The Unexceptional Exceptionalism of the United States: Michael Mandelbaum on the American Way of Foreign Policy

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. It's less than a month to the big day, the 250th birthday of the United States on the 4th of July, 2026 We've been doing a number of shows on America's place in the world and its sense of itself. Did a show a few days ago with the Emory University historian, Dominic Erdegene on American patriotism. He thinks there's a big problem of patriotism in America, and that America are proud of their country, are themselves perhaps scoundrels. It's a controversial position. We also did a show recently with the Johns Hopkins University historian, Sarah Purcell, who has a new book out, Freedom Round the Globe, A World History of the American Revolution, which speaks of the way in which the American Revolution inspired many liberation movements in the 18th and 19th century. And we're continuing that theme today in terms of not how America is seen around the world, but the American way of foreign policy, which is a new book by one of America's leading foreign policy experts. My guest today, Michael Mandelbaum. He's joining us from his home in suburban Washington, DC. Michael, an early happy 250th.

**Michael Mandelbaum** (2:02)
Thank you very much. Well, I think we all have cause to celebrate. So I'm looking forward to the 4th of July, which will be a special one this year.

**Andrew Keen** (2:14)
It certainly will. So you disagree with Dominic Erdesen that there's a problem of patriotism in America, that Americans have no more or less reason to be patriotic than anywhere else in the world?

**Michael Mandelbaum** (2:30)
I'm not familiar with the book, but I do think Americans have reason to be patriotic. The last 250 years have not been perfect, but I think America has done good things for Americans, and on the whole, on balance, and it's one of the themes of the American Way of Foreign Policy, the United States has done good things for the rest of the world as well.

**Andrew Keen** (2:57)
That's the standard self-conception of America, the idea that America was invented or created in some ways to make the world a better place. Is there really, Michael, an American way of foreign policy that's different from other ways of foreign policy, other great powers historically, the British, the French, the Chinese, the Indians?

**Michael Mandelbaum** (3:21)
Well, that's an excellent question, and it is the central question that I address in the American way of foreign policy.
My argument, my thesis is that the foreign policy of the United States, over 250 years, has differed from the foreign policies of other countries in three specific ways. There are three enduring distinctive features of American foreign policy that have endured from the 18th century to the present. The first of these is that the United States has conducted an unusually ideological foreign policy, by which I mean that political ideas and the effort to spread them have been relatively more important for the United States than for other countries. The second enduring feature is that the United States has conducted an unusually economic foreign policy. That is to say, more than other countries, the United States has used economic instruments as a way of trying to achieve political goals. For most countries, it's been the other way around. They've used political instruments for economic purposes by acquiring empires, for example, and for the first enduring feature, most countries have carried out policies geared to power politics, sometimes by academics called realism.
The United States is unusual in both those respects and in a third. The United States has carried out from the very beginning an unusually democratic foreign policy, by which I mean that public opinion has had a relatively greater impact on American foreign policy than it has in other countries. For almost all other countries, for most of their histories, foreign policy was the preserve of a small elite. That was never true of the United States. In this book, I explain why that is so, and trace the impact of public opinion over 250 years.

**Andrew Keen** (5:47)
Have those 250 years been consistent, Michael? One of the things that always astonishes me, and I've often given this piece of data, I'm always a bit wary of data points, but this one seems particularly striking, is that before and after the First World War, America had a standing army the size of Sweden or Portugal. Now, of course, America's military investment and prowess is astonishing. Can one then generalize about this 250 year history? Haven't there been such sharp turns?
So many, what we in Silicon Valley call pivots, that there isn't a consistent theme or story?