Kagan captures well the fundamental relationship between the nature of a country and the character of its foreign policy: that the latter reflects the national idea, whatever that might be and however it might change over time. The book is at its best in showing how the country's restless and constant desire for expansion is rooted in its settler origins. (He vividly describes the way in which the settlers constantly set the agenda of government when it came to the theft of Indian land, irrespective of the treaties that the government had solemnly agreed with the Indians.) Already, in the early decades of the 19th century, not long after independence, “American leaders from every region of the country and representing every political stripe”, writes Kagan, “shared a common belief that most if not all of North America, including Canada, Mexico, and the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, formed the natural' dominion of the US.”
The fact that the US rested on universalist abstract principles imbued American society from the outset with a wider and more ambitious concept of its role: that its values were relevant and applicable to the rest of the world. Of course, at the root of its restless expansion and growing self-confidence — and ultimately its enormous influence — was the hugely dynamic nature of its capitalism, which was eventually to transform the entire world. In fact, although Marx's analysis of capitalism was based on Britain, its true lodestar — and insight — was surely the American model-to-be, at once both revolutionary and untrammeled by a past that it had destroyed.
The second volume will deal with the 20th century. There are too many illusions about the US, and in its own way this book helps to dispel some of them. Although at times it suffers from an excessively narrative style, it is an extremely useful contribution to our understanding of American history.
Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, at the London School of Economics.
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