Unsuspending Judgment: Tocqueville and the Dilemmas of American Foreign Policy

• In Event: Great Power Competition

Abstract

In Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the United States plays a singular role in the inevitable and all-consuming historical process of moving the world towards ever-greater equality of conditions. At the same time, he hoped to show how the spread of democracy could accommodate the unique features of a people’s history and culture, which may help to preserve freedom despite, or in some cases because, they frustrate the pure logic of egalitarianism. Tocqueville closely examines how various aspects of American politics and culture might help to reconcile its universal and particular aspects of their national character, but in the realm of foreign policy, he only points out a contradiction without any attempt to resolve it.

In one passage, he praises the Americans for having “no external affairs to discuss,” a blessed condition for cultivating liberty without having to participate in the squabbles of the European powers. Then, in another oft-quoted passage, he predicts that the Americans will achieve a degree of power unrivaled since the days of Rome, destined to hold “half the destinies of the world” in its hands. History may have fulfilled Tocqueville’s prediction, but it has also exacerbated a fundamental tension within American democracy. As Tocqueville pointed out, the Americans in particular were both eager to spread their civilization, especially by means of commerce, even as they dreaded that doing so would imperil their share of its benefits. The growth of its power on the world stage would fuel both its desire to control the march of history and to be shielded from it.

Author

• Eric Andrew Fleury, Connecticut College