Document created: 10 October 2003    
Air University Review, July-August 1974

The Impact of American
 International Attitudes
on the U.S. Military

Dr. Lloyd A. Free

Over the past eight decades, different cycles and varying attitudes of the American people toward our international role have had their effect on the United States military. One way the influence is noteworthy has to do with the relative weight in determining American policies given at various times to ideals, on the one hand, and self-interest, on the other. In discussing this aspect, I shall draw heavily on a book about the subject, Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations, written by Dr. Robert E. Osgood, Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, with which the Institute for International Social Research is affiliated. 

At the very core of national self-interest, according to Osgood, is normally, of course, the matter of national survival: territorial integrity, political independence, political institutions, and, I would add, way of life. Central to an understanding of basic American outlooks in a historical sense is the fact that from the War of 1812 until the period immediately preceding Pearl Harbor, Americans never really thought they had to worry about their national security. They could perceive no external threat, actual or potential, from any power or combination of powers, to their country’s physical safety. This security, they felt, was also reasonably insured for the Western Hemisphere as a whole through the Monroe Doctrine, which, despite earlier threats of encroachment, seemed to be well established internationally by the 1870s.

Feeling secure from menaces from abroad, Americans also took for granted that, so long as they adhered to a policy of isolation and avoided entangling alliances, another aspect of their national self-interest was also well provided for: “self-sufficiency, or the conduct of foreign relations without reference to other nations or to matters beyond unilateral national control.”

Until World War II, Americans felt perfectly safe in pursuing any policies they happened to fancy on the international front, often with little or no awareness of where the country’s enlightened self-interest really lay and sometimes with what might be considered a fair degree of irresponsibility.

What motivated them for much of the period were other aspects of national self-interest, particularly the increase of national power, wealth, and prestige. Put very simply, their assumption from the beginning of the Republic was that America was destined to be the greatest nation on earth—the greatest in power, in enlightened institutions, in virtue and morality.

While belief in America’s destiny or “mission” could be used to sanctify aggrandizement, it also embodied an idealism transcending the nation’s selfish interests. Here, of course, Osgood is referring to “ideals derived from the Christian-liberal-humanitarian tradition of Western Civilization,” in which “the ultimate moral standard remains that of the individual’s welfare; the instinct for the creation of a brotherhood of man, in which all men, regardless of distinctions, would have equal partnership, and in which human conflicts would be settled by reason, morality and law rather than physical power, coercion or violence.” Coupled with these goals were visions of peace, goodwill, and justice among nations and a “good life,” in both the moral and material senses, for the peoples of the world.

In Osgood’s view, America’s unusual—indeed, almost unique—overall situation permitted Americans to remain ignorant of the realities of international relations during most of their earlier history and to overestimate the role of ideals and underestimate the role of national power and material self-interest.

For added clarification, I would introduce the theory of another outstanding scholar, Dr. Frank L. Klingberg of the University of Southern Illinois. In an article published more than twenty years ago, he advanced the thesis that the international history of our country had been characterized by cycles of alternating moods of introversion and extroversion that had deep emotional support not only by the Administration and Congress in power but by the electorate as well. By “extroversion” he meant the “nation’s willingness to bring its influence to bear upon other nations, and to exert positive pressure (economic, diplomatic, or military) outside its borders.” During extrovert periods confidence in the “destiny” and influence of America was high, with visions of expansion and extension of American influence abroad. By “introversion” he was referring to periods “when America was unwilling to exert much positive pressure on other nations,” constituting years of consolidation and preparation—or, as he put it, “‘plateaus’ preceding the ‘mountain climbs’ ahead.”

According to Klingberg, who supported his thesis with convincing evidence from the beginning of the Republic, periods of introversion have lasted about two decades on the average, and periods of extroversion about three.

