US Foreign Policy Envisioned by George Washington in his Farewell Address

Patrick Garrity, "Warnings of a Parting Friend (US Foreign Policy Envisioned by George Washington in his Farewell Address)," The National Interest, No. 45, Fall 1996

Exactly two hundred years ago, on September 19, 1796, readers of the American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia discovered that one of their number had formed the resolution to "decline being considered" as a candidate for the upcoming election "of a Citizen, to Administer the Executive government of the United States." In a lengthy written address to his "Friends, and Fellow Citizens", George Washington then went beyond this announcement of political retirement to offer some "disinterested warnings of a parting friend." These warnings, Washington wrote, had resulted from "much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanence of your felicity as a People."

The result was, of course, Washington's famous Farewell Address, one of the classic expressions of American foreign policy - indeed, of the entire American political tradition. Shortly after its publication, John Quincy Adams, the greatest American diplomat of the day, expressed his hope that the American people "may not only impress all its admonitions upon their hearts, but that it may serve as the foundation upon which the whole system of their future policy may rise, to the admiration and example of future time." Daniel Webster, on the centennial of Washington's birth in 1832, said that the Address was "full of truths important at all times", and he called for "a renewed and wide diffusion of the admirable paper, and an earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and consider it." Even Woodrow Wilson, whose views on foreign policy might be thought poles apart from those expressed in the Farewell Address, took great care to offer his views on alliances "as an interpretation of the meaning of that great man."

This effusive praise for what became known as Washington's Legacy stands in stark contrast to the popular and scholarly neglect of the Address over the past several decades - ironically, at a time when Washington's general reputation has risen sharply among historians. The reason is fairly clear: the Address is most closely associated with Washington's "great rule of conduct" - that "in extending our commercial relations" with foreign nations, "to have with them as little political connection as possible." Washington went on to argue:

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships, or enmities. . . . Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour, or Caprice?

This is the stuff of isolationism. At least so it seemed to President Harry Truman and most of the other architects of American foreign policy after Word War II. In his memoirs, Truman recalled the strong grip that isolationism had held over the country after World War I, with near-disastrous consequences for American and international freedom. "Throughout my years in the Senate I listened each year as one of the senators would read Washington's Farewell Address", Truman wrote. "It served little purpose to point out to the isolationists that Washington had advised a method suitable under the conditions of his day to achieve the great end of preserving the nation." Unfortunately, "for the isolationists this address was like a biblical text. The America First Organization of 1940-41, the Ku Klux Klan, Pelley and his Silver Shirts - they all quoted the first President in support of their assorted aims."

In the wake of victory in World War II, Truman was determined that America would step forward to lead what he called the Free World. But Truman observed, "I knew that George Washington's spirit would be invoked against me, and Henry Clay and all the patron saints of the isolationists." For this reason, Truman - and his fellow internationalists - looked to sources other than Washington for political inspiration and strategic guidance. Truman wrote of the activist, outward-looking doctrine that was later to bear his name, "I was convinced that the policy I was about to proclaim was indeed as much required by the conditions of my day as was Washington's by the situation in his era and Monroe's doctrine by the circumstances which he then faced."

Given the success of Truman's doctrine, what reason might we have to revisit the Farewell Address two hundred years after its publication? It is this: The end of the Cold War has made it necessary for Americans to re-think their role in the world, to look for guidance in dealing with new strategic conditions. The Farewell Address harkens to an older, but not necessarily contradictory, tradition of American foreign policy that might provide some such guidance. Historians such as Samuel Flagg Bemis and Felix Gilbert have long appreciated that the Farewell Address should not be read only, or even primarily, as an isolationist tract. Most important, George Washington best represents that part of the American founding concerned with what is now popularly called "civic virtue." The search for a common good - for public and private virtue - is an issue very much on the minds of Americans today, as it was for those in 1796. For Washington, this search had a strong and a necessary foreign policy component.

