America is tired of being a superpower. Polling data from the 2024 Presidential election suggest that Donald Trump’s foreign policy plan, which seems to oppose America’s international role as a leading superpower, was itself an important factor in his election. His foreign policy, adopting neo-isolationism and a willingness to dismiss our role as a defender of an international world order, breaks decades of internationalist precedent. 

The Trump foreign policy vision sharply contrasts  that of the Biden administration, which represents the conventional liberal internationalism. That has guided American statecraft for more than a century. This brand of foreign policy has worked to position the U.S. as a superpower state that devotes its considerable resources and partnerships to promoting liberal democracy abroad and curbing the spread of autocracy and human rights abuses. Since the end of the Cold War, America has become, in the words of Robert Kagan, the “Benevolent Empire,” using its unprecedented unilateral influence to manage global crises, maintain international order, foster economic prosperity, and promote liberal democracy abroad. Indeed, the beginnings of American unipolar hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War saw the rapid ascendancy of international liberal democracy in the early 1990s. By 2006–the peak of global liberal democracy–about three-fifths of all countries had governments in which citizens engaged in free and fair elections. 

 Since then, however, the international political and economic winds have turned against America’s standing as the unipolar superpower. The advanced democracies, including the United States, have seen diminished economic and geopolitical standing. America and Europe’s share of global economic output has declined since the 1960s, while that of Russia and China has only risen. A shrinking share of the economic pie has been accompanied by the rise of intense economic inequalities in both emerging and developed countries. This has resulted in rising resentment among the middle and lower classes, which, in turn, has increased political polarization.

Global democracy has been steadily in retreat as autocratic states including China, Russia, and Hungary have risen to use their growing influence, wealth, and technological power to undermine confidence in democracy abroad through media propaganda and interference in democratic elections. The rise in power of autocratic states and alliances have resulted in a world in which the image of American international unipolarity has become increasingly challenged, potentially being replaced by a multipolar world order in which countries such as China and Russia have significantly more influence in international affairs.

In light of these challenges to America’s foreign policy vision, one might argue that American voters’ embrace of Trump isolationism and economic autarchy over traditional liberal interventionism is not only a reaction to the perceived chaos within the liberal international order, but also a kind of “superpower fatigue” among the American public and governing class. This “superpower fatigue” amounts to a growing pessimism about the viability of one of the primary goals of liberal internationalism: the promotion liberal democracy abroad. Trump’s promise of an isolationist “America First” foreign policy shattered the liberal internationalist consensus. As Georgetown University’s Director of European Studies Charles Kupchan writes, “Rather than resisting the public’s call for an inward turn, Trump amplified it, promising to free the U.S. government from its foreign burdens and focus its attention and resources on the home front. That promise won the support of many millions of Americans that felt—and still feel—left behind by liberal internationalism.” 

In recent times, Americans have witnessed two instances where conventional American liberal interventionism has failed. The first is the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. After more than a decade of involvement in Afghanistan, which cost both trillions of dollars and the blood, sweat, and tears of millions–including many American servicemembers–America finally pulled many of its forces from the region. They announced the official end of its project to “nation-build” the country into a stable liberal democracy. The second instance is America’s support for Ukraine in its war with the Russian Federation. Early in the war, the Biden administration argued that in choosing to give weapons, aid, and political support to Ukraine, the United States was engaged in a momentous battle between “democracy versus autocracy,” rhetoric familiar to liberal interventionists. 

Yet after more than two years of fighting, and Russia now controlling around a quarter of Ukrainian territory, the Biden administration’s vision of war against global autocracy seems to have become less popular with the American voter. Pollsters consistently found that American voters generally thought Trump would do a better job than Harris of handling the Russo-Ukrainian war, for which Trump has proposed pulling funding and support for Ukraine–a democratic ally–and advocates swift negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end the conflict. The American public’s antipathy against more direct intervention in foreign wars was also a factor in Trump’s election. According to a survey from the Institute for Global Affairs, which asked swing-state voters which candidate would be more likely to send troops to fight in an unnecessary war, respondents said Harris by six percentage points.

