Neste dia em 1776: Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, In Congress, July 4, 1776

 Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Thomas Jefferson, In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, 

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

American Foreign Policy; the jeffersonian tradition under Obama - Book review

H-Diplo Article Review 769 on “Shielding the Republic: Barack Obama and the Jeffersonian Tradition of American Foreign Policy.”

by George Fujii

	2018
	H-Diplo @HDiplo Article Review  No. 769 23 May 2018

Article Review Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse

Web and Production Editor: George Fujii 

Michael Clarke and Anthony Ricketts.  “Shielding the Republic: Barack Obama and the Jeffersonian Tradition of American Foreign Policy.”  Diplomacy and Statecraft 28:3 (2017): 494-517.  DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1347448.

URL: http://tiny.cc/AR769

Review by Gustav Meibauer, London School of Economics and Political Science

 

 

The foreign policy (or lack thereof) of the current presidency has led to a flurry of publications highlighting the purported influence of ‘Jacksonianism’ on the Trump administration’s thinking.^[1] Indeed, at least since Walter R. Mead’s influential book, the four ideational traditions in U.S. grand strategy and foreign policy he identified—Jacksonianism, Hamiltonianism, Wilsonianism, Jeffersonianism—have captured the attention of researchers trying to account for both continuity and change in American foreign policy.^[2] The recent focus on Jacksonianism is preceded by extensive scholarship on principles most closely connoted with Wilsonianism and Hamiltonianism: internationalism and interventionism, the active promotion of liberal values, democracy, human rights, and free trade; in short, the remaking of the world in America’s image.^[3] In their excellently detailed and theoretically rich article, Clarke and Ricketts take it upon themselves to highlight the fourth tradition, namely Jeffersonianism,^[4] and showcase its analytical value in elucidating what remains a topical puzzle: the seemingly inconsistent and contradictory nature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, particularly vis-à-vis Libya and Syria.

The authors argue that what they perceive as the current literature’s “inability to characterise President Barack Obama’s foreign policy adequately” (495) stems from the failure to account for Jeffersonian influences on President Barack Obama’s rhetoric, decision-making, and corresponding U.S. behaviour. In an impressive, theoretically rich exegesis of Jeffersonian thought, the authors then develop the core ideational tenets and principles of this grand strategic tradition. In that regard similar to Jacksonianism, Jeffersonian principles focus on the “perfection and protection” of the virtues of the republic. Instead of espousing populist values and military strength, however, Jeffersonianism highlights the maintenance of a functioning democratic system, prescribes inherent restraint (even detachment) in foreign affairs, and supports the use of force primarily for the purposes of self-defence, the protection of commerce, and the maintenance of neutrality (501). This, the authors argue, is quite different from simply “isolationism.” Instead, the avoidance of entanglement in the affairs of other states, and the focus on balance of power, on “unmolested commerce” and the principles of free trade, is informed, in their narrative, by Jefferson’s prudent estimation of the interests of what was, in his time, a “small but prosperous neutral power dependent on external trade” tasked with preserving “individual liberty and republican government” at home (502). The article is strongest in the authors’ meticulous, elegantly presented and all-round convincing presentation of Jeffersonian principles, which succeeds in establishing this tradition more firmly alongside its more prominent counterparts and contributes in important ways to the broader research field on the ideational underpinnings of U.S. grand strategy.^[5]

The authors proceed to argue that the principles they have identified can help explain what is often depicted as the contradictory quality of Obama foreign policy: “Such contradictory assessments are the result of a failure to account for the introverted influence of the Jeffersonian tradition” (504). In particular, the “various crises that have confronted the [U.S.] since 9/11” have opened up political space for the resurgence of such views—an assessment that broadly compares with those expressed elsewhere that the post-Cold War era and/or 9/11 respectively have increased ideational competition over America’s interests, strategies, and role in the world.^[6] The authors criticise these approaches for their lack of synthesis and the failure to “account for the broader themes within Obama’s foreign policy approach” (506). 

They therefore have set themselves the task to provide such synthesis, and try to demonstrate the uniquely Jeffersonian element in, variously, Obama’s rhetoric, decision-making, and resulting American foreign policy. It is to the authors’ credit that they focus on the Obama administration’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Libya and Syria to “situate Obama’s strategic response to these civil wars within a well-formed tradition of American foreign policy” (508). This poses a particular challenge, as an analysis highlighting common principles across both cases would have to account for U.S. support for intervention in the one case, and non-intervention in the other. Indeed, the authors argue that Obama’s response to both civil wars “prioritised American domestic ideals” (507) and direct American national security interests (510). Libya did not touch upon such core interests, and thus Obama, viewing the situation instead as a “European problem,” decided to support the intervention by “leading from behind” and “offloading” responsibilities (509): the authors agree with Jack Holland’s characterisation that Obama “utilised all available technological sophistication, coupled with elegant and lofty rhetoric, in order to minimise the costs and risks to the United States” (509-10).^[7]  A similar principle was at play vis-à-vis Syria: Obama withstood pressures to intervene in a conflict he perceived as irrelevant to vital national interests, and instead opted for a more limited strategy of providing military assistance and concentrating on the fight against the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS).

