George Washington, the United States, and the World

The September 17, 1796 “Farewell Address” George Washington delivered upon departing the presidency is a foundation stone of American foreign relations thinking. It is also a grand strategy document (one heavily crafted by Alexander Hamilton), a shot at Washington’s and Hamilton’s pro-French Democratic-Republican political opponents, and an effort to dampen national political division. Here, Washington famously mentioned the dangers of “entangling alliances,” words seized upon to advocate forbidding or abandoning support for friendly and allied nations. But this simplistic portrayal of Washington’s advice doesn’t relay the breadth of his words. An increasingly dangerous international scene, and a presidential election possibly returning the nation’s most famous critic of America’s alliances to the White House, shows the need to recover the fulness of Washington’s advice about the nation’s place and purpose in the world.

Famously, Washington cautioned the U.S. against becoming involved in Europe’s affairs as the conflicting interests of its nations rarely concerned the United States. America should honor its current ties but create no more. Why, he asked, “by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe,” should Americans “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?” “It is our true policy [strategy] to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements.”

Two factors shape a clearer image of Washington’s (and Hamilton’s) vision for the nation’s walk with the world: “fidelity” to current alliances (meaning France, with which the United Colonies allied during the War of Independence), and the “liberty” to “steer clear” of additional “permanent alliances.” Those urging obeying Washington’s supposed advice to separate from the world overlook his insistence upon remaining a loyal partner honoring its agreements, and that sometimes the U.S. needs allies, such as when it fought for independence: “Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

Remembering Washington’s pragmatism is critical. In the present era of strategic competition, the U.S. faces a gathering coalition of authoritarian actors – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – determined to overturn the current international system and undermine America’s institutions, society, and place in the world. Together, their GDP is about $21 trillion; the U.S.’s, about $26 trillion. By comparison, the U.S. GDP in 1985 was $4.3 trillion; the Soviet Union’s, $2.2 trillion. We hold an advantage, but not the overwhelming one of the Cold War era. Moreover, their combined populations dwarf America’s; and their willingness to sacrifice the lives and welfare of their citizens in order to achieve their aims is drastically higher. With $33 trillion in debt, and an unwillingness and possible inability to spend what is necessary to counter the growing power of states meaning us ill, the U.S. needs friends to help ensure overweening economic and military strength and the ability to deter aggression these can provide. We must exercise our liberty to choose friends and allies, embrace and strengthen our current “entanglements,” and cultivate new ones aiding the U.S. in maintaining the Union and its freedoms, just as Washington said. Maintaining the current rules-based international system enables free nations such as ours to choose their own way. Only by harnessing our power – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic – can the U.S. achieve these aims. And only with the help of allied and friendly nations can we hope to gather the necessary strength. America needs friends. And our friends need us.

Washington didn’t advocate isolationism but disentanglement (which didn’t preclude involvement in the world) and building the nation’s strengths to achieve its security and sovereignty. If these things were done, and Americans stood together, Washington believed the result would be decisive:

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Military and economic strength would deter enemies and grant the U.S. freedom of action internationally.

One challenge of abiding by Washington’s words is that the United States is no longer “detached and distant.” Jean-Jules Jusserand, France’s ambassador to Washington from 1902-1924 said of America’s strategic position: “On the north, she has a weak neighbor; on the south, another weak neighbor; on the east, fish, and the west, fish.” But technology and our economic and cultural interconnectedness have altered the situation. Washington urged flexibility backed by strength which, once achieved, would allow the fledging US to “resolve upon” “neutrality” or “choose peace or war” as it deemed fit.

Washington didn’t call for a U.S detached from the world – he knew the impossibility of this – and certainly cautioned about alliances – but he also understood the necessity of interacting with the world to secure America’s place in it. The nation must protect itself, particularly in dangerous times: “There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.”

Washington understood the necessity of meeting the world where it was, building sufficient protective strength, and using this to engage internationally in ways beneficial to the United States and its people. This, the nation can do. But the exigency of the situation demands friends to help.

His admonition to “remain one people under an efficient government,” is a little harder to meet.

Donald Stoker is Professor of National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School and author of the forthcoming Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present (Cambridge University Press). The views expressed here are his own.

This article is adapted from Donald Stoker’s new book: "Purpose and Power: American Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2024)."