Defining the National Interest

Defining the National Interest
Author(s): Anthony Lake

Source: Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 34, No. 2, The Power to Govern:
Assessing Reform in the United States (1981), pp. 202-213
Published by: Academy of Political Science
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Definingthe National Interest
ANTHONY LAKE
A balance among self-interest, idealism, and power has defined

successful American foreign policy since the earliest days of the Republic. But
when proclamations of grand goals run ahead of capabilities or when economic,
political, and military power is allowed to wither, there is posturing, not policy.
When the pursuit of American ideals is not perceived both at home and abroad
as rooted in American interests, the result is confusion and suspicion. When
American policy is seen to be defined solely in the terms of realpolitik, it loses
much of its natural character, strength, and appeal.
Debate about American foreign policies has traditionally revolved around
how the balance among ideals, interests, and power is to be struck. Much of this
debate has been unnecessarily complicated by the assumption of a stark separa-
tion of interests and ideals. Until the end of the nineteenth century, interests and
ideals were largely in harmony, and the United States's pursuit of both was
generally commensurate with its power. But since the Spanish-American War,
characteristic American idealism and impatience have helped produce alter-
nating periods of illusion and disillusion, euphoria and gloom, expanded and
contracted definitions of interest, perceptions of the world as friendly and
hostile, and perceptions of the United States as triumphant and beleagured. The
pendulum has constantly been swinging: from the fervor of the war against
Spain to the anti-imperialist revulsion at the start of the century; from Wilson's
moral crusade during and after World War I to the disillusion and narrow anti-
idealism of the following decades; from the great effort during and after World
War II to the bitterness and questioning during and after the Vietnam war.
Since the mid-1970s it has swung again, to a new assertiveness. Will this
assertiveness provide, over time, a broadly based approach that encompasses
all of the United States's interests? Or will there be only another spasmodic shift,
containing the seeds of a new reaction?
The formulation of foreign policy is much more difficult today than it was
thirty-five years ago. The Soviet threat remains, indeed in an intensified form,
but in a changed world of multiple challenges and interests. While a foreign
policy designed to meet a single threat would include necessary defense
measures and could provide an easy and popular coherence, it would be at the
DEFINING THE NATIONAL INTEREST | 203
cost of incompleteness when measured against the full range of the United
States's interests.
In the past, the nation's periodic waves of disillusion and retrenchment have
been characterized by distrust of pursuing American ideals and a redefinition of
American interests in more limited ways. Yet ideals of individual freedom were
not necessarily inconsistent with the pursuit of national interests. The failures
that created disillusion were more often failures to keep power and com-
mitments in balance.
Balancing Ideals and Power