While empirically rich (as much as the current lack of primary data that afflicts all research on topical administrations allows), the case analysis cannot fully live up to the authors’ promise. It is not evident that the authors’ assessment that Obama did not want to commit military force “if there [wasn’t] a threat to national interests” is enough to qualify him as a Jeffersonian. Here, it seems that the authors’ case analysis could profit from a further focus on the domestic side of the story that is so important in the authors’ rich exegesis of Jeffersonian thought. Similarly, the authors’ focus on synthesis may have led them to overemphasise coherence in foreign policy decision-making. Infusing the empirical analysis with an argument around Jeffersonian principles makes sense, to be sure, because it helps flesh out the topical relevance of this foreign policy tradition. Conversely, however, the authors could probably have reached the same analytical conclusions from their cases (namely that the Obama administration had a more restrained understanding of the national interest compared to, for example, Obama’s activist, even expansionist, predecessor) by employing simpler, binary categories.^[8]

The authors themselves stress that Mead’s traditions were aimed squarely at moving beyond such binaries and false dichotomies towards a more nuanced account of American foreign policy (496). But then part and parcel of this move is a more ‘realistic’ conception of conflicting and ever-competing streams of thought. Rather than categorising Obama (or the Obama administration?) as (predominantly) Jeffersonian, then, additional focus could perhaps have been put on fleshing out how the different traditions interact in foreign policy.^[9] The authors point to this themselves when they highlight the different voices and viewpoints present in the administration (are Obama, his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter all similarly Jeffersonian?). Obama himself, who is mostly depicted as a Jeffersonian, seemed to think preventing a massacre in Libya is in America’s interest (511). Is this about domestic ideas, protecting commerce, or vital security interests, or might Obama be torn between principles of Jeffersonianism and others (perhaps more Wilsonian in nature)? ^[10] Finally, Jeffersonian principles end up causingeither reticent action (in Libya) or, for the most part, inaction (in Syria), only in part. Evidently, as the authors suggest, external factors such as “the inability to get multilateral cover” and “uncertainty over whether [intervention in Syria] would be the first step in an escalatory ladder leading to sustained […] military involvement” formed the other part of Obama’s calculus (511). This point towards a potentially fruitful integration of ideational drivers of foreign policy with external factors in a theory of strategic choice. As such, Clarke and Rickett’s article has enriched the field with a theoretically sophisticated take on the Jeffersonian tradition. By engaging critically with questions of foreign policy change and continuity, the authors offer a nuanced and intriguing account of Obama’s strategic choices. This makes their article a must-read for any scholar or practitioner seeking to understand the ideational underpinnings of past and current American foreign policy.

Gustav Meibauer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on U.S. grand strategy, coercive diplomacy, and the interaction of external stimuli and elite ideas in foreign policy decision-making.

© 2018 The Authors | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

Notes

[1] Taesuh Cha, “The Return of Jacksonianism: The International Implications of the Trump Phenomenon,” The Washington Quarterly 39:4 (2016): 83-97; Walter R. Mead, “The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs 96 (2017): 2-7.

[2] Walter R. Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

[3] Amilcar Antonio Barreto, American Identity in the Age of Obama (London: Routledge, 2013); Fraser Cameron, US Foreign Policy After the Cold War: Global Hegemon or Reluctant Sheriff?(London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy: Public Diplomacy at the End of the Cold War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).

[4] Jack Holland, “Obama as Modern Jeffersonian,” in Jack Holland and Michelle Bentley, eds., The Obama Doctrine: A Legacy of Continuity in U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2016); Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, “Thomas Jefferson and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 69:2 (1990): 135-156.

[5] Eric A. Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Adam Quinn, “The Art of Declining Politely: Obama’s Prudent Presidency and the Waning of American Power,” International Affairs 87:4 (2010): 803-824; Colin Dueck, “Ideas and Alternatives in American Grand Strategy, 2000-2004,” Review of International Studies 30:4 (2004): 511-535; Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Barry R. Posen and  Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions of US Grand Strategy,” International Security 21:3 (1996): 5-53.

[6] Holland, “Obama as Modern Jeffersonian.”

[7] Holland, 49.

[8] Tudor Onea, US Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; Quinn; Robert Singh, Barack Obama’s Post-American Foreign Policy: The Limits of Engagement(London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012); Hal Brands, “Barack Obama and the Dilemmas of American Grand Strategy,” The Washington Quarterly 39:4 (2017): 101-125.

[9] Dueck; Posen and Ross.

[10] David Fitzgerald and David Ryan, Obama, US Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Intervention (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

A frase da semana (de sempre): Thomas Jefferson sobre os livros