Progressive and Liberal Positions on American Foreign Policy

Liberal foreign policy has had a sweeping effect on the international forum since Woodrow Wilson's presidency. Wilson, who grew up in the post-war South, was a pacifist, and ran his campaign for re-election on the slogan 'He kept us out of the war.' The United States entered World War I under Wilson in 1917, however, and helped in the final push to defeat the Germans. The role America played allowed for Wilson to instrumentally influence the controversial Treaty of Versailles, which formalized peace with Germany and formed the League of Nations. The United States' Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles and so the US was never a member of the League of Nations. Later the League of Nations would fail as an international institution.

From Wilson, we get two distinct strains of liberal foreign policy: idealism and realism. As with most political extremes, the vast majority of liberal thinkers fall somewhere in-between these two camps. The oft-dismissed 'idealists' have a global rather than national focus, and see peace as a plausible outcome of tolerance, diplomacy, and disarmament. The realists argue for a type of non-interventionalism, though they, like most liberal-minded thinkers, approach politics in general from a very humanist perspective, and accept the use of government as an instrument to bring about peace and quell violent regimes.

Another idea that runs through both the idealist and realist camps of liberal thinking, is that of the need for humanitarian aid. Often, the rational for foreign aid by some liberals resembles the same rational for domestic welfare programs. As the thinking goes, if American foreign aid can be used to educate and change the problems in unstable or hostile foreign societies or countries, then we won't have to worry nearly as much about defending ourselves from those societies or countries. (Learn more about America and Humanitarian Aid.) Additionally, liberal foreign policy relies heavily on the United Nations and NATO, emphasizing that a cooperative international effort will not only boost our allies, but will also discourage violence and tyranny in the developing world through international pressure.

How liberal policy plays out in the real world is mixed, as evidenced in the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy Jr., Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. It is from these presidents that we get the policies of international cooperation and global government, détente, containment, and now diplomacy. That said, most liberal politicians have not shirked from using the military force of the United States when necessary to protect national safety and interests.