How plausible is Coles's claim that the ideology underlying American foreign policy is still best characterized as "manifest destiny"? (See especially Coles, 421-422) To some extent, Coles is able to make parts of the case persuasively. It is perhaps plausible to assimilate the acquisition of resources and military bases to manifest destiny. But projecting political power and opening new markets are activities comfortably treated under a heading at once more general and more suggestive: imperialism. A comparison with the British experience is illuminating: the British are not often accused of ideology akin to "manifest destiny," in part because the Anglo-Norman (and eventually English) consolidation of power took place over such a long period of time. And yet, manifest destiny or no manifest destiny, all the way down to the twentieth century (if not the present), the British sought to secure resources, military bases, political power, and new markets throughout a far-flung empire. I worry that Coles's analysis of manifest destiny, geared as strongly as it is to explaining the justification of American foreign policy in light of American experience, lapses into the same ideological trap that she imputes to American government: the conviction that America's behavior is special, and must be explained in terms of its special history. America's behavior is no doubt particularly American, but is not totally idiosyncratic; America's history is its own, but is not without foreign parallels. It seems to me that, before supposing that Americans are peculiarly prone to foreign intervention because of manifest destiny, it would be important to show that this sort of behavior is actually peculiar to Americans.
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