School of War - Ep 266: Blake Seitz & Mike Watson—Were the Founders Isolationists?

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Blake Seitz, Content Strategist at Palantir Technologies, and Mike Watson, Executive Director at The Alexander Hamilton Society, join the show to discuss America’s relationship with the world at the time of the Founding Fathers. ▪️ Times 02:45 18th Century geopolitical landscape 06:25 Yorktown 11:17 Diplomacy of the Founders  16:23 Bold rhetoric  19:37 Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists 25:45 Washington’s legacy  32:42 The roots of isolationism  36:38 Parallels and changes 44:16 What does it mean to be an American?  47:20 A grounding in history Read more - 1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more content on our School of War Substack

Is America an isolationist or an interventionist country, a country devoted to hard-edged pragmatism or to our highest ideals? Are we focused on our immediate neighborhood or the affairs of the world at large? At the risk of sounding flippant, the answer to all these questions might just be yes. But to get some more clarity on these foundational issues regarding America's role in the world and how these issues have shaped our military history. Today we're going back to the country's founding and where our founders came down on these questions and more. Let's get into it. It is the shift before war this Milwaukee invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in him. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation

I'm trying. It's a fight on the beaches. It's a sight on the landing ground. We'll fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never have no rest. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today.

Blake Sites, who's a content strategist at Palantir. Previously, he was senior policy advisor to Marco Rubio and numerous other folks during their time on the hills. That was Marker Rubio when he was a senator, also speechwriter to Tom Cotton, others like Kevin McCarthy, Mike Lee. We are also joined by Mike Watson, the new executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society. Congratulations, Mike. And thank you both for joining the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us on. Aaron, great to be here. Today, we are going to talk about the American founding and foreign policy. You both contributed essays to a volume that the Alexander

Hamilton Society brought out in recent weeks called 1776, the beginnings of American exceptionalism abroad. Let me start extremely big picture, about as big picture as it gets in these things, and just ask you guys to characterize the 18th century geopolitical context into which America emerges. What is the nature of European politics, British imperial politics, which if America is exceptional, as the title seems to suggest we are going to get to a claim that it is, what is the background against which? which it becomes exceptional. Well, in late 18th century, America and the world

was characterized by competition between old world empires that were expanding and consolidating their positions in the new world. The Britain's American colonies were a major part of that, but of course they were one set piece in a broader competition that was spanning the globe at the time. The French, the Spanish, and other powers had colonies both in the Caribbean, elsewhere on the American continent. And so the situation at that time was part of a struggle between these old world empires that America was a part of. And, you know, the immediate context that the Americans were operating off of was Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War.

and it's changing policy toward America as a result of that victory. So with France being in a weakened position after that war's conclusion, Britain had a period where it was able to consolidate and tried to extract more revenue as recompense from the American colonies and try to focus more on bolstering its own commercial advantage of its traders in America, which is what led to a number of the In retrospect, he would say policy mistakes from London and this tightening, ever-tightening ratchet, this series of sort of ratcheting policy from London and then reactions from America primarily about commercial matters, but that became tied in with conceptions about liberty that ultimately culminated in 1776 with the decision to seek independence and establish American freedom of action from the old world empire itself. Mike, anything to add? Yeah, I think on the American side, you know, we're part of a larger global empire.

And so either conflicts that started in Europe ended up dragging in the United States during most of the century, or occasionally a conflict that started in the United States will then have, or in the territory that became the United States, would then end up having global repercussions. So, for example, the seven years war got started in part by a young George Washington, getting into a skirmish with some French soldiers near to modern-day Pittsburgh. In other cases, a dynastic succession dispute in Europe ended up leading to American cities being attacked or burned down or whatnot. So from the American side, they're very plugged into this world, and not everybody at the time thought that that was a good thing.

