What Is the National Interest of the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID9750629
AuthorsHans J Morgenthau (University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year1952
Volume282
Issue1
Pages1-7
Publication date1952-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/000271625228200102
OpenAlexW2042876790
LanguageEN
Citations received6

States is significant in itself, for it shows the profound change which has come about in American thinking on matters of foreign policy. A little less than forty years ago, one of the greatest of American statesmen, Woodrow Wilson, gave a speech at Mobile, Alabama in which he declared, is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interest. It not only is unfair to those with whom you are dealing, but it is degrading as regards your own actions. Woodrow Wilson, in thus speaking, echoed an opinion which was widespread in his time. Some decades earlier, Gladstone had propounded in Great Britain a similar philosophy in opposition to the policies of Disraeli. Few would be bold enough today to express in so uncompromising terms their disparagement of the national interest. Even so, we have still to cope with a philosophy, very much alive in our midst, which, while it recognizes the national interest and its importance, defines it in terms which take the heart out of the concept and out of the policies intended to support it. From the very beginning of American history, two irreconcilable philosophies have struggled for predominance over the American mind. One prevailed during the Federalist period of American foreign policy, that is to say, roughly the first decade of American history, and its outstanding representative was Alexander Hamilton. The other conception of the national interest of the United States seems to be the exact opposite of that of the Federalist, and is represented by any number of individuals and policies in recent American history. Woodrow Wilson is the outstanding exponent of it

Federalist · Foreign policy · Jeffersonian democracy · National interest · National security · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law

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