American Exceptionalism: The New Version

Each nation tends to see itself as unique. Two, France and the United States, consider themselves as exceptional because—or so they claim—of the universality of their values. One only, the United States, has tried to develop foreign policies that reflect such exceptionalism. Whereas France and most of the European powers have tended, or been forced, to practice balance-of-power politics for their protection and for the creation of minimal order in the international jungle, the United States has had much leeway to be original. The main component of its exceptionalism has been, for more than a century after its