, which, of course, is also the usual long-standing approach in some national history traditions, especially that of Germany. Historians traditionally are moored to their archives while social scientists seem mired by their methodology.

An undergraduate at Cambridge and postgraduate at Oxford, I very much came through this empirical tradition. There were ideas aplenty, but they tended to be episode-specific, for example theories for the extent and causes of ‘decline’ for seventeenth-century Spain, rather than grand theories of state decline.

The situation first changed for me in the early 1980s when I became interested in the literature on the causes of war and read not only the historians but also social scientists such as the excellent trio of Jack Levy, William Thompson, and John Vasquez. I had been somewhat less impressed when I met George Modelski in the AE and he seemed rather lost in an archive, seeking very much starter advice. Thereafter, I have been interested in theoretical social science offerings, although very much floored by (some of) the theory, and the extent to which it predominates.

Far more positively, I used to point out that historians traditionally pretend to have no theories, but, in practice, had theory yet often failed to articulate it adequately. Conversely, social scientists are supposed to start with theories and sort them out with empirical tests; hence the focus on methodology. I, however, found much of the social science work somewhat ahistorical in that it could fail adequately to address the impacts of chronological contexts and changes.

This interest encourages me to turn to Dale Copeland’s welcome book. It is interesting and can be read with profit whether or not the reader is engaged with theory. Copeland, Professor of International Relations at the University of Virginia and author, among much else, of The Origins of Major War (2000) and Economic Interdependence and War (2015), focuses on American foreign policy in order to probe his theory of realism in international relations. Moreover, drawing as it does on extensive and impressive studies in relevant American archives, his work is of great interest for those looking for trends in this foreign policy.

Copeland essentially presents America as a realist power motivated by self-interest, and notably so in terms of the protection of American foreign trade. He is very wary of approaches to this policy in terms of ideologies of international betterment. At the same time, Copeland discusses alternative explanations with some care and does not badly (and boldly) dismiss them as do so many of his disciplinary colleagues. All to the good.

For this historian, who has written on American foreign policy up to 1871 and then again during the world wars and the Cold War, there is the excitement of the long-term which is so welcome given the frequent concern with its antithesis. Yet, that can lead to issues and problems elsewhere. Those of us who work on the long-term can be apt to subordinate the particular to the theory, the system, or any other synonymous approach. There are certainly signs of it with Copeland as both theorist and empiricist, not least in his determination to pursue an approach that presupposes a commitment to a certain type of national security as the key thesis. Furthermore, in part due to his commitment, and also to his determination to engage with state actors as to a degree autonomous if not independent, Copeland does not boldly consider sufficiently in my view the extent to which ideas and policies of national security, whether military, diplomatic or economic, are in practice politically constructed, contested and contingent. This is not a study, for example, that engages with Edward Rhodes’ work on 1890s’ navalism or really cares about William Jennings Bryan or a host of other alternatives.

This might be seen as an historian being ‘picky’, but, instead, rests on a more fundamental proposition, that of needing to delve more beneath the ideas and rhetorics of state and national interest, and to understand the politics, successes and failures of sectionalism. Copeland sees this when asking us to be skeptical about standard ideological explanations, then and since. Fair enough, but possibly, in this truly interesting and important book, he has done the same.

(https://newdiplomatichistory.org/a-world-safe-for-commerce/), this review is used through the kind permission of Prof. Black and the editors.

Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. Works he has previously reviewed here include Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, Augustus the Strong, Military History for the Modern Strategist, The Great Siege of Malta, Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation, Superpower Britain, Josephine Baker’s Secret War, Captives and Companions. A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why, The Pacific’s New Navies, No More Napoleons, Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, America’s Early Independence, The Fate of the Day, The Maginot Line: A New History, The Nuclear Age. An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival, Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, and Mexico: A 500-Year History.

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Note: A World Safe for Commerce is also available in e-editions.

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