Identity and Foreign Policy: The Case of American Exceptionalism and Unilateralism

This dissertation seeks to bridge both the disciplinary divide between political science and history, as well as the theory-policy divide by presenting a historically informed theory of American foreign policy.;Scholars and policymakers alike assume U.S. foreign policy changed fundamentally in the 1940s, turning away from its "aloof" past towards multilateralism. This is the basis on which contemporary critiques of unilateralism rely. Luckily, according to liberal and constructivist theorists, the American national identity is partly responsible for its commitment to multilateralism, thus the United States can be expected to return to its multilateral posture.;This analysis, however, rests on assumptions about an American national identity and its connection to U.S. foreign policy that are open to critique.;In this dissertation, I argue first, that American identity can meaningfully be defined in terms of American exceptionalism, rather than dichotomized into an "exemplary" and a "missionary" identity; and second, that exceptionalism has contributed to a more constant foreign policy posture than is commonly assumed. The powerful sense of exceptionalism has led the United States to want to engage with the world---in other words, pursue an internationalist foreign policy---but on its own terms, meaning in a unilateral manner. The dissertation critiques the "turn-around thesis" by arguing that it underestimates the internationalism of U.S. foreign policy before the twentieth century, and exaggerates the U.S. commitment to multilateralism made during the Second World War. It does this because it fails to grasp the strong connection between American exceptionalism and unilateral internationalism that has existed in U.S. foreign policy history since the inception of the republic.