Fusing the insights of Osgood and Klingberg is not entirely simple, but some generalized relationships do seem to emerge. Almost by definition, during periods of introversion the role of national power and self-interest has been nonactivist, if not muted. The role of ideals has generally predominated. But the substance of the ideals and the follow-through accorded them have tended to be passivist, quiescent, and nonaggressive. As we shall see in more detail, this was true, for example, during the introverted 1920s when the United States was active on the international front in the search for world peace but refused to take the slightest risk or commit American power to achieve it. During such periods emphasis on the military has been at very low ebb.

During periods of extroversion, on the other hand, far more emphasis has been placed on the role of national power and prestige. And, while the role of ideals has almost invariably continued, the substance of the ideals and behavior in support of them have usually been markedly dynamic, activist, and sometimes even aggressive.

Indeed, the most exalted moods of extroversion have come when such dynamic idealistic notions have served to reinforce and rationalize aggressive policies of national power, self-interest, and aggrandizement, as in the Spanish-American War. During such periods, of course, the American military has really come into its own, particularly when resulting in territorial conquests or war.

This heady combination of power-mindedness and idealism was sometimes dangerous medicine for a fledgling country, but Americans at various times—wrapped, so they felt, in their own security blanket—had little difficulty swallowing it. It is perhaps best summed up in the concept of “manifest destiny,” which served to sublimate the old American missionary impulse into the doctrine of the “survival of the fittest” engendered by Social Darwinism, then applicable to nations and individuals.

A classic statement of this point of view was made by a then relatively obscure Congregationalist minister, Josiah Strong, whose views attained wide currency in 1885, when America was about to emerge from a period of introversion. The religious life of the Anglo-Saxon race, he claimed, was “more vigorous, more spiritual, more Christian than that of any other.” The United States was destined to become the seat of Anglo-Saxon power. And there was no doubt that “this race, unless devitalized by alcohol and tobacco [italics added], is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others and mold the remainder, until, in a very true and important sense, it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind.”

Urged on by such reasoning, fortified by geopolitical doctrines of power and dynamism of such leaders as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt, America entered a period of extroversion in the 1890s that was highlighted by the expansion of the U.S. Navy, sending the great white fleet around the world, building the Panama Canal, launching military interventions in Latin America in general and Mexico in particular, and, most pertinent, by the Spanish-American War. This war, greeted with great public enthusiasm, was motivated by altruistic idealism, centering on freeing the wretched Cubans from the despotism of the Spaniards, on the one hand, and by extreme egoistic aggrandizement, on the other, which did not abate until the U.S. had seized control even of the faraway islands of the Philippines.

Perhaps the height of irony is found in the history of that most idealistic and moralistic of all our Presidents, Woodrow Wilson. His early approach to international affairs has been summarized by Osgood:

He entered office with an intention to produce a radical reform of foreign policy which would give America world leadership in standards and policy, lift her diplomacy to the best levels of mankind, cause her to act for the progress of mankind, and advance American ideals rather than contracts of a narrow circle of financiers. . . . He of course regarded morality as a guide in foreign policy and thought moral duties between nations were the same as those within nations, that the United States used moral standards in its judgments, and that all nations were coming to be judged by morality.

Yet, caught up in a period of extroversion, in the course of his administration he found it necessary, as Osgood notes, to carry out more armed interventions in Latin America than any of his predecessors, to impose upon Haiti and the Dominican Republic prolonged military occupations, to invade Mexico, and finally to lead us into World War I, not to “save America” but to “save the world for democracy.” It was a war in which Americans, conditioned by Wilson’s idealistic verbiage, participated with exalted moral fervor even thought they had no real fear for the safety of their own country and continent.

Thus for about three decades, ending at the close of World War I, our society was in a phase of intense extroversion. Then, following the defeat of Wilson’s League of Nations initiative, with what seemed an astounding twist, we found ourselves in the alternate phase, a mood of introversion. It was not that Americans ceased to be international-minded. In fact, avoidance of war and preservation of peace were the central theme of American foreign policy during the 1920s. The keynote, however, was cooperation without entangling alliances.

