most distinguished the crusading democratrnfrom his predecessors was the obsessivenessrnof his missionary New Testamentrnvision. Unhke earher Americanrnleaders, Wilson burned with democraticrnidealism. He attributed this quality tornothers fighting the “German militaristsrnand autocrats” and was afterwardsrnshocked to discover their cynical attitudesrnabout power.rnAccording to McDougall, Americanrnintervention on the side of the Allies mayrnhave been justified to avoid “the calamity”rnof a German victory; nonetheless, forrnWilson, this intervention had to be upheldrnon moral grounds consistent withrnhis crusading ideology. Therefore he alternatedrnbetween appeals to neutralityrnand the appearance of being evenhanded,rnon the one side, and, on the other,rnhints to the Allies that the United Statesrnwould join their side as soon as the Germansrnprovided sufficient provocation.rnIn the end, Wilson bequeathed to thernnahon a legacy of liberal interventionism,rnone that McDougall believes hasrnmarred our understanding of vital nationalrninterests. His own arguments herernand in an essay printed in Commentaryrnon a “gender-inclusive” military underscorernhis concern about the danger ofrnmaking international relations andrnnational defense subject to ideologicalrnfashion.rnSuch a trend, however, may be unavoidablernfor reasons that go beyond thernscope of McDougall’s analysis. As hisrnbook makes clear, domestic considerationsrnhave played a critical and evenrnovershadowing role in American foreignrnpolicy in this century. It was not extraneousrnto American intervention in thernGreat War that the Eastern elites, in bothrnthe North and the South, were passionatelyrnAnglophile, or that real neutralists,rnAnglophobes, Austrophiles, and Germanophilesrnwere in a weaker politicalrnand social position. The reason McDougallrngives for the possible necessityrnfor intervention—namely, that Germanyrnwould otherwise have dominated the Atlanticrn— is a page taken from a brief by anrnAnglophile interventionist. Avery differentrnview can be found in the argumentsrnof Charles Beard, Walter Karp, PatrickrnDevlin, and other critics of the Alliedrncase for American intervention. ThernCentral Powers were never in a positionrnto equal, let alone surpass, Brihsh navalrnhegemony. Submarine warfare was desperatelyrnresorted to by the Germans tornbreak a British blockade. By war’s endrnthat blockade had taken a toll of hundredsrnof thousands of German civilians.rnEngland might indeed have continuedrnto control the seas even if the Germansrnhad forced the French into making arnpeace favorable to German interests.rnWhat distinguished Wilson from Bryan,rnmoreover, is not that one was a New TestamentrnProtestant moralist and the otherrnnot. Both were—though Wilson was alsorna dishonest Anglophile. TheodorernRoosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, byrncontrast, were honest ones, openly pro-rnBrihshfrom 1914 on. Knowing who wasrnor was not culturally and socially sympathehcrnto the British side may be necessaryrnto an understanding of liberal internahonalismrnin this period.rnA similar approach should be appliedrnto understand other groups holding particularrnforeign policy interests, though allrnof them, as McDougall points out, dependingrnon the time frame, embraced inrnthe end the language of the crusaderrnstate. As odious as this language may be,rnit did—and still does—provide a rhetoricrnusable by all sorts of interventionists,rnfrom New England and Southern Anglophilesrnto Catholic anticommunistsrnand Zionist neoconservatives. As JustusrnDoenecke and McDougall both show,rnAmerica First’s spokesmen against Americanrninvolvement in the European warrnoften appealed to internationalist ideals.rnWhile McDougall rightly presents liberalrninternationalism as a pervasive creed,rnequally important has been the adaptability’rnof this creed to different foreignrnpolicy agendas.rnThe final point that needs to be madernis the difficulty of carrying out the realisticrnapproach to foreign policy propoundedrnby McDougall. Whether advocatedrnby him, George Kennan, or other teachersrnof geopolitical sobriety, such an approachrnmay have become anachronistic.rnInternal politics and journalistic obsessionsrnare by now inseparable from statecraft,rnas has become obvious with thernpoliticization of the American military.rnAmerican interventions in Somalia andrnBosnia seem to have less to do with nationalrninterest than with pressure fromrnthe civil rights lobbies and journalisticrnadvocates of Bosnian pluralism and warrncrimes trials. The “global meliorism”rnpresented by McDougall as the eighthrnand most recent phase of our relationshiprnto the world (these phases could berneasily collapsed into two or three) did notrnarise spontaneously from the Americanrnpeople. The imperative to change otherrnsocieties into a reasonable facsimile ofrnthe United States is preached by Americanrnelites, which subordinate foreignrnpolicy to domestic ideologies and electoralrnstrategies.rnFrom the 1960’s on, moreover, thernglobal meliorism that McDougall seesrntaking hold during and after World WarrnII has been accompanied by a government-rnand media-led effort to ban discriminationrnin every form. While McDougallrndeplores its effects on thernmilitary, these effects have also been feltrnin social and foreign policy. America’srnmilitary intervention in Haiti was justifiedrnin terms of a universal “right torndemocracy.” This particular tight, confectedrnby journalists and state departmentrnofficials, had no critics, save for isolatedrnpaleoconservatives. The difficultyrnof stepping into the critical role is thatrnone appears, or is made to appear, “insensitive”rnas soon as one raises the questionrnof where a putative right comesrnfrom. But the refusal to take on the ideologicalrnpower blocs can only make mattersrnworse. What do the critics of therndominant therapeutic ideology do whenrnwe go to war over a “universal right” tornfeminist self-expression or to homoeroticrnself-fulfillment? And if we dispute thatrnputative right, do we still have to acceptrnthe morality of preaching and imposingrna “right to democracy”? Is it necessary tornfall back to the earlier fiction in order torndispute its more extreme extension, thernway we do by glorifying the civil rightsrnmovement of the mid-60’s in order torncondemn its supposed subsequent derailment?rnOr is it necessary to break thernentire chain of ideologically drivenrnpromises in order to make people thinkrnclearly and sequentially?rnI believe this last question is the onernthat must be addressed. The “global meliorism”rnlamented by McDougall reflectsrna series of cranky agendas presentedrnas foreign policies. The politicalrntheorist James Kurth has noted in Orbisrnthe incongruity of having a multiculturalrnUnited States leading an expandedrnNATO as “protector of the West.” Inrnwhat way, asks Kurth, is the U.S. justifiedrnin leading a Western, predominantlyrnChristian civilization, if the same superpowerrnis consciously shedding its specificallyrnWestern identity? The answer isrnboth simple and horrendous: the UnitedrnStates will redefine its global mission tornfit whatever our political class is doing atrnhome.rnJANUARY 1998/23rnrnrn