Schools Of American Foreign Policy Thought

In his book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, Walter Russell Mead categories foreign policy beliefs into 4 groups, summarized here by current-practitioners and typical values:

• Jacksonian: John McCain, Ross Perot, Donald Rumsfeld; Cowboy diplomacy, unilateralist

• Hamiltonian: James Baker, George H W Bush; internationalist, conservative multilateralist (coordinate, but on limited scope of goals)

• Jeffersonian: Cato Institute, Colin Powell; protect Civil Rights (protect US values), avoid short-sighted actions that turn against us later

• Wilsonian: Madeleine Albright, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton; liberal internationalist (globalist), multilateralist, "enlightened" (liberal) definition of US role