Do Americans have a worldview? And is there a central organizing principle that explains it? To frame the question in Tolkienesque terms: Might there be one explanation that rules them all?
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I think there is.
Sigmund Freud argued that in the human enterprise, anatomy is destiny. In the affairs of nations, geography -- what it wills, demands, and bestows -- is destiny too.
It can't explain everything, to be sure. Britain and Japan are both island nations. That might explain their reliance on naval power and even their imperial aspirations. But what accounts for their fundamentally different histories? Other factors are clearly at play, including culture, religion, and what nature bestows or denies in resources. Fortune, along with the random circumstances it brings, pushes them in different directions.
Still, if I had to identify that one thing that -- more than any other -- helps explain the way Americans see the world, it would be America's physical location. It's kind of like in the real estate business: It's all about location, location, location.
The United States is the only great power in the history of the world that has had the luxury of having nonpredatory neighbors to its north and south, and fish to its east and west. The two oceans to either side of the country are what historian Thomas Bailey brilliantly described as its liquid assets.
Canadians, Mexicans, and fish. That trio of neighbors has given the United States an unprecedented degree of security, a huge margin for error in international affairs, and the luxury of largely unfettered development.
From the earliest days of the country's founding, geography has been much more an ally than adversary. As the Brits found out, an island cannot rule a continent. To be sure, America was vulnerable in those early years. The French and Spanish threatened North America with their imperial ambitions. The British also wouldn't give up easily: The king's troops invaded and burned parts of Washington in 1812 and again looked for advantages during the U.S. Civil War.
Still, for most of its history, the United States lived with a security unparalleled among the countries of the world. And despite the shrinking nature of that world and the threats it carried -- take the Pearl Harbor attack, the Cuban missile crisis, the 9/11 attacks -- the United States never faced a threat to its existence. Its only real existential threat came not from abroad, but from within -- a civil war over slavery that almost tore the country apart. Indeed, after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, the United States would never again be faced with a threat quite like that.
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