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What is the secret behind the impressive rise of the British and American superpowers over the last three hundred years? According to Walter Russell Mead, the answer is a potent combination of religion and money. In God and Gold, Mead tracks “the biggest geopolitical story in modern times: the birth, rise, triumph, defense, and continuing growth of Anglo-American power” in the face of constant “opposition and conflict.” In short, he attempts to explain why the United States—like the British Empire before it—has emerged as a world leader, and whether it will continue to play this role in the future.
What is the secret behind the impressive rise of the British and American superpowers over the last three hundred years? According to Walter Russell Mead, the answer is a potent combination of religion and money. In God and Gold, Mead tracks “the biggest geopolitical story in modern times: the birth, rise, triumph, defense, and continuing growth of Anglo-American power” in the face of constant “opposition and conflict.” In short, he attempts to explain why the United States—like the British Empire before it—has emerged as a world leader, and whether it will continue to play this role in the future.
Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for United States Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations as well as one of today’s most interesting and original writers on the history of the United States. To truly understand his latest book, one must recall Mead’s previous work, Special Providence, which is considered a groundbreaking study of American diplomacy. In that book, Mead made an ambitious attempt to fashion order out of the chaos that has marked American foreign policy since its very inception. In other words, he took it upon himself to expose the logic underlying the seemingly contradictory decisions and sudden turnarounds that have given American conduct in the international arena such a bad reputation for so long.
Mead identified four schools of thought that have guided American foreign policy over the last two hundred fifty years. Each set of ideas is represented by an important American statesman: “Jeffersonians,” named for third president Thomas Jefferson, favor isolationism; “Hamiltonians,” named for Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury and confidant of George Washington, focus on trade and economics; “Jacksonians,” named for seventh president Andrew Jackson, endorse an aggressively populist track; and “Wilsonians,” named for president Woodrow Wilson, who led the United States into World War I, advocate an idealist foreign policy. According to Mead, the prevailing policies in every era of American history have reflected the power relations between adherents of these various approaches. While these views have often nudged American diplomacy in opposing directions, they have rarely led to complete reversals of policy. Most of the time, the changes they brought about were far less dramatic. The transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration, for example, was not “revolutionary,” but a mere shift in emphasis: A president who adopted Hamiltonian and Wilsonian perspectives was replaced by a president who saw greater value in the Wilsonian and Jacksonian outlooks.
In God and Gold, Mead elaborates on the premise of Special Providence. Both works shed light on the guiding principles of American foreign policy throughout its history. Unlike many analysts and commentators, however, Mead does not rush to interpret historical events as pivotal turning points. Even the Cold War, he argues, should be put into proportion:
The Cold War, large though it loomed at the time, and vital as it was to win, was less of a milestone in American history than many assume. The real decision, whose implications and consequences are still with us today, was to take on Britain’s old role. The Cold War was an incident in American foreign policy, not an epoch, and its end left the United States with essentially the same set of responsibilities, interests, and tasks that we had when we began.
The two books differ mainly in the degree of detail that the author chooses to include. The scope of God and Gold is, obviously, much larger than its predecessor. While researchers who prefer a microscopic study of history may see Mead’s tendency to ignore pesky details in favor of the big picture as a shortcoming, most readers will appreciate this bold approach. It is precisely through generalizations that Mead successfully synthesizes a vast amount of data, connecting events and crises while still retaining a coherent narrative and offering lessons for the future.
Shmuel Rosner is a columnist and an editor.