Two Challenges

Before turning to the substance of the Farewell Address, we need first to establish the document's bona fides as a deliberate, rather than an accidental, contribution to the American political tradition. Two challenges to the Address on this score have emerged. First, those impressed by the sophistication of the Address have concluded that it must have been ghost written for Washington by Alexander Hamilton. However brilliant Hamilton might have been, American foreign policy since the 1790s has followed much more the line of his great rival, Thomas Jefferson. If the Farewell Address is pure Hamilton, then we would have reason to question how much significance we should attribute to it. Second, and relatedly, critics at the time and later have argued that the Address was in fact a partisan document - one not intended for the ages, but merely to influence the upcoming presidential campaign between Jefferson and John Adams.

On the point of authorship, Hamilton undeniably played a major role in the Address' final composition. It was standard practice for Washington, during the Revolution and his presidency, to turn to able colleagues and subordinates for help in drafting correspondence and public papers. But Washington clearly dictated the themes of the Address when he sent Hamilton a complete first draft in May 1796 - including some language that James Madison had provided four years earlier - with the instructions that any revisions be "predicated upon the Sentiments contained in the enclosed paper."

To be sure, Hamilton accepted Washington's charge to recast the president's initial 1796 draft if he thought it advisable (which Hamilton did). And Hamilton's hand can clearly be seen throughout the document. For instance, the Address warns about the dangers of "permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachments for Others." This echoed language that Hamilton had used in a 1792 letter to Edward Carrington, where Hamilton had accused Jefferson and Madison of having "a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment against Great Britain." But all in all, Hamilton tried faithfully to follow Washington's guidance, knowing from experience that Washington's modesty about his own intellectual capabilities did not extend to endorsing something that he did not understand or believe.

In subsequent correspondence and re-drafting, Washington carefully edited Hamilton's version of the Address, including removing and adding to the text proposed by his former aide de camp and secretary of the treasury. For example, Washington preferred to rely upon "temporary" rather than "occasional" alliances, as proposed in Hamilton's draft. Hamilton had suggested: "Permanent alliance, intimate connection with any part of the foreign world is to be avoided." Washington changed this to read: "'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Here Washington deliberately invoked the spirit of the Revolution, as many Americans would recall an almost identical phrase from Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

Most telling on the point of authorship is that virtually all of the important ideas that appeared in the published version of the Address had been expressed by Washington in previous other public and private writings. Hamilton, who had access to many of these sources, undoubtedly drew upon and expanded them in a good faith effort to articulate Washington's mature views - with which Hamilton was in essential, if not complete, agreement. And Washington, in turn, had undoubtedly learned much from his close association with Hamilton over the years, and from Hamilton's anonymous newspaper essays on foreign policy, which Washington had read carefully and approvingly.

What, then, about the alleged partisanship of the Address? Many followers of Jefferson immediately criticized Washington's legacy on these grounds. Washington's advice to steer clear of foreign connections was widely read as an attack on the French alliance (with which Jefferson's Republicans were identified). His criticism of factions was interpreted as an attack on the emerging Jeffersonian party.

The Farewell Address was indeed issued in the midst of great political debate over the proper American attitude toward the ongoing war in Europe. The conflict between France and Great Britain, which began in February 1793, constantly threatened to drag the United States into war over the right of America to trade with the belligerents. Most Americans agreed that it was in their interest to stay out of the war, if this could be done honorably. But following this course raised problems for the United States not only of foreign policy - that is, how to steer a path between the two superpowers of the day - but, more critically, of domestic politics. Distinct pro-British and pro-French factions had rapidly developed. The virulent debate between these factions went to the question of the type of government and society that the United States should have, with Britain and France serving as models (or anti-models). As a result, the country seemed on the verge of civil war or anarchy. Washington wrote to Jefferson in 1796, "until the last year or two, I had no conception that Parties would, or even could, go to the length I have been witness to."

In the context of this foreign and domestic turmoil, Washington frequently expressed his determination to prevent political parties from coming into existence, or if he could not do that, to reconcile them. He succeeded in keeping the United States out of the war by adopting a policy of strict neutrality, a policy that he had cobbled together in 1793 out of the Cabinet debates between Hamilton and Jefferson. Circumstances and choice, however, led Washington to move toward what became the Federalist or Hamiltonian position, particularly after Jefferson left office as secretary of state at the end of that year. This was especially true of Washington's decision to accept the Jay Treaty, which Republicans regarded both as unnecessary appeasement of the British and as a step toward bringing monarchical government to America.(1) Washington's initial view of the controversial treaty - "not favorable" - gave way to his eventual judgment that this was the best way to keep America out of the European conflict.