Four basic ideals shaped American thinking about foreign policy for most of the
first century of its history. The first ideal was a conviction, natural to any
revolutionary society, that the principles by which it was to be organized were
universally valid. Support for republicanism and freedom was seen to be a ma-
jor part of the United States's interest. The second ideal related to the ideas of
the Enlightenment: wars were caused by the ambitions and rivalries of tyrants.
Where the people were sovereign, peaceful foreign policies followed. From this
idealistic notion came a tenet of policy that well served the interests of a young
nation of limited power: the United States should avoid entangling involvement
in European diplomacy and wars. The catechism of a child of the Enlightenment
also included a third shaping ideal-free international commerce. As trade
among nations grew, all countries would become so prosperous, and the ties
among them would become so important, that wars would become un-
thinkable. Thus the formula for international harmony was to be found not
only in the political philosophy of human freedom but also in the economic
theories of Adam Smith. Finally, ideals and interests were considered
synonymous in the drive for continental expansion-America's manifest
destiny. With the exception of the War of 1812, most United States military ef-
forts in the nineteenth century were devoted to this cause.
Before the growth of the United States military and economic power at the
end of the nineteenth century, direct intervention remained limited to the
Western Hemisphere. While ideals of democracy and welfare encouraged
popular support of European revolutionary movements, the policy of
nonintervention in European affairs generally predominated. In 1884, Secretary
of State Thomas Bayard indicated the extent of the United States's commitment
to noninvolvement: "So long as I am Head of this Department, I shall not give
myself the slightest trouble to thwart the small politics or staircase intrigues in
Europe, in which we have not the slightest share or interest, and upon which I
look with impatience and contempt."' In 1889, Henry Cabot Lodge complained
that foreign policy excited "only a languid interest"in Americans.2 Lodge's com-
1 Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900 (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1975), p. 10.
2
Ibid., p. 13.
204 | ANTHONY LAKE
plaint was short-lived. Within ten years, American troops were stationed in
Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and China. The United States had annexed
Hawaii, part of Samoa, and some fifty other Pacific islands. As a result of the
Spanish-American War, it had taken control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the
Philippines.
Having defeated Spain despite severe military problems, the United States
found it necessary to undertake a crash program to expand its military
capabilities in order to match its new global role. For the first time, the nation's
view of its interests and the obligations of its ideals had exceeded its capabilities.
American ideals and interests were still seen as in harmony, but the resulting
policies produced a military crusade rather than a restrained pursuit of peaceful
commerce. Why, when previously the weight of American ideals had helped
keep the United States out of foreign ventures, did President McKinley recom-
mend war in the name of humanity and civilization as well as in behalf of en-
dangered American interests?
The answer cannot be found primarily in perceived economic imperatives. It
is true that, because of a stagnating world economy, expanded export markets
appeared threatened. But the American business community showed little en-
thusiasm for the Spanish-American War, and popular enthusiasm was not
sparked by appeals to economic interest. Nor is the answer to be found in the
nature of American idealism. Certainly, Americans were deeply affronted by
brutal Spanish behavior in Cuba. But the same Spanish actions in previous
decades had failed to provoke the United States. It was not traditional American
ideals that led to war but the way in which they were used to fire popular senti-
ment for intervention.
The most accurate explanation, and one of particular relevance in the early
1980s, lies in exploring changes in Americans' self-image. As Robert Greisner ef-
fectively argues, a period of economic adversity, urbanization, and rapid social
change led many Americans-goaded by the new popular press-to seek
reassurance in foreign ventures.3 Uncertain of the direction or even the in-
evitability of progress now that the process of continental expansion was com-
plete, Americans were eager for the psychological comfort of an international
campaign that was both assertive and morally justifiable.
President McKinley, despite initial personal doubts about entering the war,
fell into a trap that was to catch several of his successors in the twentieth cen-
tury. He wrapped American participation in the war in the language of a global
American mission for good. In the following years, this rhetoric could not be
squared with the reality of American forces fighting against nationalists in the
Philippines.
Entry into World War I revived for a time the United States's sense of mission.
As before, new intellectual currents argued for American intervention.
American foreign policy, which had emphasized a strong presence in Asia and
on the sea, shifted its focus to the "Atlantic Community" and to countering Ger-
3 Ibid.
man control of the Eurasian land mass. But once again, after overcoming his
personal hesitations, an American president wrapped the new venture in
altruistic goals and American ideals. The disillusion that followed was far more
severe than the reaction to the Spanish-American War, both because of the costs
of the war and because of the way in which the goals were portrayed.
The result during the interwar period was not pure isolationism, an im-
possibility in a world of increasing economic interdependence, but short-sighted
and disillusioned nationalism -a period in which the United States's pursuit of
its growing interest in European peace fell short of its potential power. Disillu-
sioned liberals stayed on the sidelines. Conservatives returned to the earliest
roots of American foreign policy and counseled against involvement in Euro-
pean affairs, ignoring technological, economic, and social factors that made any
major European conflict inevitably a challenge to American interests that would
require American military involvement.
A working balance among ideals, interests, and power was achieved in the
years immediately following World War II. In the Truman Doctrine and the for-
mation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States
committed itself to maintaining the European balance of power and addressed
the prospect of an extended competition with the Soviet Union for global in-
fluence. These interests were served well by idealistic concepts and programs
that reflected a vision for a better world. The Marshall Plan, Point Four, and aid
to poor nations helped stabilize economies and societies in which the United
States had an interest. The general refusal to support European colonialism was
both moral and prudent, since this support would not only have been at odds
with traditional American values but would also have meant opposition to the
global trend of decolonization. Through the concept of collective security and
the creation of the United Nations, the United States became committed not
only to maintaining a balance of power but to a system that could help preserve
peace and build world order by penalizing the aggression of any nation against
another.
Some critics of these policies were concerned that the United States had taken
on more responsibilities than it could manage in Europe. That there has been no
war in Europe for thirty-five years, however, is evidence that American and
Western European power has been equal to the task of maintaining the balance
in Europe. But central questions were left unanswered as the new policies were
carried into the 1950s: How widely drawn would be the lines of containment?
How would a policy of containment be related to the emergent nationalism in
former European colonies? How would the East-West competition affect the
United Nations and the concept of collective security?
As the election campaign of 1952 gathered momentum, a politically powerful
critique of the Truman administration's policies suggested that the United
States's goals actually fell short of American capabilities. Writing in Life in the
spring of 1952, John Foster Dulles called for "A Policy of Boldness." He urged a
policy of response against Communist aggression not only through defensive
means but also by striking back "where it hurts, by means of our choosing." A
206 | ANTHONY LAKE
political offensive could go beyond passive containment so that "within two,

