The American Foreign Policy is firmly rooted in the origins of the US nation. As Walter Russell Mead quoted, there are four major drivers for the foreign policy of the country. While Hamiltonians would regard the alliance between the US government and great business as the most important part for stability, Jeffersonians view the spread of democracy in other countries as less important unlike Wilsonians. Jacksonians on the other hand highlight the security as well as the economic well-being of the US nation as important for domestic as well as for the foreign policy (Mead, 1999). Christopher Hemmer (2015) on the other hand considered that one of the best ways how to protect national interests would be to make the other nations to accept the principes of U.S. democracy, as according to him, it is not good enough to create a stable system at home, even if it means to accept a position of a missionary within the global context.

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Henry Nau,being one of the foremost theoreticians of U.S. foreign policy, has distinguished between the neoisolationism and realism, being the most important powers behind the decision taking of the foreign policy decision takers. While the nationalism, which is inherent in the U.S. society attempts to withdraw the powers of state from affairs that are related to events abroad, the realists regard as the most adequate U.S. policy the policy which is able to identify and tackle threads that are arising abroad and in an efficient and pragmatic way fight these, without compromising the stability and prosperity at home. For realists therefore, the U.S. foreign policy is rather a tool of domestic policies and not a tool of ideology that is to follow more than the interest of domestic interests (Nau, 2013).

    References
  • Hemmer, Christopher. 2015. American Pendulum. Cornell University Press.
  • Mead, Walter, Russell. 1999. “The Jacksonian Tradition”. The National Interest, New York City.
  • Nau, Henry. 2013. Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan, Princeton University Press.