In Search of Monsters to Destroy? The Liberal American Security Paradox and a Republican Way Out

Abstract

This article explores the dynamics between American modes of self-narration and patterns of foreign policy conduct. Pointing to the continual influence of the Puritan heritage, it joins with those who find American national identity articulated almost exclusively in what I term a liberal and missionary vocabulary. In opposition to conventional assumptions, however, the article depicts exceptionalism and liberalism as highly contradictory ways of making - and making sense of - the world and America's place within it. Furthermore, it shows how such contradictions have repeatedly defined a set of highly inflexible and ultimately destructive dilemmas in American foreign policy. Yet, the article concludes, America need not repeat itself without end: by turning to decisionalist and pragmatic strands in its past America may foster from within not only an alternative to rationalist liberalism, but also a way out of the liberal security-paradox.