five or 10 years substantial parts of the present captive world can peacefully
regain national independence."4 Such sentiments called for an extension of the
United States's influence far beyond its capacities. Fortunately, prudent deci-
sions by President Eisenhower on such issues as the war in Indochina and the
Hungarian Revolution kept power and policy generally in balance.
Gradually, however, the conceptual bases of American policy shifted in ways
destructive to the balances of the late 1940s. An approach that emphasized
almost exclusively the East-West aspect of every issue pushed the United States
increasingly into a stance unsympathetic to movements for independence in the
Southern Hemisphere. The view of political change in such areas narrowed,
now being seen primarily as an opportunity for, if not the creation of, Com-
munist competitors. This reactive approach served to deny the United States's
traditional interests and ideals. In addition, the concept of collective security be-
came limited to maintaining the East-West balance of power, thus diminishing
the concept's broader relevance and vision. Throughout the decade, the United
Nations was seen more as a flawed cold war instrument than as an institution
that could serve to inhibit not only Soviet aggression but also aggression from
any source.
In 1961, the Kennedy administration brought a fresh synthesis of ideals and
interests to American foreign policy. American defenses would be strengthened
to support more flexible military doctrines, while the possibilities for arms con-
trol could be explored. The United States would respect the diversity and the
drive for national self-determination of new nations around the world.
Generous economic and military assistance would support stability through
domestic progress in these nations, while their defenses against external subver-
sion would be strengthened.
As interests and ideals were once again integrated, however, the exhilaration
of the time produced rhetoric and commitments that ran beyond the power to
produce results, most notably in Vietnam. By treating that conflict as a case of
international aggression rather than as a civil war, the resulting intervention
became a test case of the United States's commitments to containment, collective
security, and economic and social progress in developing nations where
"freedom"was under assault.
During the Johnson administration, as the Vietnam war became more and
more identified with American foreign policy as a whole, criticism of the war
took two forms. For some, the general foreign policy principles that had led the
United States into the war were demonstrably wrong. In order to justify
American losses, official spokesmen constantly resorted to hyperbole-the
future of the balance with the Soviet Union, the principles of collective security,
4 Quoted in Thomas G. Paterson, Containment and the Cold War: American

Foreign Policy
Since 1945 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1973), pp. 52-55.
and the peaceful world order were said to be at stake. Critics of the administra-
tion concluded that if the endless human costs were the corollaries of such con-
cepts, the concepts themselves must be fundamentally flawed. Others felt that
the United States had overreached itself and out of an exaggerated sense of
responsibility had undertaken a mission beyond its capacities. The error was
not necessarily in the basic concepts but in losing a sense of proportion and in a
failure to distinguish among regional cases in applying general principles.
While the Nixon and Ford administrations maintained a commitment to the
war in Indochina for as long as possible, they sought ways to accommodate the
growing wave of disillusionment by seeking to bring goals and power into
balance. The goals would remain global in scope but more narrowly anti-
Communist. The means would depend more on the efforts of other nations.
Hence the emphasis on "Vietnamization"of the war and, through the Nixon
Doctrine, on greater self-defense efforts by threatened states around the world.
The concept of collective security had already been discredited by the failure of
the Western allies to contribute to the Vietnam war and was quietly buried by
the Nixon administration.
In 1968, Henry Kissinger had warned against the "disinterested"proposition
that the United States "must resist aggression anywhere it occurs since peace is
indivisible" as leading to an "undifferentiatedglobalism and confusion about our
purposes. The abstract concept of aggression causes us to multiply our com-
mitments."5 In his first annual report on United States foreign policy in 1970,
President Nixon called for "a more balanced and realistic American role in the
world. . . . Our interests must shape our commitments, rather than the other
way around."
Despite such expressions of realism, the imbalance remained uncorrected and
domestic disillusion increased. The continuation of the war played a central
part. But so did a more basic conceptual problem. Collective security was
replaced by a more classic diplomatic notion-maintaining the balance of
power with the principal adversary while seeking to negotiate with it a resolu-
tion of major disputes. The first flaw in this approach lay in the fact that major
problems and instabilities in a changing world of diffuse power were seldom
susceptible to solutions through Soviet-American understanding (if achievable
in any case). The second flaw lay in the same excess in rhetoric that had be-
deviled earlier presidents. Neither "a generation of peace" nor true "detente"
could be achieved through an "eraof negotiations." Many Americans felt that a
narrow focus on balance-of-power calculations and classical negotiations failed
to take sufficient account of traditional American ideals. The Nixon Doctrine
seemed to be simply a less expensive defense of the global status quo.
Responding to disillusion with the Vietnam war and with the Kissinger ap-
5 Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy: Three Essays,

