The Cold War: A New History

by John Lewis Gaddis

The Americans did seek global influence in the realm of ideas: their Declaration of Independence had, after all, advanced the radical claim that all men are created equal. But they made no effort, during their first fourteen decades of independence, to make good on that assertion. The United States would serve as an example; the rest of the world would have to decide how and under what circumstances to embrace it. “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” Secretary of State John Quincy Adams proclaimed in 1821, but “[s]he is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”13 Despite an international ideology, therefore, American practices were isolationist: the nation had not yet concluded that its security required transplanting its principles. Its foreign and military policy was much less ambitious than one might have expected from a nation of such size and strength.