American policy of this period was characterized by such nondynamic, nonaggressive, idealistic moves as two limitation-of-armaments conferences, a severe curtailment in military spending, the effort to “insulate” the country from war through the Neutrality Acts of 1935-37, and, most symbolic of all, the ridiculous Kellogg-Briand Pact, which purported to outlaw war for all time as an instrument of national policy!

Despite the repugnance to American idealism of Nazism and Fascism, the U.S. failed to react except verbally to the rise and increasing aggressiveness of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. It refused to cooperate with the League of Nations in levying sanctions when Italy invaded Ethiopia. It failed to budge when the Japanese went berserk first in Manchuria and later in China proper, despite America’s close historical ties with the Chinese. And so it went: the posture was passivist, the mood deeply introverted.

The disillusionment of the times with the activist international role the United States had played in the past was exemplified in 1937 by a Gallup poll finding that no less than 70 percent of those with an opinion felt it had been a mistake for the United States to enter World War I.

Typical of the mood of passivism which had seized the country was another Gallup poll in mid-1938, when apprehension about Axis intentions was already running high. While almost seven out of ten Americans favored a world disarmament conference, almost two-thirds opposed the idea of President Franklin Roosevelt’s taking the initiative in calling such a conference. (Shades of Teddy Roosevelt!) In the eyes of Americans of that day, in short, world leadership and responsibility involving anything in the way of burdens, risks, or commitments for the United States were to be avoided at almost all costs.

After about two decades of introversion and isolationism, which had been immeasurably deepened by the Great Depression, a gradual shift began on the eve of Pearl Harbor. On the one hand, for the first time since the War of 1812 Americans began to suspect that their own national security and self-sufficiency might, after all, be involved in the outcome of the war in Europe—a true turning point in the history of American thought. In the second place, our heretofore quiescent idealism began to become more dynamic in the feeling that the cause of freedom, as represented by Great Britain, must not be allowed to be crushed through the might of the Nazis, Fascists, and militaristic Japanese. Idealism and self-interest thus joined to move America toward intervention. While the desire to stay out of the war continued, sentiment for increased aid to Britain, at ever increasing risks for the United States, rose sharply as time went on.

The ambivalences of the public mood during the last weeks preceding Pearl Harbor are evident in some of Gallup’s major findings. Interviews concluded less than a week before the Japanese attack showed that, while about one-quarter thought not, slightly more than one-half of Americans expected that “the United States will go to war against Japan sometime in the near future.” In short, from a historical review, it appears probable that, even if the Japanese had not taken the initiative, the American public would soon have endorsed the U.S. entering the war anyway. Thus, in the period preceding Pearl Harbor, Americans were shifting gradually from their prior mood of introversion to the mood of exuberant extroversion that characterized this country during World War II and for well over two decades thereafter.

And what a binge we went on in the postwar period—at least until the Russians took some of the wind out of our sails by acquiring the bomb and launching their Sputniks. We conceived of ourselves as the most powerful, the richest nation since the Creation, our system as the model that every other country should follow.

We saw a menace, not only to America itself but to human freedom everywhere, in what we then conceived of as monolithic Communism, and we girded up to fight the Cold War. Not only our national self-interest but our national security were considered to be involved in every part of the globe—eventually even in faraway Vietnam. It was clearly our manifest destiny to run and protect the Free World, more especially to save it not so much for democracy as from Communism. Our idealism again took on a dynamic, aggressive character, which can best be denominated by the somewhat negative term, anti-Communism. The positive aspect of this idealism was perhaps best expressed in President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech of 1961: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Except for temporary military alliances during times of war, our joining of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 had been our first “entangling alliance” since the founding of the Republic. This was followed, during the Dulles era, by a spree of “pactomania.” In our own eyes, the U.S. had become the self-appointed policeman of the world and the guardian of all humanity.