Though America has always been the “benevolent empire,” it has been the “reluctant empire” in many ways as well. From the early days of the Republic, isolationism began as a thread running through American foreign policy, beginning famously with George Washington’s admonition in his famous Farewell Address to “steer clear of permanent alliances” and have “as little political connection as possible” with foreign countries. Yet, as Kupchan writes, the U.S. embrace of an “expansive internationalism” upon joining the Second World War marked a “historical inflection point” which was solidified in U.S. foreign policy by the early 1950s with the onset of the Cold War. With voters’ recent embrace of Trump foreign policy, the American public stands at another historic inflection point: whether or not they believe that the United States should continue with a liberal internationalist foreign policy that engages in the active promotion of liberal democracy abroad, or a Trump-style neo-isolationism. 

Instead of scrapping the project of liberal internationalism altogether and caving to America’s superpower fatigue, its proponents should reimagine the objectives of the internationalist project. This reimagining should include tempering of internationalists’ expectations–and that of the American public–in the United States’ ability to effectively export the American-style liberal democratic model abroad. To avoid the kind of risky imperial overreach that has become fodder for American isolationists arguing against the merits of liberal interventionism–such as in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan–advocates of America’s role in the geopolitical contest of “democracy versus autocracy” must clearly ground their approach to promoting liberal democracy abroad in consistent moral and anthropological theories of man and society. For such theories, we turn to two prominent and familiar thinkers in the Anglo-American political tradition: Mark Twain and Edmund Burke.

Mark Twain and the Connecticut Yankee

The insights from the works of these two thinkers, Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, can promote the following conclusion. Though liberal democratic governments are an objective moral good that should be pursued by all countries, their continued existence is only supported if the sentiments, or emotions of the people themselves, in addition to their social mores, lead them to believe in the morality and justness of the liberal democratic model. The French thinker and author of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, defines “mores” as the “habits of the heart.” In other words, this belief in liberal democracy must be deep-rooted, which means that it seldom comes about through external changes such as technological or infrastructure improvements, or even through education if that education proves insufficient in altering individual sentiments and mores. 

We see this latter point most clearly in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. At face value, Connecticut Yankee is a satire novel against the values of medieval hierarchy. It follows the story of a 19th century factory boss, Hank Morgan, who dreams of emerging in King Arthur’s sixth-century feudal Britain. Hank, who is an ardent and genuine believer in the virtues of American-style republican government, goes on a crusade to eradicate Camelot’s old feudal order and install a republic in its place. To that end, Hank builds a network of telegraph cables, has King Arthur’s knights sell toothbrushes and hats, starts a cleanliness crusade, promotes religious diversity, straightens the roads, organizes a stock market, dynamites Merlin’s tower, and even opens “man factories” to teach young people how to read, write, and think for themselves. He even tries to discredit the established Church by repairing the leak in a “miraculously” dry well considered holy. 

All along the way, Hank maintains a genuine faith that the republican model can be seamlessly and effectively exported to any country, even among “the most degraded people that ever existed.” Yet, Hank’s republican revolution unfortunately flounders on the misguided assumption that mere superficial changes–such as technological knowledge and institutions–can convince people to truly and meaningfully believe in republican society. Camelot’s feudal institutions and ideas, including the divine right of kings, which contrasts with the principles of Hank’s republicanism, had already “penetrated to the soul of the Camelotians,” convincing them of the rightness of their hierarchical order. 

Connecticut Yankee has received several different interpretations of its overarching themes and purpose. Joel A. Johnston argues that the novel is meant as a critical commentary upon “issues of hierarchy, submission, and the exercise of liberty.” For Johnson, “the unifying theme of Connecticut Yankee…concerns how abolishing the physical and legal institutions of hierarchical control is only the first stop toward achieving the individual liberation necessary for democratic self-rule. Unless citizens’ core convictions change, even the most liberal and just reforms will likely fail, prompting critics to conclude–incorrectly, but understandably–that democracy itself is to blame.” The question of the revolution’s success or failure was certainly a question of “core convictions.” And while I agree that the idea that “genuine independence of mind and spirit” of democratic citizens is perhaps the essential precondition for the flourishing of liberal democratic institutions, it is not the only explanation of the failures of Hank’s republican revolution. For that, we turn to the thoughts of the British theorist and politician, Edmund Burke, one of the essential thinkers on the liberal democratic tradition. 

