ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how President Barack Obama and his critics made use of the traditions to understand the course of the American foreign policy debate during his two terms in office. In the absence of a unifying, major threat such as the Soviet Union had provided, Americans found it hard to see the need for an expensive international agenda. During the Cold War, American foreign policy on the whole was more effective than earlier in the 20th century, but miscalculations continued. Crucially, while the American foreign policy establishment is largely Hamiltonian, unlike Barack Obama it has historically been willing to make common cause with the Jacksonians. In taking this Hamiltonian approach to the Far East, Barack Obama was operating squarely within the history of US foreign policy, which with only a few exceptions has taken a strongly Hamiltonian approach to the Pacific since the 19th century.