Foreign Affairs and Federalism
Federalism has played a major but little-noticed role in U.S. foreign policy. Its greatest successes in this sphere, paradoxically, were in eliminating foreign policy among the founding states of the United States and in removing the territories it subsequently absorbed from the realm of foreign policy. These developments, which came in the early period of the Union, are usually not conceived of as foreign policies; but for Americans who did so conceive of them, they provided models for later applications of federalism in external diplomacy.
The Constitution obviated the need for a foreign policy on the part of the individual states of the union, whether toward other countries or toward one another. The Articles of Confederation had forbidden separate state foreign policies, but the temptation remained; the stronger union after 1787 eliminated the temptation. Similarly, the Constitution, while unable to prevent civil war between the northern and southern regions of the Union with their different forms of society, eliminated the danger of war between individual states—an impressive accomplishment as settlers moved westward where the old colonies had overlapping claims.
Technically, federalism made foreign policy complicated. Under the Confederation, important treaties of the union were disobeyed by states, making diplomacy difficult. The Constitution resolved this problem but still kept diplomacy difficult. By separating legislature from the executive, it made the ratification of treaties uncertain compared to other countries and weakened the coherence of foreign policy. As a bargain between states that did not always trust each other—Southerners feared treaties might betray their interests in the Mississippi—it imposed a two thirds requirement on Senate ratification of treaties. John Hay, a Neo-Federalist secretary of state more than a century later, called this the irreparable mistake of the Constitution.
However, as a compensating factor, federalism introduced a new simplifying element into foreign policy: the possibility of annexations yielding constitutionally equal states that could homogenize with the others, sparing itself the usual imperial or center-periphery tensions. The Articles of Confederation had provisions for admitting other countries by decision of nine states. The 1787 Constitution enabled a majority of both Houses of Congress to admit a new state, making the admission of a state formally easier than a treaty with a state.
What really made rapid expansion possible, however, was that the Constitution based everyday congressional decision making on simple majorities, and executive implementation no longer dependent on the member states. This enabled the Congress and executive to keep functioning without loss of efficiency when the number of member states increased. Expansion thus occurred without any widening, deepening tension. The 1787 form of federation facilitated expansion in a manner and degree without historical precedent. And expansion was the most important element in the first century of American foreign policy.
In other external diplomacy, Federalist ideals played a smaller role at first. The original generation of Founding Fathers dreamed of wider applications of federalism—Thomas Jefferson dreamed of an Anglo-American-Spanish confederacy, Thomas Paine of an Anglo-American-French one in the early stages of the French Revolution; James Madison and Jefferson noted the absence of any absolute limits on how far modern federalism could be extended; and Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in Paris that if the federal Constitution could succeed, there was no reason not to unite Europe in “one Grand Republick and Federal Union.” However, none of this went farther than personal speculations, usually private. After the 1790s, it faded away from the comments of national leaders; lesser, if still estimable, figures continued such thoughts.
After 1865, international federalism reemerged as a subject for speculation, this time both among national leaders such as President Ulysses Grant and among leading intellectuals—in Europe as well as the United States. A huge impression was made by the successful consolidation of the American federation following its testing in civil war, and also by the human cost of modern war.
International unions of states were in fact developed in the twentieth century, under the pressure of the wars and the influence of federative movements. They developed on all three levels, European, Atlantic, and global. These unions took the form of confederations: the European Union, the Atlantic alliance structures (NATO, OECD, G-8), and the UN system. Confederalism thereby experienced a revival, thanks in part, paradoxically, to Federalist propaganda imbued with the Anti-Confederalist spirit of The Federalist Papers.
The founders of international institutions were in each case a mix of Federalist and Non-Federalist national leaders and officials; the institutional mixes of federal, confederal, and nonfederal elements can be traced to the balance between those who pushed for federalism and those who resisted it. The League of Nations was the child of Woodrow Wilson, who felt that the ultimate goal was world federalism and the League was the first step; the idea was pioneered by a League to Enforce Peace, a public movement whose guiding spirit, Hamilton Holt, was a world Federalist. NATO was negotiated by Atlantic Federalists such as John Hickerson and Theodore Achilles of the U.S. State Department, and their counterparts in other countries such as Lester Pearson of Canada, as well as by Non-Federalists in the United States and other governments such as Dean Acheson. The European Community (EC) was negotiated overwhelmingly by Federalists, and so was able to include in its founding treaties a Federalist commitment to “an ever closer Union of the European peoples,” a goal to which it has increasingly approximated itself, becoming the European Union (EU) in 1992.
The United States played a central role in promoting these international organizations and their federal features. Woodrow Wilson was only the first to do so. The Marshall Plan used its funds to pressure Europeans to form an economic federation; it spawned the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the latter serving as one of the most fertile of international organizations: father-in-law to the EC, direct father to the OECD, and uncle to NATO, which took many of its personnel and practices. The CIA helped finance the European Movement, which in turn spawned the Hague Congress and Council of Europe and backed Jean Monnet in forming the EC.
