The Consistency of American Foreign Policy

Experts use a range of terms and definitions to describe American foreign policy since the country's inception in the eighteenth century. Essentially, these experts contend that America moved from a policy of relative isolation to one of expansionism - imperialism even - before moving again to a policy characterized by multilateralism. Many experts today contend that President George Bush's foreign policy, as demonstrated by the U.S.-led action in Ir`q, represents a break from traditional American policy, at least as that policy has been practiced since the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. This paper, however, examines the motives behind American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century and finds that President Bush's Doctrine is consistent with a basic policy of American hegemony first demonstrated during the presidency of William McKinley.

On October 18, 2003, United States President George W. Bush gave a speech to the Philippine Congress in Manila. Security officials were concerned that Bush might be targeted by terrorists while in the country, so Air Force One was escorted into Philippine air space by F-15s (Judis). Large groups of demonstrators protested Bush's presence in the country, including several Philippine legislators who organized a walk-out during his twenty-minute speech (Judis). In his speech, Bush praised America's involvement in making the Philippines "the first democratic nation in Asia" (Judi

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d realpolitik because it allowed the United States to use its dominant world position "to promote a balance of power that favors freedom." But it is hard to see much strategic change between McKinley's action in the Philippines in 1898 and Bush's action in Iraq in 2003, regardless of the terminology used to describe the impetus for the actions. Babacar M'Baye writes that McKinley gained his moral philosophy from a puritanical faith that believed in the supremacy of Christian civilization. Thus, he believed he had an obligation to "Christianize and civilize those who were not" (M'Baye 1). Several other authors also quote McKinley's own words regarding his belief that civilizing the Filipinos was one justification for annexing the country in 1898 (M'Baye 1). The political justification for the annexation, however, was essentially a disguised version of America's manifest destiny. Rather than advocate simply steamrolling over foreign cultures as the Americans had essentially done with the American Indians, however, McKinley couched the motive of colonial occupation in the language of the expansion of American moral values (M'Baye 1). Judis writes that the Spanish-American War and its aftermath represented a turning point in American

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