excerpted in William Taubman,
Globalism and Its Critics (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), pp. 105-10.
208 | ANTHONY LAKE
proach, Jimmy Carter took office determined to broaden the agenda of

American foreign policy. Beyond the focus on strong alliances and Soviet-
American relations would come a new concern for human rights, for limits on
the spread of weaponry, and for reviving the American position in the Third
World. Despite notable successes-especially in the Middle East, in relations
with China (the scenes also of the greatest accomplishments of the two previous
administrations), and in Africa- the balance among interests, ideals, and power
was never satisfactorily achieved. The support of human rights was insufficient-
ly conveyed as being in America's long-term interests and was not closely
related to maintaining the balance of power. Carter's human rights campaign
sounded like a new version of earlier moralistic crusades. In the first months of
his administration, every policy was portrayed as a new departure, when em-
phasis on its relevance to long-standing American interests would have been
more reassuring at home and abroad. Then, as the actions of the Cubans or the
Soviets in Ethiopia, South Yemen, and Afghanistan called for greater attention
to East-West concerns in United States policies, it appeared that this shift was
inconsistent with or a replacement for concerns for such goals as human rights
and nuclear nonproliferation. Competing voices within the administration, each
emphasizing different parts of the broadened agenda, aggravated the problem.
The rhetoric by which the White House characterized each new Soviet move
made the American responses seem less substantial than they were. At the same
time, both conservative and liberal critics warned that the commitments of the
Carter doctrine regarding the Persian Gulf ran beyond available American
power.
The pendulum of public opinion, which had swung away from preoccupation
with the Soviet challenge, now moved rapidly in the opposite direction. The
Reagan administration was elected proclaiming a single-minded return to de-
fending American interests against the Soviet challenge. While the policies have
shifted, one danger remains the same as before. In 1977 the Carter administra-
tion encouraged the perception of new policies that could right every wrong,
and this led to disillusionment when the world maintained its stormy ways. The
Reagan administration also seemed, in early 1981, to be promising far too
much: that a "resurgent America" could magically create a world order
favorable to the United States. As in 1977, an emphasis on the mistakes of the
previous administration strengthened the impression of truly radical departures
in foreign policy - an impression created during the 1980 presidential campaign
in which the views of each side were caricatured rather than debated.
Formulating Foreign Policy