Monnet himself always worked closely with the United States, starting out in World War I as an organizer of the Atlantic alliance, and forming close liaisons in the interwar years with figures such as William Clayton and John Foster Dulles—both Federalists. Clayton wanted an economic federation of Europe within an Atlantic political federation and a world of free trade leading to eventual world federation. Dulles advocated a complete European federation within an Atlantic confederation or federation, and eventual world federation. Clayton, as undersecretary of state for economic affairs, helped negotiate the Bretton Woods institutions and wrote the memo on the economic collapse of Europe that led to the Marshall Plan. He personally insisted to European leaders that the funds would flow only if they set up a permanent joint organization: thus the birth of OEEC. Dulles guided Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who sponsored the bipartisan resolution laying the ground for NATO, and as secretary of state pushed hard in 1953–54 for the Europeans to form a full federation. His idea of liberation drew on the Federalist nucleus approach. He remains respected in Europe even if usually condemned in the United States on left-right grounds.
These individuals did not operate in a vacuum. They could play pivotal roles because there was a large milieu supporting federalism in American foreign policy thinking. This milieu had grown for nearly a century. Later it shrank in the 1960s, and American federative initiative shrank with it. The primary American role in promoting international organization and federalism was a consequence of American ideals and of the enormous emerging power of the United States—itself credited to its rapid federal expansion, bringing it to the point at which, by 1890, it surpassed all European powers save Russia in population, and had a larger active loyal citizenry than any country anywhere. It entered into the heart of world politics only then, in the 1890s. From the start it sought a moral orientation for the use of its power, looking for something more relevant to an interdependent world than classical realpolitik. Its ideals of democracy and federalism provided its two most important motifs for moralizing foreign policy in the twentieth century.
The two motifs became intertwined. The confederalism of Woodrow Wilson was part of his plan to “make the world safe for democracy”; the federalism of the 1940s was meant to stabilize democracy and avoid new Weimars—in effect, to make democracy safe for the world. Federalism was envisaged as making a success of democracy in central and southern Europe where before it had always been problematic; democracy in turn was a criterion for membership in the federative unions. This combination of roles was applied in the EU as well as NATO. While democracy has been the most vocal of American political exports, federalism has been comparably important in practice.
For nearly all Federalist movements from the 1860s to the 1940s, whether in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere, the inspirational point of reference was the American union and its bible, The Federalist Papers. Those Papers had argued that the new 1787 form of federation could eliminate rivalry and war between its member states, could free democracy of its traditional penchant for extremism and instability, could overcome the frailties of previous confederations, and could unite the freedom and expanse of federalism with the efficiency of the modern central sovereign state—all matters of greatest importance for international politics. The United States seemed to bear out in practice these happy predictions.
The Civil War, to be sure, served as warning as well as inspiration: warning, in showing that Union does not eliminate all dangers of war; yet inspiration, in showing that the Union, with its strong form of federal entities elected by the people, could grow roots deep enough to endure a rift running straight through its body politic and heal with unusual rapidity. The warning led some Federalists, often called “regionalists,” to be cautious; they generally restricted their proposed unions to countries with similar democratic regimes and societies with similar forms and levels of development. Some of them salvaged a hope for ultimate world federation by leaving a door open for others to join after meeting the standards; this was the “nucleus” idea, modeled rhetorically on the United States’ expansion from 13 states to 50. World Federalists gave a different answer to the warning, arguing that technology and globalization were rapidly erasing distinctions, and were making interdependence so great and war so costly that the dangers of remaining separate had become greater than the dangers of federation on a global scale.
The UN system reflected the globalist approach; the EU and NATO reflected the regional nucleus approach. NATO included in its founding treaties the provision of leaving a door open to later emerging democratic states to join; the EC treaty called emotionally upon all free Europeans to join in its project. Realists and neutralists argued that this would only alienate those left out and lead to counterunions like the Warsaw Pact. Nevertheless, the EU and NATO gradually attracted all countries in their neighborhood to wish to join, including by the 1980s their enemies; the prospect of joining played a role in motivating the Soviet bloc countries to abandon communism and to hope to be able to succeed as democracies.
The American Federalist roots of contemporary international confederacies raise a question of whether they have a genetic code of evolving toward modern federation. In the case of the EU, this seems plausible; the trend toward federation has accelerated since 1989. Elsewhere such a telos has been less in evidence; the Atlantic and global institutions have continued to evolve and in some respects deepen, but more slowly and without clear direction. The slowdown correlates to the decline of American support for international federalism since the Vietnam War and the rise of the “small is beautiful” philosophy.
The decline of the goal of federalism in American foreign policy has continued, with ups and downs, for several decades; it may or may not be permanent. The rise of international federalism in American thinking and policy proceeded even longer. It was propelled by pride in the American political innovation and by increases in interdependence, factors that have not disappeared.
In view of the depth of national sovereignty and identity, and the profound differences between national societies with collective corporate achievements to defend, an endpoint of modern federation seems unlikely for most international organizations: what worked for a union of British colonies may not be appropriate for a union of historical nations. Yet in view of ever-accelerating growth of technology and interdependence, it seems that some form of efficient federalism must eventually be achieved. If international federations do emerge, they will come after a process already much lengthier than the Federalist movements had anticipated in their idealization of the U.S. Constitutional Convention, and take forms unique in many respects. Nevertheless they may, like the EU, incorporate some basic principles of the modern national federation pioneered in the United States, such as the direct election of federal representatives and direct legal obligation of citizens to federal authorities.
Ira Straus
SEE ALSO: Commerce with Foreign Nations