One of the goals for some of the people who were in favor of independents was figuring out how to get out of these global conflicts. and they didn't always succeed. It's striking how much of this history is still visible, especially on the East Coast and I guess upstate New York in different places if you know where to look for it, but I don't think many people look for it anymore. I grew up walking distance from Braddock Road in Northern Virginia, which I have to assume is somewhere in the vicinity of the trace

of the actual road that General Braddock cut from Alexandria up along the Potomac to get his troops up to the mountains to fight the French with disastrous consequences, as it turns out. But this military history of what you're describing is actually all around us. It certainly is. And actually, you know, Aaron, as part of this project, so as we put together this essay series over the course of more than a year,

the 10 essayists who are contributing plus myself and T.S. Allen, my co-editor, had a chance to go to Yorktown. So we did a staff ride of the Yorktown battlefield at Virginia to see where, where American and French Marshal Valor won victory on the battlefield. And, you know, as you say, it's not just the Yorktown battlefield. It's stretching all up and down the East Coast of the United States that you see these reminders of where the past took place. And, you know, I think as we go into America's 250th year, it's an incredible opportunity

for people to seek out those sites and go visit them. There's really nothing better than being on the ground and seeing that you guys. of where these battles were fought in order to get into the minds and understand the mindset of our descendants. You know, Yorktown, Yorktown was not sort of the battle of popular imagination of the American Revolution where two sides line up and march toward each other and fire. It was an extended siege that involved trench lines. It was a combined arms operation that had a land component culminating in a bayonet charge that Alexander Hamilton. was a part of. And that involved a battle offshore between the British and French fleets. So it was incredibly modern contest in many cases. And you can only get a sense and a real flavor of it if you're

on the ground looking at it. Yeah, it's quite extraordinary. Okay. So we've we've discussed the geopolitical context. We've discussed the physical military history that's still all around us. And you know, I'm struck that area of Virginia now where Yorktown is is now one of the seats. of American military power. You've got a really significant Air Force base there. You've got a naval air station. You've got the massive naval base at Norfolk itself. You've got some major special operations teams based out of there, just, you know, a stone's throw, essentially from where this revolutionary fight was fought. Okay. So let's talk about the character of this revolutionary entity and young republic and its attitudes towards foreign policy. And I want you guys to help me resolve

what seems like a kind of tension. If you sort of casually ask around these days about what the foreign policy of the early republic was, you tend to hear, or you often can hear, that it was committed to a kind of non-interventionism. It was dedicated to staying out of Europe's troubles and its entanglements. By the 19th century, of course, we have the Monroe Doctrine.

Very much in the news right now, I don't know if you guys saw, not only because of Venezuela, but I don't if you guys saw President Trump's remarks on Air Force One on Sunday as he was flying back from, Palm Beach up to Washington, but he was talking about the Venezuela raid and everything around it. And he had this moment where, you know, a lot of people love Donald Trump.

A lot of people hate Donald Trump. I'm going to set that particular issue aside and just assert that the man is objectively quite funny. And he says, he says as he's sort of justifying and providing context the race, like some people, they're calling it the Don Row doctrine. And he sort of looks wistfully and dramatically away. And it was just, it's like a hard to describe moment that was just side splitting. funny. Like the guy has amazing timing. So we have we have the Monroe doctrine now the Don Roe doctrine, but the Monroe doctrine has articulated in the 19th century is a sort of more

muscular version of you stay out of our business. The Western Hemisphere is ours. Implicitly maybe we'll stay a bit out of your business as well. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, you just described a world in which North America is very much part of European politics. Also, the Declaration of Independence itself, it's a strikingly universalist document just to make a sort of obvious statement. It's making broad assertions about the nature of man, about religious matters, about the nature of politics that do not appear limited to North Americans of a particular ethnic stock in a particular place in time. So if one has broad universalist claims like that, one would think that one would have views. about the rest of the world and not just America. Help me make sense of this rather complicated and confusing picture. Absolutely. So, you know, when you are looking at what the Continental