During this period, faced by the Communist menace, the American military enjoyed its greatest heyday, totally out of proportion to what had ever happened before in peacetime, not only in the resources it could command but in its unprecedented influence on both strategic matters and foreign policy generally.

Then (coincidentally or not) after it had become apparent that America’s vast military power had been effectively stymied by a small Asian nation in Indochina, something began to happen at just about the time that Klingberg fifteen years earlier had predicted that it would: after the mid-sixties Americans began turning inward again toward a mood of at least somewhat greater introversion. A majority of the public began to feel it had been a mistake for us to get involved in Vietnam. Subsequently, the new President, undoubtedly responsive to the changing mood of the public, began our withdrawal from Vietnam and announced the Nixon Doctrine, postulating a continuing role for the United States abroad but a sharp reduction in our overextended commitments.

And what transpired a bit later? Why, the most confirmed Cold Warrior of them all manifestly reduced international tensions by making “peace” first with Communist China and then with the Soviet Union. (Shades of the China Lobby and the “kitchen debate”!) And how did the American public, which for so many years had exhibited both extreme extroversion and an anti-Communist syndrome, react? They ate it up.

And where do we stand now? So far, the answer seems to be that Americans have by no means swung over to the outright type of isolationism that characterized this country from the end of World War I to the beginning of World War II. But there has been a distinct watering down of the stalwart internationalism that permeated the nation for more than two decades after the war.

The recent situation is shown most clearly in a public opinion survey of a national cross section of more than 1800 cases commissioned by Potomac Associates and written up in a book entitled State of the Nation that William Watts and I put together. With a formula my Institute had used twice before, a battery of questions was prepared to rank members of the sample on a scale from completely or predominantly internationalist to predominantly or completely isolationist, with an in-between category labeled “mixed” (meaning a mixture of internationalist and isolationist patterns). Here are the successive results for 1964, 1968, and finally 1972.

International Patterns

It will be noted that the percentage of isolationists, whether predominant or complete, remained very small throughout. However, the proportion of those who were “completely internationalist” was almost halved between 1964 and 1972, with the “predominantly internationalist” category and, even more significantly, the “mixed” category (half-way toward isolationism) both increasing.

The most significant factor associated with these shifts was growing sentiment that less emphasis should be put on international matters and more on national problems here at home. The responses to several of the questions will illustrate.

Domestic Concerns

We shouldn’t think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home.

It will be noted that the proportion of those agreeing that greater emphasis should be placed on domestic matters rose from 55% in 1964 to 60% in 1968 and to 73% in 1972. Clearly, this trend indicated a turning inward on the part of Americans, reflecting a sharp increase in concern, both relatively and in absolute terms, about the problems that face this country here at home as contrasted with the international scene.

Also highly indicative of the lessening power of extroversion are the ways reactions have changed in the case of two following statements that Watts and I put to our State of the Nation cross section in 1972, which I had previously used in my 1964 and 1968 Institute studies:

Dominant Position

The U.S. should maintain its dominant position as the world’s most powerful nation at all costs, even going to the very brink of war if necessary.

As will be noted, in 1964 a majority of the public agreed with the thesis that the U.S. should maintain its position as the world’s most powerful nation at all costs. By 1972 that view was held by less than four in ten, with one-half expressing disagreement. (This, in itself, of course, is a reflection of changing views about the importance of American military might.)

Containment

The United States should take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to prevent the spread of Communism to any other part of the free world.

Between 1968 and 1972 the two-to-one majority sentiment for the U.S. taking all necessary steps to contain Communism had dissipated into virtual stalemate.

The present outlook is well summed up by the overwhelming agreement accorded the following statement, which in highly simplistic fashion outlined the essence of the still vaguely defined Nixon Doctrine:

The U.S. should continue to play a major role internationally, but cut down on some of its responsibilities abroad.

A remarkable 87 percent agreed.