But Washington's decision only served to inflame passions at home. For the first time as president, Washington himself took the brunt of public attacks on his policies and character. In a notorious broadside in 1796, Thomas Paine accused Washington of being "treacherous in private friendship . . . and a hypocrite in public life", and added that, "the world will be puzzled to decide, whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any." It seemed clear that Washington had failed in his immediate task of domestic reconciliation.

Washington was nonetheless determined to provide in speech what his statesmanship apparently failed to accomplish in practice. The Farewell Address represented his best attempt to articulate the basis on which all Americans genuinely interested in the national welfare could be rallied. The Farewell Address was intended to be a guide to the true and enduring middle ground of American politics and foreign policy. This is not to say that Washington sought consensus for consensus' sake, or would accept the lowest common denominator between competing factions. Instead, he appealed to the highest possible grounds of agreement, in hopes that it would endure beyond the political passions of the moment.

Seen from two centuries' hindsight, the Address is striking not for what was new and original about it, but for what was even then familiar and common to all Americans, Republican as well as Federalist. Taken out of their immediate context, many of Washington's arguments could easily have been expressed by a Republican of that period. Indeed, the basic sentiment of the Farewell Address was to be restated most memorably in Jefferson's First Inaugural of 1801: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." The fact that the expression "entangling alliances" is often mistakenly attributed to Washington and the Farewell Address is an indication of how well Washington articulated the consensus about foreign policy that actually existed among Americans. To be sure, Jefferson and his later followers would interpret the Address in their own way, not necessarily embracing all of Washington's advice. But Washington did clearly define and capture the high ground, precisely as he had intended.

National Character and True Independence

The main body of the Farewell Address covers six topics: first, a statement of the necessity and importance of national union; second, a defense of the Constitution and the rule of law; third, an expression of Washington's strong reservations concerning political parties; fourth, a lengthy consideration of the proper habits and dispositions of the people; fifth, warnings against foreign influence in domestic affairs; and sixth, Washington's reflections on international relations proper, covering foreign alliances, commercial policy, and neutrality.

For those interested in the foreign policy recommendations of the Address, the last two categories would seem to cover the subject. But that is not so; Washington's views about America's proper relationship with the rest of the world permeate the entire document.

Throughout the Address, Washington attempted to outline the material and moral grounds for a Union - a political community - that could realize the promise of the American Revolution. For Washington and his contemporaries, this meant "true independence", not merely the formal recognition of nationhood provided by the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain. Shortly after that treaty had been signed, Washington insisted publicly that unless a strong Union were formed, the individual states would become "the sport of European politics, which may play one State against another to prevent their growing importance, and to serve [Europe's] interested purposes." This same concern had led Washington to support efforts to reform and strengthen the central government during the 1780s, culminating in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and in Washington's subsequent acceptance of the presidency. Union, as Washington expressed it in the Address, required "unity of government."

But a strong central government that adhered to republican principles would be impossible without a common public understanding of what held the Union together. In the Address, Washington went to great lengths to persuade, or remind, his countrymen that the security and prosperity of the various sections and economic interests were interdependent. On the matter of security, he maintained that the greater strength and greater resources provided by the Union meant "proportionately greater security against external danger, a less frequent interruption of their Peace by foreign nations." Washington rehearsed the complementary resources and enterprises of the various sections (North, South, East, and West) that provided the whole with important advantages in foreign commerce. For this reason, Washington argued, it was neither desirable nor necessary that the interest of one section or group be sacrificed for the benefit of other sections or groups. He specifically pointed out how Western demands to navigate the Mississippi had been satisfied through the recently ratified Pinckney and Jay Treaties, despite earlier fears that this right would be abandoned by the East in order to appease the Spanish or the British.