There are, of course, shifts in foreign policy emphasis and priority when there
are shifts in American opinion and political leadership. But until new ad-
ministrations learn to reject the temptation to emphasize the new at the expense
of the enduring, until the press ceases to dramatize every "new beginning," and
DEFINING THE NATIONAL INTEREST 1209
until the public ceases to expect more than any American government can
deliver in a world of diffused power, the cycles of illusion and disillusion will
continue. A consistent American foreign policy must allow the flexibility
demanded by international change and a domestic democratic system. But it
must also be grounded in general agreement on national interests and how they
are consistent with American ideals.
The most realistic measuring stick for American foreign policy interests, or
any nation's international interests, is the effect foreign events may have on the
lives of individual citizens. Nations are not markers on an international chess
board, yet the abstractions of conventional foreign policy analysis too often
treat them as such. Nations are, of course, collections of people, and it is in their
fortunes that the fortunes of nations are told.
From this perspective, the relative importance of different kinds of interests
becomes most clearly defined. Involvement in a foreign war provides the most
dramatic and deadly damage to the welfare of a nation's citizens. Especially in
the nuclear age, primary attention must therefore be given to the maintenance
of power balances, the prevention of political coercion, and the work of
peaceful diplomacy. But international economic events have the most im-
mediate effect on people's lives. The quiet economic decisions of a friendly na-
tion can affect real American interests far more than a dramatic revolution in a
country of little economic or strategic interest, yet they are likely to receive less
attention in the daily headlines.
A central question is whether economic and military interests can be
separated. In perhaps the most interesting and thoughtful foreign policy docu-
ment produced in the 1980 electoral campaign, the Libertarianparty urged such
a separation through a return to the policies of the Founding Fathers. Political
and military nonintervention abroad and concentration on territorial defense,
coupled with an active and free international trade, "would do far more to ad-
vance the legitimate aims of American foreign policy than has the interven-
tionism of the past thirty-five or forty years," and would be more consistent
with domestic American institutions.6 While couched in terms familiar to those
who learned the most from the Vietnam experience, the intellectual origins of
this argument are more precisely found in the conservative views of the 1930s.
Yet the economic welfare of American citizens, and perhaps their political
freedom, cannot be broadly separated from maintaining an active American
diplomacy and the use of military power abroad. The necessity of intervention
in World War II provides the most important evidence of this fact. The need to
keep open the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of most Persian Gulf oil provides
the most recent example. The question is one of balance and proportion. Where,
and to what degree, are the interests of American citizens so involved that
6 Libertarian
Party, "White Paper on Foreign and Military Policy," Washington, D.C., 1980,
pp. 4-5.
210 | ANTHONY LAKE
American diplomacy must become deeply engaged and American military

