Democracy and Imperialism

After costly U.S. engagement in two major wars in the Middle East, foreign policy debates are dominated by questions about the appropriateness of American military interventions. A central issue is whether an interventionist foreign policy is compatiblewith the American constitutional tradition and the temperament this tradition requires. The book examines Irving Babbitt's (1865-1933) unique contribution to understanding the quality of foreign policy leadership in a democracy. Babbitt explored how a democratic nation's foreign policy is a product of the moral and cultural tendencies of the nation's leaders and that the substitution of expansive, sentimental Romanticism for the religious and ethical traditions of the West would lead to imperialism. Democracies that lack political restraint and tend toward plebiscitary practices and outcomes are more likely to be warlike and imperialistic. The United States has been moving away from the restraining order of sound constitutionalism with an increasing tendency to try to impose its will on other nations, which will inevitably cause the United States to clash with the civilizational" regions that have emerged in recent decades"--