PARTISAN REVIEW
73
knowledging the necessity of marketplace expansion to sustain the econ–
omy and not questioning the way in which traditional political theory
ties individual freedom to a prosperous capitalist political economy.
If
Roosevelt and Lodge, for example, had been anticapitalist, he might
have a case. But, their tactical rhetoric against businessmen never became
strategic leadership against capitalism.
Those men did not have an actionable personal economic motive
in pushing American expansion, but economics was nevertheless at the
center of their thinking about foreign policy. They periodically sneered
at the entrepreneur, but they persistently concerned themselves with the
kind of imperial action that would sustain the marketplace economy.
Schlesinger also bypasses my explicit discussion of the way in which
metropolitan leaders used the marketplace-expansionist argument to
maintain their political power. Far from disregarding political motives,
I place them at the center of my account when the evidence points to
that analysis (as on p. 32, where I speak directly to the points that
Schlesinger asserts I ignore).
Having once invoked the strategic motive Schlesinger largely ignores
it. Strategy involves a very specific question: how, given a concep–
tion of national requirements and interests, does one formulate a military
policy that will protect or advance those needs and objectives? I offered
in
The Roots
a rather detailed review of how, as the overseas-market
analysis of the American economy gained acceptance, the security peri–
meter and other aspects of strategy were redefined to fit that new con–
ception of the requirements and interests of the political economy. The
navy became the top service arm because it was the instrument of force
most appropriate to a conception of American interests as worldwide,
and the insular acquisitions (and some of the other spheres of influence)
were viewed as military outposts as well as economic springboards.
To go a bit further, the term "strategic motive" is a slippery com–
bination of words, and it is necessary to handle it carefully. Let us
suppose a nation whose
Weltanschauung
does not consider expansion be–
yond its home territory as either necessary or desirable.
It
is content
to conduct its trade on terms mutually agreeable to the parties con–
cerned. A leader of that nation deciding to acquire external territory
solely
for the purpose of improving the military security of his country
against foreign attack could fairly be said to be acting on a strategic
motive. But it is extremely difficult to find such cases. Seward's effort
to buy the Danish West Indies is perhaps the best one (though Seward's
conception of continental security was clearly linked to his imperial
plans) .
To
be
sure, Americans have often invoked the rhetoric and justifica-
