An excess of ‘national exceptionalism’: towards a new political geography of american foreign policy

Abstract

The political geography of inter-state behavior has often had distinct overtones of ‘national exceptionalism’. This is the tendency for a political geographer to assume or argue for his particular country's unique ‘mission’ or ‘destiny’ in the world. ‘Expansion’ and ‘containment’, which together define the basic geographical metaphors of this genre, have been justified in terms of each country's unique character. American exceptionalism has been a particularly powerful doctrine. In an attempt to confront this conventional wisdom, the idealist roots of exceptionalism are exposed and an alternative approach to the political geography of inter-state behavior, using American foreign policy as an illustrative case, is outlined. The alternative approach involves focusing upon the global context of competitive inter-state relations associated with the growth of a modern world political economy. The main conclusion is that though the political geography of American foreign policy has changed considerably over the years, and this can be explained within a world political economy perspective, exceptionalist arguments offer much the same by way of justification today as they did in the early 19th century. Their ‘transcendental idealism’ offers no means of accounting for the changed political geography.