American exceptionalism in 2024

CAMBRIDGE – As the 2024 presidential election approaches, three broad camps are visible in America’s debate over how the United States should relate to the rest of the world: the liberal internationalists who have dominated since World War II; the retrenchers who want to pull back from some alliances and institutions; and the America Firsters who take a narrow, sometimes isolationist, view of America’s role in the world.

Americans have long seen their country as morally exceptional. Stanley Hoffmann, a French- American intellectual, said that while every country considers itself unique, France and the US stand out in believing that their values are universal. France, however, was limited by the balance of power in Europe, and thus could not pursue its universalist ambitions fully. Only the US had the power to do that.

The point is not that Americans are morally superior; it is that many Americans want to believe that their country is a force for good in the world. Realists have long complained that this moralism in American foreign policy interferes with a clear analysis of power. Yet the fact is that America’s liberal political culture made a huge difference to the liberal international order that has existed since WWII. Today’s world would look very different if Hitler had emerged victorious or if Stalin’s Soviet Union had prevailed in the Cold War.