Despite this turning inward and consequent watering down of earlier outright internationalism, it is of particular importance to the American military that no general mood of pacifism or sweeping repudiation of our belligerent past has gripped the country as yet. Americans today are highly selective in their views about the wars we have been involved in, as shown by several questions the Institute commissioned the Gallup organization to ask late in 1972. For instance:

Pacifism

Do you think it was a good thing the U.S. took part in (name of war), or do you feel it would have been better if we had managed to stay out?

In contrast to the large majority that in 1937 said it was a mistake for the U.S. to have entered World War I, more than six out of ten now think it was a good thing that we took part in that war, and a huge majority amounting to almost eight out of ten feel the same way about World War II.

On the other hand, a large plurality now feels that it would have been better if we had stayed out of the Korean War, and a huge majority amounting to almost seven out of ten thinks our involvement in Vietnam was an error.

There were, of course, significant differences between the two World Wars, on the one hand, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, on the other. The former, for one thing, were big wars in which the U.S. and its allies won clear-cut, sweeping victories. For another, far more Americans now living observed at first or second hand the confusion, muck, and costs in lives and money of the Korean and Vietnam affairs than of the earlier world wars. In historical retrospect, the world wars, perhaps in part because of distance in time, retain a greater measure of idealism and even nobility, whereas many Americans today, no doubt, are not really clear in their own minds what we were fighting for in Korea or Vietnam, what vital interests or purposes of ours were involved, or what we were trying to or did in fact accomplish.

As a final step in giving some greater perspective as to the impact on the U.S. military of changes in Americans’ international attitudes, we have prepared a table on defense expenditures over the last eight decades. Rather than expressing these in terms of constant dollars, we came to the conclusion that the most meaningful way to indicate them would be as percentages of total gross national product (GNP). This gives an idea of how much of a slice of the total national pie America has been willing during various fiscal years to devote to the military services. (The table is not entirely exact because the figures available on defense expenditures are on a fiscal year basis while the GNP figures are for calendar years, but the thrust of the comparisons is not seriously affected by this discrepancy.)

Let’s look first at the percentages of GNP devoted to defense expenditures from fiscal 1889 through fiscal 1939. During these years, when there was no concern about the national security of the U.S. homeland, the figures were consistently low. They rose only during the two wars of that period: the Spanish-American War and World War I. It is further evident that no significant preparedness was undertaken in the way of military buildup in advance of either of these wars.

Annual Defense Expenditures
                                                                           As Percentage of GNP
                    

As for World War I, by which time our leaders should have known better, the percentage of GNP devoted to defense in fiscal 1916, after the war in Europe had been going on for two years, dropped significantly below the average for 1900-1915; and in 1917, on the eve of our own involvement, it only came back up to the earlier low level. Then immediately after the war had ended, it dropped from the average level of 11.0% during the war to about where it had been during the prewar days between 1900 and 1915 (1.1%).

After World War II started in Europe, because this time the national security of the United States was considered potentially at stake, there was at least some significant buildup in advance of Pearl Harbor. In fiscal 1940 the percentage of GNP devoted to defense went up from the earlier average of 1.1% to 1.5%; and in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, it actually rose to 4.8%. Then, of course, came the astronomical average of 30.8% during the war years.  But after a period of demobilization in 1946, the average in the three years before we became involved in Korea went back down again to 5.0%.

Korea actually boosted the defense expenditure rate in terms of GNP to one-half of a percentage point above where it had been during World War I. But, leaving aside the period of the war in Vietnam, let’s see what happened following Korea: from 1955 to 1964 the average was 9.5%; in 1965-1966 it dropped to 7.8%; then, after Vietnam, it dropped further in 1971 to 7.7%; and in 1972 it dropped to 6.0%, with only a statistically insignificant rise in 1973 to 6.1%.

So, except for the increased outlays necessitated by the Vietnam War, the trend in defense expenditures as a percentage of GNP has been consistently downward since 1964-still far above the average before World War II, of course, but nevertheless ever downward.