Congress is thinking about, you have to remember this is early 1776 when they started thinking about declaring independence and doing a few other things that are going to have to do as a result of that. And at this point, the siege of Boston has been concluded successfully from the American side, the British Army has left, the Continental Congress has tried repeatedly to come up with some kind of agreement with the King and George III. And George III, basically, his view is this is a completely illegitimate entity. I'm not going to negotiate with it. I'm just going to send in the army and, you know, precious this rebellion. So the continental Congress is kind of stuck in the spot where on the one hand, you know, they kind of want the Brits to just like leave them

alone. But they can't do that most likely without getting some European support. So among other things, they don't have a Navy. They don't really have any finances to speak of. They don't have an arms industry. So there's no way for them to defend themselves without getting some help from the outside. And they conclude, I think, correctly that the only way they're going to get the European monarchies to help them out is if they declare it depends. They need to make it clear to the French, that this is not just a tax revolt that's going to get resolved the way that many of the tax revolts in early English history have been solved, like, you know, the Magna Carta, you get together on a field, and then you just kind of carve out a new division of responsibilities or whatnot. So that,

they need the French to feel like they have an opportunity to really hurt the Brits and give some money, if they give some money in support to the Americans. So on the one hand, the Americans in this declaration think we really badly need all of these different monarchs to think this is a group that they should support. On the other hand, they've come to the conclusion that most monarchies are illegitimate. They're not really providing the kinds of, they're not protecting the liberties that the Americans think are universal. that are just inherent to mankind. And as you said, there's a lot of tension in this document.

At the beginning, they basically say, we think that any government that does not provide certain kinds of liberties and protections to its people is questionable legitimacy and that people have a right to overthrow it. And then they spent a lot of the rest of the document, kind of reeling that back in and saying, okay, we're not saying that the French people

should go revolt immediately. We're saying that George, George the third is so bad that we have no other choice. And here's the laundry list of all of the things that he's done that we think make a revolt justified in this case. So the Americans also are kind of thinking at this point, well, we want the French to help us out. But then we, after that, we're done. We want the Europeans to leave us alone. We want to get out of this cycle of global conflicts. So they also send over to the French this model treaty. And the model treaty essentially is we the Americans want you, the French or you, the European monarch to him we're addressing

this to give us the support we need in order to win this war. But we don't want to have any kind of military relationship or alliance or anything like that. So you give us military support and in exchange will give you some market access. We want, you know, some trading negotiations. And don't worry, we promise that we're not going to attack you after this war is ever. This does not particularly impress the diplomats in Europe who are kind of aware that this is a completely lobsided proposal from people who don't have a ton to offer them

at that moment. So the French more or less tell them, you know, instead, if you want anything for us, you're going to have to give us not just a binding alliance, but you're also going to have to promise not to end the war without or say so. So you, you the Americans can't come in, you know, get what you want

and then immediately back off and, you know, let everyone else kind of handle the aftermath of your actions. So that's the setup for the whole thing, is that the Americans desperately want help from these monarchies, but they believe so strongly in these universal principles that they can't help put them in a document, even while knowing that that's likely to turn off or raise significant questions in the capitals of all these countries that they need help from.

In its way that feels familiar, this clash between dealing with geopolitical realities and the necessities of the republic's advantage on the one hand, and commitments to a particular vision of liberty on the other. Blake, you had something to say there. Yeah. So one thing that we were trying to do with whenever we were putting together this volume was get as close as possible and get into the words of the founding fathers. And if you take the trouble to read the founders,

one thing that is just immediately striking is the boldness of their rhetoric. And if you're reading it from the perspective of a European monarch or courtier, I'm sure it would come off as extreme arrogance, both, you know, the most universalist aspect, aspects of the declaration, the new principles that they're laying out for their republic. And then if you look at the debate over the ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, it opens on page one with Alexander Hamilton. And Federalist number one, talking about how it fell to the people of America to decide if a government could be established by reflection and choice or if it had to be decided and set up by accident and force. And in the same page, he describes America as perhaps the most interesting empire in the world today. So there was massive ambition on the part of the founding fathers that did not always match the means at their disposal. But I think indicates that, you know, obviously there are huge debates today over the nature and extent of American exceptionalism. But if you take the trouble to read the founders, there's no dispute whatsoever that they believed America was exceptional and had an exceptional role in the world. and they did everything in their power through their statesmanship to bring that into being.