Burke and the Theory of Sentiments

Burke would have found some amusing similarities between the characteristics and outcomes of Hank’s republican revolution in Camelot and the 18th century revolution in France. Both revolutions sought to nearly eradicate the foundations of a longstanding feudal order and replace them with e more egalitarian and republican institutions. Both revolutions, moreover, were grounded in particular egalitarian and abstract moral theories of the rights and nature of individuals. 

Burke’s seminar work, Reflections on the Revolution in France is a critical commentary on the generally misguided nature of the French revolution as a radical effort to change French society and, most importantly, individuals. It is important to note that Burke’s criticism of the principles of the French Revolution is not ultimately a criticism of the concept of political or even moral rights. As Burke himself writes in Reflections, “Far am I from denying in theory; full as far as my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy.” His criticism involves not the question of political rights, per se, but the source and justification of such rights. 

At its core, Burke’s project is interested in the stability of politics as informed by prudence. The French Revolution’s approach to the relationship between abstract rights and politics poses a significant threat to not only the stability of politics but the wellbeing of countries.  The French revolutionaries were militant believers in the then-radical notion that political questions were only a question of abstract rights. In reducing all political questions to questions of natural, abstract right, the revolutionaries discarded other sources of political legitimacy which also served as a source of stability. These include “the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of a long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.” 

The ultimate source of legitimacy for the laws of a country is that such laws have proven, through history,to be beneficial to a people and the country at large. The French “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men.” Yet it is this very wisdom that is best suited to inform the enshrinement of the political rights of a country as tools for the wellbeing of the people. As Burke writes, “lf civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule.” This concept of rights as “proven beneficence” is central to the Burkean political philosophy.

The second threat that the French Revolution’s conception of right poses to stability and wellbeing is that it disincentivizes a kind of patriotism that itself is a key source of stability. A political order crafted from a wisdom born of the history of a given country contains a certain elegance, pleasantness, and beauty that endears its citizens to its institutions. On the other hand, the French Revolution’s overreliance on the language of abstract reason and a metaphysical understanding of politics places its aims in direct opposition to a Burkean conception of rights and its attendant merits. As Burke writes, “Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of his mechanistic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment, But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aides to law” (Burke 77-78). 

Burke in many ways, is the antithesis of Twain’s Hank Morgan. While Hank admits that he had “been a man ‘nearly barren of sentiment…or poetry,’  a fact that caused him to undertake his republican reform “in an overly clinical manner,” Burke embraces both in his politics. For him, the same emotions and sentiments which drive artistic creation are those that motivate political action. His Reflections is littered with references to Shakespeare and the theater, and his prose sings with a kind of poetic musicality. His appreciation for art and beauty extends to his politics; politics is supposed to be beautiful in the sense that it is capable of inspiring in us a passionate love and admiration for our civic institutions and country as a whole. Or, as Burke so eloquently states, “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” 

Towards a More Lovely Liberal Internationalism

A Burkean reading of Twain’s Connecticut Yankee offers a timeless reminder: Successful political systems which seek the wellbeing of their people rely on more than just our abstract conceptions of justice, but also on a rhetoric that is able to convince citizens of the moral rightness of their political regime. Good republics, for their sustainability, must be more than the brick-and-mortar of their institutions or the codification of their laws in a justice system. They must inspire a “revolution of the soul” which is concerned about more than the promise of technological improvement or material prosperity. A positive vision of republican government includes the promise that citizens will not merely live, but that they might live well, that their institutions will enable them to lead ennobling, beautiful lives that are both reflective of an agreed-upon cosmic justice but also are practically and particularly suited toward their individual and collective wellbeing. 

Therefore, a more lovely liberal internationalism may still see American constitutional democracy itself as a model to be emulated and even admired by others, but not necessarily to be copied to perfection in light of respect for the local wisdoms and practical experiences of a national people. It will regard the process of building democracy abroad as one that is gradual, messy, and is driven largely by the spirit and consciousness of a country’s people and its history. Such an approach may be able to relieve America’s superpower fatigue and restore faith in liberal internationalism. 

Burke and Twain confirm that it is indeed possible and desirable for well-meaning individuals to aid in the creation of healthy liberal democracy abroad. However, Americans must learn to reimagine their expectations for the character and outcomes of this process, grounding their understanding on a more solid conception of man, society, and the nature of politics. Reimagining America’s liberal internationalism in this way will help to not only satisfy its staunchest critics, but result in the regrowth of a world full of liberal democracies, one that is both lovely and free.