This reflects, I suppose, the lessened sense of menace felt by both the American people and their leaders, and it is probably another indication of the shift in our society from a mood of stalwart extroversion to one of somewhat more introversion.

But what about the future? To start with, there may be no generalized feelings of pacifism in this country yet, at least. Nevertheless, encouraged by President Nixon’s and Secretary Kissinger’s high-level diplomacy, a comfortable feeling of détente appears to be seeping increasingly into the veins of the American people. According to a recent Harris poll, for example, almost 7 out of 10 Americans now believe that the U.S. and the Soviet Union can reach long-term agreements to help to keep the peace.

Despite the continuing, frightening Soviet military buildup during recent years, which is more gigantic and sustained than ever carried out before by any world power in time of peace, many Americans and most of our allies have increasingly lost the sense of any imminent menace from abroad. And, most seriously, substantial and sustained support has developed at the popular level, despite the position of the Administration and many members of the House and the Senate, for cutting defense expenditures. A growing percentage of the public, amounting to more than one-half of those with an opinion on the subject, now feel we are spending too much on defense.

In conclusion, taking all this into account, where in an overall sense do we—America and Americans—stand today? Despite the Nixon Doctrine and the current relaxation in international tensions, the United States continues to play an enormous though reduced role in world affairs—on the whole with the approval of the American public. Despite the present tendency to turn inwards toward domestic problems and, relatively speaking, de-emphasize international matters, at this stage Americans as a whole are still far from the thoroughgoing isolationism of pre-World War II days. In short, we as a country are well below the summit of activism and extroversion that we attained in the years after World War II, but We are still far, far above the deep valley of isolationism we lived in between the wars.

The present mood cannot be characterized as either one of sustained extroversion or, as yet, one of clear introversion. But it is almost certain that we shall witness at least some further drift toward introversion before reaching one of those “plateaus” Klingberg talked about.

I would, of course, like to hope that we are entering a period of a more moderate, stable outlook and stance of enlightened self-interest toward America’s place and role in the world than what has characterized the extremes in the periods of both introversion and extroversion during the last eight decades. But, as with so many things in our national life at the present time, we can only wait for the future to tell.

We are, in short, in a period of transition, if not of temporary dormancy. With our potential enemies defanged, in the eyes of the public, through a most uncertain and unpredictable détente, with our relations with former friends and allies, especially the Western Europeans and Japanese, now cool and distant, we find ourselves as a people possessing a dimmed sense of national purpose, of national self-interest, and even of national ideals (whether in the active or passive form)—except perhaps those who feel strongly about the Israeli cause or the emigration of Jews out of Russia. In short, we lack for the moment a sense of basic guidelines in international affairs.

If I were a military man or connected with the Defense Establishment today, I would see little grounds for optimism. Nor would I yet feel entirely pessimistic. But to tell you the truth, just as a plain, ordinary American citizen, I personally feel extremely uneasy for the time being about where America is likely to go.

The Institute for International Social Research

In preparing this article I have had extensive assistance from Dr. Arthur W. John, Research Associate for The Institute for International Social Research.

Bibliography

Free, Dr. Lloyd A., and Watts, William, State of the Nation (New York: Universe Books, 1973).

Klingberg, Dr. Frank L. “The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy,” World Politics, vol. IV, no. 2 (January 19522).

Osgood, Dr. Robert E. Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, sixth printing 1969).

Contributor

Dr. Lloyd A. Free (J.D., Stanford University) is President, The Institute for International Social Research, Washington, D.C. During World War II he was Assistant Military Attaché in Switzerland, later Senior Counselor, UNESCO, for mass communications. With the State Department 1947-53, he directed the Office of International Information, then was Embassy Counselor for Public Affairs, Rome, and Director of the USIA in Italy. Dr. Free is a consultant to the present Administration, as he has been to previous ones. He is principal author of State of the Nation (1973).

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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