And that meant being in close contact with the world through trade and diplomacy and raising a military, being able to defend America's independence, which was the lodestar of American foreign policy, and so on. I don't know if people appreciate, even those who, you know, read some of the Federalist papers in school maybe, to the extent to which they really are, many of them, or much of it, is a foreign policy doctor. full of arguments about the role of America in the world or the way in which America needs to deal with the world, probably is a little bit better put. But also how our constitutional structure needs to reflect the realities of what the world demands from us. Like the two things

are sort of intertwined. I wonder, can you say a bit more, Blake and Mike, whoever wants to feel this can take the first swing about the views expressed by the founders in the Federalist papers on foreign policy? But also, you know, I am clear. that there is an anti-federalist tradition. There were other voices. You know, what was this, the guys who wrote the federalist papers, they win. The Constitution is ratified. And we get the republic that we still have to this day. But what was the range of the debate specifically as concerns foreign policy? Well, I commend to your listeners, Luke Schumacher's essay in our volume, which is all about the federalist versus anti-federalist debate during the constitutional convention.

And if you read it, it's very clear that both the federalists and the anti-federalists agreed that the United States was an exceptional country. But there was a major disagreement over the best means of securing the Republic and the American experiment. And ultimately, ratification was a decision to come down on the side of building a strong military and using deterrence in order to prevent the old world powers from coming over and destroying the fledgely American Republic. The anti-federalists would have said and said quite loudly that the United States was a very special republic, that it was nurturing this sort of this flame of liberty that could

be snuffed out at any point, but that the greatest threat to the flame of liberty would come internally from centralized power and that was from tyrannical power that would crack down on the states. And they had quite a bit of precedent on their side to support that too. If you're drawing from, you know, centuries of debates on these subjects that happened in England and revolutions and so forth. And what the federalists answered was that through the Constitution, we can establish both the means to prevent foreign encroachment on America through a standing army and a Navy and all of

these other things that the Articles of Confederation made no allowance for, and while also preventing an internal tyranny from forming through a division of power internally and structurally so that we could, in effect, have the best of both worlds. Yeah, and I think what you see in the constitutional debates is really the victory of kind of realism over utopian thinking, where, you know, most of the founders who were in favor of the Constitution had concluded that there are all kinds of threats around us, particularly during a period where land transportation is not great. You know, we're in a bad spot where the British Navy controls the Atlantic seaboard. All of our new territory that we've got in the Northwest,

at the time of the Northwest Territory, is ultimately controlled by whoever has the mouth the Mississippi River, which in this case is Spain, and they're not particularly friendly to us at this point. We're in a rough spot in the sense. We're essentially surrounded. And there are some of the antifederals who basically thought, well, if we just ignore the Europeans, then all of our problems will go away. Or they even thought, in some cases, well, why not just dissolve the union? We've already defeated the breads. And since we're all, you know, going to be peaceful, mercantile, how republics, the 13 countries can just exist along each other side by side without any problems because we don't have that many problems right now as it does. And I think what the federal

saw is that, one, the Europeans are not necessarily, or the rest of the world, rather, is not going to leave the United States alone just because the United States wants to be left alone. And two, if there are 13 United States or if there's 13 disunited states rather than one United States, that actually makes the problem worse. That doesn't make it better. And Alex Senior Hamilton in particular shreds a early version of the Democratic Peace Theory, where he says, if you look at the history of republics, if you look at the history of maritime powers, of mercantile powers, they're not always peace-loving entities. You know, people can be wonderful. They can also be really greedy and selfish and destructive. And the best chance we have of taming the worst impulses of

human nature is by creating a system where we don't have a bunch of independent and independent entities running around, doing whatever they want to, and ending up in, you know, basically another version of Europe where you have essentially a game of thrones on the American continent. And susceptible to foreign powers, too, right? Endlessly vulnerable to foreign powers making plays in the internal politics of one of the original 13 states to undermine other states potentially. I mean, in a way, the nightmare, the Hamiltonian nightmare, which does not come to pass because he wins the debate is the situation that Europe faces today.