power readily available?
Based on their importance to the United States, their power and political
orientations, and the United States's previous commitments, a priority for dif-
ferent geographic regions can be roughly sketched: (1) America's allies in Europe
and Northeast Asia, with the importance of Asia constantly increasing; (2) the
Persian Gulf; (3) the Western Hemisphere and the rest of East Asia, including
Australia and New Zealand; and (4) Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Asian sub-
continent.
The caveats against creating such priorities are as important as the priorities
themselves. Relations with important countries within one area, such as Nigeria
and India, may matter far more than relations with smaller nations in crucial
regions. It is also difficult to segregate, even analytically, the United States's in-
terests in one area from its interests in another. For example, the United States's
relations with its European allies and with Japan increasingly involve events far
beyond the region of the formal alliance. In addition, the act of drawing lines
around regions can, in itself, be dangerous. It could imply that nations of genu-
ine importance lie beyond the lines of interest or could tempt adversaries to
believe that the United States is ceding them new spheres.
The point of thinking about regional priorities is not to draw arbitrary
defense perimeters. Its importance lies in making the distinctions necessary to
keep the United States's commitments and tactics proportionate to its interests
and power. A tendency toward undifferentiated thinking-equating, for exam-
ple, Soviet and Chinese support for North Vietnam with a Communist move in
Europe or a Soviet adventure in the Persian Gulf-has clouded American
foreign policy debates since the 1950s. The United States certainly has an in-
terest in "containment"everywhere, but it must realize that different degrees of
interest allow different approaches to the problem.
Where the most important interests of the United States would be jeopardized
by an attack, as in alliance areas, a commitment to immediate military action is
necessary. But where its interests are less immediately involved, it can rely more
on other instruments and the workings of time-on the use of economic
leverage, determined efforts peacefully to resolve international disputes, patient
efforts to expand United States political influence, or even careful support for
the nationalism of those populations under the control of the Soviet Union or its
allies. Indeed, in areas where American military power is limited, it must turn to
these more subtle means if it is to avoid disaster. Paradoxically, the United
States competes best with the Soviets in most Third World nations by deem-
phasizing global competition. Treating such nations as pawns in a larger game,
interpreting "socialist"domestic institutions as allegiance to the Soviets, and in-
sisting on alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union offend
Third World nationalism and thus limit American influence. The United States
competes best in the Third World by pursuing policies that respond primarily to
Third World concerns: economic development and national independence.
While current American interests and Third World realities call for such an
approach, three trends increase the likelihood that American military force
could be required to defend vital interests in nonalliance areas: the expansion of
American economic interests in and political ties to Third World nations; the
precedent of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and more assertive Soviet
global policies; and the enhanced military capacities of Third World nations
themselves. The lesson of Vietnam is not that the United States should never use
force when there are new challenges to American interests. Such thinking
smacks of the earlier absolutist rigidities that resulted in the Vietnam intervention.
The lesson should be the injunction to ask careful questions before undertak-
ing new military actions or commitments that could force such actions. To what
extent are American interests involved? What would be the impact on the lives
of American citizens, current and future, of a failure to take military action? Is
there a legitimate request for assistance by a nation under external attack? Is
there an assault on the international legal rights of the United States or its allies?
What is the degree of effort by the government requesting assistance? By its
allies? Will the government requesting assistance become dependent on
American intervention for its survival against the wishes of its own people?
What are the prospects for military success? Is the cost of military failure accept-
able? Even with congressional support, will the American public support the
venture? If such questions are not adequately answered, the consequence will be
policies of dangerous bluff and bluster or defeat.
Conclusion
Beyond the defense of immediate interests in various regions of the world, com-
plete United States foreign policies must also address a range of long-term in-
terests that are largely synonymous with American ideals, such as the pursuit of
limitations on the spread of armaments, the economic well-being of other na-
tions, and human rights. These are not idealistic luxuries, but investments in a
safer and more prosperous future for America. American interests are im-
mediately affected by the decisions of the governments of other nations.
American values call for concern about what happens to individuals within
those nations. In the long run, the two come together, for the needs and hopes
of those individuals will define the actions of their governments -most quickly
in democracies but in time even in authoritarian societies. As Hans Morgenthau
has written, "the greater the stability of society and the sense of security of its
members, the smaller are the chances for collective emotions to seek an outlet in
aggressive nationalism, and vice versa."7
Recent events in Iran and Central America make clear the ways in which
7
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), p. 106.
212 | ANTHONY LAKE
American interests can be damaged when nations fall into turmoil because
repressive governments have lost legitimacy with their people. The United
States's interest lies in encouraging an early balance of popular political, social,
and economic reforms, not on America's terms but in the terms of the local
society. If repression is allowed to drive out moderate alternatives, sooner or
later the United States will face an unpleasant choice between support for fur-
ther repression (resulting in international obloquy) and acquiesence in the
triumph of radicals.
Extending the ideals and protections of the Constitution throughout the
United States has generally enhanced internal stability. Similarly, pragmatic
support of human progress abroad-within the limits of United States in-
fluence-constitutes an investment in future moderation. At home and abroad,
humane reform opposes rather than invites radicalism. Economic progress does
not guarantee political peace either among or within nations. But economic
adversity does produce both frustration and short-sighted decisions by in-
dividuals and governments to serve the present at the expense of the future.
Current trends in global population growth, environmental degradation, and
resource development clearly presage further political instabilities.
There is no doubt that meaningful attention to such concerns as human rights
and nuclear nonproliferation complicates both American diplomacy and the
task of presenting coherent foreign policies to the American people. But shying
away from complexity and relegating such concerns to the realm of "idealism"
disregards long-term American interests. Moreover, a policy that does not
reflect American values and that does not address America's humanitarian and
self-interested stake in the progress of hundreds of millions of people in the
world who live lives of terrible desperation will fail to touch the hearts of
Americans. Appealing to a fear of communism will always mobilize support for
a policy, but it will not sustain it.
Concern for issues like human rights also strengthens the American position
abroad. Mere defense of the status quo leaves the initiatives to others,
diminishes American prestige, and damages the country's alliances. As Robert
Osgood wrote in 1953, "no coalition can survive through a common fear of
tyranny without a common faith in liberty. If the leader of the Western Coali-
tion ceases to sustain that faith, then who will sustain it?"8
American ideals must always be evaluated in terms of interests. Only thus can
foreign policies be made sustainable in domestic politics and American behavior
made more explicable to others. National interests are well understood. Claims
of altruism are instinctively mistrusted.
8 Robert
Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in America's Foreign Relations (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 450.
DEFINING THE NATIONAL INTEREST [ 213
There will always be ample room for debate about the paths and priorities the
United States should pursue in defending its security, advancing its interests,
and pursuing its ideals. It is long past time, however, for Americans to accept a
broadened conception of their interests that includes their ideals- and to pursue
both with a realistic sense of the possible. Only then will the pendulum cease its
swings between idealism and anti-idealism.

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Defining the National Interest

Author(s): Anthony Lake

A balance among self-interest, idealism, and power has defined

Balancing Ideals and Power

political offensive could go beyond passive containment so that "within two,

4 Quoted in Thomas G. Paterson, Containment and the Cold War: American

5 Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy: Three Essays,

proach, Jimmy Carter took office determined to broaden the agenda of

Formulating Foreign Policy

American diplomacy must become deeply engaged and American military

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