Washington often referred to such common and complementary material interests as the "cement" of the Union. "Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the Union", he wrote in the Address. But interest alone would not assure political harmony. For Washington, the essential national interest was the establishment and preservation of a certain type of national character that was at once American (thus his defense of Union) and republican (thus his defense of the Constitution). Washington's concept of the national interest, of "true independence", was oriented first to a good domestic order, and only then to America's relationship to the outside world.

Washington believed that nations, as well as individuals, were defined by certain moral attributes. In the case of republican America, Washington typically described the preferred characteristics as sobriety, industry, and virtue. But above all, for Washington, there was the importance of justice, which he defined largely (but by no means exclusively) in economic terms: meeting one's obligations to others. As Washington wrote to an English correspondent in 1793: "To administer justice to, and receive it from every power with whom they are connected will, I hope, be always found the most prominent feature in the Administration of this Country."

Because Americans had a peculiar genius for commerce, especially foreign commerce, as well as for individual liberty, it was crucial that the United States deal justly with other nations and peoples, and have the reputation for doing so. The Constitution, and constitutional government, were required to ensure justice at home and with other nations. Under the weak Articles of Confederation of the 1780s, America had not met its just obligations either to foreign powers or to its own citizens. In Washington's defense of the Constitution in the Address, he insisted that Americans collectively must act toward the world as they did individually toward each other, in a way that would strengthen, not debase, the national character and sense of justice. In his discussion of the proper dispositions and habits of the people and their government, Washington wrote that "religion and morality are indispensable supports." When later discussing the proper disposition of America toward the world - "observe good faith and justice towards all nations" - Washington again invokes "religion and morality" to substantiate his case, adding: "Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?" For Washington there was a close, indeed inseparable, tie between domestic and foreign affairs.

This necessary intertwining of internal and external interests presented a real danger, however, for it opened the regime to what the Address termed "one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government": "foreign influence." Washington expressed his belief that domestic faction - the domination of particular and partial interests adverse to the common good - "opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion." Thus, Washington reminded his fellow citizens, "the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. . . . Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."

To put the United States in such a condition of foreign influence and dependence was for Washington the negation, or antithesis, of "true independence." The corruption of the American character would initially manifest itself by "permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachment for others." Such indulgences of excessive fondness or hatred would render America "in some degree a slave." It would be a "slave to its animosity or its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest." Antipathy toward a particular nation, he explained, led to a national character that was more readily disposed "to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes and umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur." This excessive sensitivity would result in "frequent collisions, obstinate envenomed and bloody contests." Public opinion that was prompted by such ill will and resentment could drive the government into war, "contrary to the best calculations of policy"; it would adopt "through passion what reason would reject." The nation thereby would become "subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambitions, and sinister and pernicious motives."

The Limit of Trust

Washington's general remedy for keeping America on an even keel was to stress the proper role of interest in foreign policy. He insisted in the Address that "there can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nations." Washington had long held the conviction, as he had written to Henry Laurens in 1778, that "no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it." But the Address argued that America's pursuit of its legitimate national interests in the world - especially when it came to questions of war or peace - ought to be "guided by our justice." Washington did not act according to the modern dichotomy between "realism" and "idealism" in the formulation of foreign policy. He agreed both with Hamilton (the supposed realist) that nations act solely out of their own interest; and with Jefferson (the supposed idealist) that there is but one standard of morality for men and for nations.

Was Washington confused or deceived when he said that interest could be guided by justice, or, more ambitiously, that interest and justice could be reconciled and comprehended? Part of the answer lies in the particulars of Washington's foreign policy in the 1790s, which will be discussed below. But at a more fundamental level, Washington thought that a just foreign policy must begin with, and not depart from, the defense and advancement of particular American interests - especially those related to the nation's security and prosperity. Essentially, Washington believed that although the standards of justice were the same at home and abroad, their application necessarily differed.

To the extent that America was a true political community, self-sacrifice and gratitude (friendship) among its citizens was possible. But such "disinterested friendship", as Washington called it, was not possible among nations. Justice in foreign affairs essentially meant making and keeping agreements faithfully, but it did not require sacrificing one's essential interests for those of other nations. Nor should the United States expect others to sacrifice themselves on its behalf. Differently put, Washington believed in the Socratic definition of justice: minding one's own business, but minding it well. As he wrote to a correspondent in 1795:

For in politics, as in religion my tenets are few and simple: the leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves, and to exact it from others; meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own is not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted wars would cease. . . .

