Most writers on U.S. foreign policy agree that an “American identity” has had important consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, American identity is usually understood as American exceptionalism, which in turn is used to explain U.S. foreign policy traditions over time. American exceptionalism is often said to have inspired a Janus-faced identity for the United States; an exemplarist identity versus a missionary identity, which in turn contributed to a Janus-faced foreign policy: “aloofness” vs. internationalism. When using “American identity” in their analyses of U.S. foreign policy, however, political scientists have fallen into the trap of employing superficial definitions of an American identity, as well as build their analysis of the connection between an American identity and U.S. foreign policy on outdated conventional wisdom within the field of U.S. foreign relations history. In this paper, I argue that this dichotomous understanding of an American identity, and with it, U.S. foreign policy traditions, simplifies the story to the extent that it distorts it. I argue that the “exemplarist” identity is largely mythical, and that its foreign policy expression - “aloofness” (previously known as “isolationism”) - is also highly questionable, per current scholarship in the history of U.S. foreign relations. This leads to the argument that rather than a dichotomous identity, the United States has exhibited a powerful and persistent sense of missionary exceptionalism, which is connected to a powerful and persistent internationalist bent throughout its foreign policy history. This paper aims to clarify the definition of American exceptionalism, all the while arguing that it should – properly understood – be retained as a definition of American identity. The paper thus contains a different argument about the way in which American exceptionalism has influenced U.S. foreign policy than what is found in most political science literature.
