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First in Freedom: War-Making, American Liberal National Identity and the Liberty Gradient

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Theorizing Foreign Policy in a Globalized World

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series ((PSIR))

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Abstract

Ever since its founding nearly a quarter millennium ago as the first ‘new nation’ to emerge from European colonial rule into membership in the international ‘society of states,’ the question of how the United States of America (or America for short) is like and unlike other polities has been vigorously debated and contested.1 One line of argument, well-developed by scholars and still vibrant in American popular discourse, holds that the United States is ‘exceptional’ in important ways, most notably in the commitment of the American regime and the American people to ‘freedom’.2 According to this line of thought, the United States has been, through most of its history, sufficiently extraordinary in its ‘liberalism’ (in the broad sense of individual liberty, popular sovereignty, private property and limited constitutional government) to be not just different, but ‘exceptional’.

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Authors
  1. Daniel Deudney
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  2. Sunil Vaswani
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

    Gunther Hellmann (Professor of Political Science) (Professor of Political Science)

  2. Aarhus University, Denmark

    Knud Erik Jørgensen (Professor of International Relations) (Professor of International Relations)

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© 2015 Daniel Deudney and Sunil Vaswani

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Deudney, D., Vaswani, S. (2015). First in Freedom: War-Making, American Liberal National Identity and the Liberty Gradient. In: Hellmann, G., Jørgensen, K.E. (eds) Theorizing Foreign Policy in a Globalized World. Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431912_11

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