By not meddling in the affairs of others, especially their internal affairs, the United States would strengthen its case against outside meddling in American politics, and thereby lessen the chances of war.

Washington's perspective on seeking "our interest, guided by our justice" led him to recommend in the Farewell Address that America's orientation toward all nations be one of "peace and harmony." Peace, not war; commerce, not conquest - these were the natural ends of American policy. To be sure, Washington fully understood European realpolitik and the workings of the balance of power. The United States had achieved its independence through armed conflict - in large part through alliance with France, and by exploiting the long-standing rivalry between London and Paris. Washington and the other Founders certainly did not neglect other opportunities to promote American security and commerce that might come about through Europe's distresses. Witness, for example, Pinckney's Treaty, signed with Spain in 1795, which granted America its long-standing demand to export goods through the Mississippi and acknowledged American territorial claims. The Spanish had long resisted these terms, but rumors of Jay's Treaty caused Madrid to concede to the Americans rather than risk closer British-American ties that could work against Spain's position in the New World.

Nevertheless, the Farewell Address implicitly rejected reliance upon the European balance of power as the essential guarantor of American security. Washington had earlier written to Jefferson: "In whatever manner the Nations of Europe shall endeavor to keep up their prowess in war and their balance of power in peace, it will be our policy to cultivate tranquillity at home and abroad; and extend our agriculture and commerce as far as possible." Of course, Washington was neither a pacifist nor a utopian. In his mind, American policy should aim at strengthening the material and moral forces of union and constitutional government to the point where foreign powers had neither the opportunity nor interest to threaten American security. When this situation of strength had been achieved, America could then strive to meet its greater purpose in the world - for America at its best was not to be purely or narrowly self-interested.

Washington yielded to none of his contemporaries in enthusiasm for the American experiment in self-government, and the promise that this experiment held for the rest of mankind. As he had stated in his First Inaugural Address, "the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican mode of government, are justly considered as deeply, and perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." And in 1793, while the war in Europe raged, Washington wrote: "It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be coextensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."

The Farewell Address set out two specific ways in which the United States could meet this calling. First, by showing that the happiness of the American people could be achieved under the auspices of liberty and self-rule, the American people "would acquire to them the glory of recommending" republican government "to the applause, the affection, and the adoption of every nation yet a stranger to it." Second, Washington's equivalent ambition for America in foreign affairs was "for a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give mankind the too novel example of a People always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." Washington mused, "Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?"

America, then, must do its part in leading by example in foreign as well as domestic affairs. The international part of the great American experiment would further elevate and extend the American character, by giving a moral content to American interests with respect to other nations and peoples.

Buying Time

Washington was at bottom a man of practice and action, not of theory. We can best appreciate his understanding of how America could seek its interest, guided by justice, from some of the more particular recommendations of the Farewell Address - especially as they shed light on Washington's own policies in office.

The central foreign policy advice of the Farewell Address was not that of isolation or non-entanglement. Rather, as Samuel Flagg Bemis argued, Washington sought a foreign policy of independence. Specifically, Washington wrote:

With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

Washington's "great rule of conduct" - to have as little political connection as possible with the European powers - was intended to buy time for American political institutions, and a distinctive American character, to mature. In his correspondence, and in an early draft of the Address, Washington estimated this period of probation, as he called it, to be twenty years. After this time, Washington believed that a strong, self-sufficient America would be in a position to dictate its future political, strategic, and economic relationship with the European powers, rather than the other way around. In the meantime, and perhaps thereafter, the United States could rely on temporary alliances to see them through emergencies. Further, Washington's warning against becoming unnecessarily entangled in the ordinary course of Europe's politics and quarrels implicitly did not preclude common action in extraordinary circumstances.

Even then, however, America would still be bound by the dictates of justice; America must be a respectable and great nation. For example, interest and justice both counseled that America would be unwise to try to play one European power off against another to gain security, but rather should establish independent grounds for American safety and prosperity. This indicated to Washington that the proper connection between America and Europe was commercial rather than political. (By a political connection, Washington meant agreements that would directly obligate or indirectly lead the United States into war as an ally of a European power.) For Washington, commercial relations between nations were much more susceptible to considerations of justice than were political ties, and less likely to import foreign quarrels into American politics. Washington had observed to Jefferson in 1788 that if the United States could "keep disengaged from the labyrinth of European politics and Wars" it could adopt a policy to "administer to their [European] wants" through commerce, "without being engaged in their quarrels."

In the Farewell Address, Washington considered the commercial aspects of American foreign policy in considerable detail. He told his readers that "harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest." Writing to Lafayette in the 1780s about his desire to improve commercial ties with France, Washington had observed that "nations are not influenced, as individuals may be, by disinterested friendships; but, when their interest is to live in amity, we have little reason to apprehend any rupture." But to foster this pacifying effect - to create an interest in living in amity - American commercial policy, according to the Farewell Address, "should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing."

Although he opposed the United States entering into new and binding political agreements, Washington supported commercial agreements with other willing nations. He wrote in the Farewell Address that these agreements would "give to trade a stable course", by defining the rights of American merchants and enabling the government to support them. Washington indicated that such commercial agreements could follow conventional rules of trade - "the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate." He was certain that the lack of a political connection to particular European powers was critical not only to preventing, or managing, factional politics at home, but also to allowing international commerce to take its natural and advantageous course. Washington also shared, though without the crusading zeal displayed by hotter heads, the belief espoused by the French philosophes - and adopted with enthusiasm by Paine in Common Sense - that free trade was a revolutionary dagger aimed against the "war system" of mercantilism.

Antipathies and Attachments

We recall in this context Washington's warning against "permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachment for others." Was this a specific warning against the French connection, and a recommendation of favoritism toward Britain, as the Republicans alleged? Washington in effect went out of his way in the Address to deny this charge. In obvious reference to the existing American treaty of alliance with France, negotiated during the Revolution, he wrote, "So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled, with perfect good faith." Washington also refused to name names in the Address - he does not explicitly put France in the category of excessive attachment, or Britain in the category of unreasonable hatred.

In a 1795 letter to Patrick Henry, Washington had insisted on his even-handedness: "by becoming the partizans of Great Britain or France", Americans would "create dissensions, disturb the public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps for ever the cement which binds the Union." Washington thought it essential that citizens should "advocate their own cause instead of that of any other Nation under the sun; that is instead of being Frenchmen or Englishmen, in Politics, they would be Americans." In short, Washington asserted, "I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others."

Washington's insistence in the Farewell Address on even-handedness with respect to foreign powers must be qualified in some important respects. He was in fact quite concerned with the specific impact of excessive hatred of Britain on American politics. Washington was determined that the American regime be defined in positive rather than negative terms. The people's understandable hostility to the British, their former colonial master and recent adversary, must not become a defining feature of the American character, or the basis of the nation's political cohesion. At best, anti-British phobia would result in a stunted or limited national character. Washington wrote to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia shortly after the end of the war that the American opposition to Great Britain and the achievement of independence would be "to very litre purpose, if we cannot conquer our own prejudices."

Washington himself shared much of the popular dislike of Britain. He certainly was not pro-British. But he was careful in public not to display these views. This would have been the easy way for Washington to retain his popularity, but he believed that an overtly anti-British policy would be unsustainable and dangerous. Like Hamilton, and unlike Jefferson and Madison, Washington assessed the current power relationship between America and Britain as derisively favoring the latter - irrespective of the justice of America's complaints against London. Washington did not assume, as did Jefferson and Madison, that America possessed the means to coerce Britain through threats of commercial retaliation. Given this relative weakness, America would be driven to war or humiliation if it engaged in a trade war with Britain; and in the event of conflict with the British, the United States would inevitably be driven to seek to redress this imbalance - as it had done during the Revolution - through closer ties with France. In the political climate of the times, excessive hatred of Britain would invariably lead to the opposite vice - too much affection for France.

That vice was not only a dangerous attachment to France, but also to the cause of the French Revolution. Washington, like virtually all Americans, strongly approved of the early moves toward self-government in France. But Washington, like those who became identified as Federalists, grew increasingly concerned at the radical and violent turn of events in that country. And he certainly resisted those who argued for joining a world-wide revolution under French auspices for liberty, fraternity, and equality. Washington rejected the close connection that Jefferson made at the time between the fate of the French and American causes, and believed that allegiance to the French transnational cause would divide, not unite, the American political community.

Still, Washington's public pronouncements on the French Revolution are few, moderate, and largely supportive; and he is silent on the subject in the Address itself. Washington wrote to the French minister in 1796 that "my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited, whensoever in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of Freedom." Washington considered this sentiment a necessary and healthy part of the American political character. But Washington wished to teach his fellow citizens that their passion for the universal cause of human liberty must not be unreflective. Washington acknowledged that the French, and every other people, had a right to decide the form of their own government, through whatever process that might entail. His implicit criticism of the French Revolution went to the means, not the end, of achieving liberty, and to France's determination to spread its cause by the force of arms. Citizen Genet's efforts to recruit American citizens into acts of war were certainly fresh in the president's mind; and the French minister in Philadelphia, Pierre Adet, was even then scheming to influence the upcoming election in the Republicans' favor. Adet, under the orders of the French Directory, announced publicly in August 1796 that the forthcoming vote would determine whether America would remain in friendship with France, or whether there would be a quarrel, and probably war. Washington (who had not yet announced his retirement) "must go."

Accordingly, Washington was determined to insulate the American character from the consequences of the French Revolution, to the extent that he considered those consequences to be unhealthy to the American body politic. Specifically, the United States must draw a line between what the French did for and to themselves - which was their own business - and French efforts to universalize their revolution by meddling in the domestic affairs of others, including the United States.

In speaking of the French Revolution to the Marquis de Lafayette, Washington had observed that "men are very apt to run to extremes", and this reflected his larger understanding of an underlying cause of factionalism in American politics. The task of Washington's statesmanship, particularly after 1793, was to fight the tendency toward extremism in both foreign and domestic policy (the two being practically inseparable). Washington rejected the adoption of extremist policies of his own to combat extremism of another sort. But to bring about such moderation, Washington was prepared to lean against the prevailing current if necessary, even at the risk of his popularity.

All this supported the logic of Washington's Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, which he called in the Farewell Address the "index to my plan" toward the war in Europe. Strict neutrality kept the United States out of the war, and eventually kept the war out of American domestic politics. Later in his second term, Washington concluded that the circumstances of the moment required him to reach an accommodation with the British - culminating in the unpopular Jay Treaty - as long as American honor, and its legal obligations to France, were not sacrificed in the process. Washington relied on his personal prestige, on the public's assurance that his object was neither alliance with Britain nor adoption of British forms of government, to win the day for the treaty. But in doing so, he was undoubtedly aware that the strongly pro-French sentiment of the public might drive the Federalists to become dangerously attached to Britain in response. Thus there are good grounds for believing that Washington's warning against the consequences of excessive attachments was indeed meant to apply equally to the Federalists and Britain. One extreme was not to be used to justify another.

A few months after the Farewell Address appeared, Jefferson would write in the same spirit: "Our countrymen have divided themselves by such strong affections, to the French and the English, that nothing will secure us internally but a divorce from both nations; and this must be the object of every American." Albert Gallatin, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, agreed in 1798 that "to detach ourselves from any connection with European politics, will tend to reconcile parties", so that "our own united efforts may then prove not altogether unsuccessful in promoting the happiness of America, and conciliating the affections of every part of the Union." Washington himself could not have said it better.

Two Hundred Years Later

It is tempting to seek direct guidance from the Farewell Address for the present - to decide, for example, whether we should enlarge NATO, or how we should deal with the trade imbalance with Japan. But a literal application of Washington's legacy runs the risk that we will confuse his specific advice, appropriate to a particular time and circumstance, with the larger "truths important at all times" spoken of by Daniel Webster. This confusion was fatal to the isolationists of the 1930s, who overlooked the spirit of the Address in favor of its letter.

The spirit of the Address - indeed, of Washington's entire public career - was directed at creating and strengthening an independent political community with a distinctive American, and republican, character. By his actions and rhetoric, culminating in the Farewell Address, Washington sought to identify and combat the extremes toward which the people of his time were inclined. At the same time, he understood that these extremes often reflected natural, if dangerously exaggerated, facets of the American character. Reconciliation - not mere compromise - became Washington's object: to articulate a moderate, sustainable, and higher political ground upon which the American character could develop and flourish. With this accomplished, the United States could effectively pursue its interests, and give and exact justice toward the world; and the American experiment could exert its true and proper influence on the rest of mankind.

Today there are again two extremes in foreign policy worth noting, moderating, and reconciling. The first is the tendency to turn sharply inward, which, taken to an extreme, leads to a xenophobic, bad-tempered nationalism that spites America's optimism and its larger sense of national purpose. This extreme also neglects the continued need for the United States to "command its own fortunes" in a strategic environment that remains - as always and even at the best of times - harsh and potentially dangerous. It ignores the fact that our ability to enter into political relations with other powers without dangerous entanglements is enhanced not only by American power, but by the fact that many of these powers are now democracies. This opens up possibilities for fruitful cooperation among nations in a way not available in Washington's day - possibilities created in no small part by America's defense of its own and other democratic societies during this century. The United States rightly takes pride in its historical role as exemplar and, where necessary and appropriate, defender of civil and religious freedom.

Today's inward-directed pressure would not have troubled Washington so long as its aims were just and its expression moderate. The need felt by Americans to re-define their public and private character in more positive terms, after an extraordinary period during which foreign policy assumed an exceptional priority in their affairs, is true to the spirit of the Farewell Address, in which Washington specifically sought to prevent the pressures of the outside world from defining American politics. So is the need to attend to the urgent problems that now beset our society. The current revived public discourse on government, civil society, and civic virtue is, it may be hoped, the beginning of an effort to build a new consensus on the nation's future purpose and character. Central to Washington's view was that justice and virtue know no sharp dividing line between the nation's conduct at home and abroad. If that is the conclusion to which America's domestic self-absorption is leaning, who could oppose it?

At the same time, the case for the compatibility of domestic political reform and foreign policy should not rest on the other extreme to which some Americans are inclined. This is the assumption that relations among nations have now become so interdependent that nothing short of a "proactive" foreign policy is either feasible or desirable; and that, indeed, the United States, acting not simply in its own interests but on behalf of the international community, must take the lead in the reform of the world if it is successfully to reform itself.

Certainly, to be true to themselves, Americans cannot ignore the safety and happiness of other nations and peoples. We must continue to have "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." But certain, too, is it that Americans will not be true to themselves if they allow the pursuit of virtue to justify behavior on their own part that in others they would readily recognize as imperialistic or hegemonic, and if they define American interests in such a way as to demand the nation's intervention virtually everywhere and in all matters. It is worth bearing in mind that while this is the bicentennial of the Farewell Address, it is only a few years since the bicentennial of the French Revolution, an event whose impact on international politics should serve as a standing reminder of the danger of embarking on a crusade, even - or especially - one undertaken in the name of the best democratic and republican principles.

We now come full circle: As the Farewell Address argued, American foreign policy rightly begins with efforts to secure the country's basic material interests of security and prosperity. But these interests should be defined, or formed, through a domestic political process that has "our justice" as its end. Washington's advice to pursue American interests, guided by America's sense of justice, in order to command the nation's fortune in the world, remains sound. This formula, rightly understood, provides the United States with the right reasons for overcoming both excessive inwardness and immoderate activism.

1 Jay's Treaty, signed in 1794 and ratified in 1795, resolved several outstanding issues between Britain and the United States left over from the Treaty of Peace - most importantly, a British commitment to evacuate the Western frontier posts. But the treaty accomplished little else to American benefit and, by agreeing to forego discrimination against the ships and goods of another nation, Jay denied the Republicans their favorite weapon against the British.