Europe much weaker than it was in the 18th century in the aggregate and individually, a bunch of small countries that do not, they have not, they're pretty wealthy, but they don't translate that wealth into hard power. And here they are endlessly vulnerable to the depredations of larger, better resource powers all around them. And I think they've woken up to that reality in 2025, but it was a long time coming. So let me ask you this about our first president, George Washington. I don't know why I felt like I just had to say his name.

That's a sad commentary on my instincts. Washington. And on the street interview and see how many people can nail that. The school of war audience, Blake, knows who our first president was. But you are right. Those man on the street interviews are depressing. You know, when foreign policy in Washington are invoked, it's often to quote his farewell address. often as a kind of QED moment in debates about the character of early American foreign

policy, that it was about avoiding foreign entanguance, or at least aspired to be about avoiding foreign entanglements. What were the realities of Washington's worldview and the nature of foreign policy in his administration? We have a great essay on that very subject in the volume by Rachel Hoff of the Ronald Reagan Institute, and I commend that again to your readers, where she talks about George Washington's true legacy. If you keep reading further in the farewell address, wait, there's more? I thought it was just that one line. There is important context, but I mean, to dwell for a second on the entangling alliances bit, the very phrase itself, entangling alliances does imply that there may be other alliances that are not entangling, that are in fact useful.

I think it's true that Washington was wary of being drawn. into the wars of the revolution. That's very clear. Whenever he's discussing that, he's talking about his policy, neutrality. The French Revolution, to be clear. That's right. And how he was trying to tack between America's revolutionary loyalty to France, as well as the reality of America's, you know, commercial involvement in all of the other interests that it happened with Britain. So he was playing a very savvy game of trying to navigate between those. two powers. But, you know, the phrase entangling alliances is a little deceiving in and of itself because he goes on to say, but of course, in an emergency, you know, you take any friend that you

can find. So we should be, we should be perfectly willing to have, to have alliances outside of that. More broadly, if you read further down in the document, he sketches his foreign policy vision for the United States where, you know, he makes very clear that his. His very cautious policy now is intended to give America time to repair its finances to build its military strength and otherwise not squander it in an immediate war so that it can have, as he puts it, the command so that America can have the command of its own fortunes in the not too distant future. And he goes on to say, you know, our ultimate goal is to be able to choose war or peace as our interest guided by justice shall counsel. So the goal was not, you know, the avoidance of war at all costs, but it was a cautious and statesman-like attempt to build American power until such time as we could wield it most effectively. I joked to several people as we were putting together this volume that, you know, you could call this Georgia. Washington's hide-and-bide strategy.

There was a period. That's good. I've never heard that before. That's very good. Yeah, there was a period where America was vulnerable. The ocean was not just a shield. It was a highway that the Royal Navy or other empires could use to attack us. And we had no naval power of our own to defend against it.

So we were vulnerable and we needed some time to regroup and build our strength. But I think that there was never any doubt in his mind of what the ultimate goal was, which was to build an America that was sovereign, that was independent, and that was powerful and able to command its own fortunes in much the same way as the old world empires were doing at the time. Yeah. And this farewell address fundamentalism is nearly as old as the farewell address, but not quite as old as the farewell address.

You know, one of Washington's best diplomats, John Quincy Adams, who is also oftentimes misremembered as an isolationist when he's. became president, and even before that one, he was Secretary of State, we start seeing the first time where the United States is really strong enough to start affecting the regional order in the Western Hemisphere during the Latin American Wars of Independence. And Adams is trying to send diplomats to this kind of trans-hemispheric conference that's going to be held in Panama. And the farewell addressed fundamentalist pop up and start saying, well, you know, don't you remember that Washington said we shouldn't do this out of the other thing?

And I believe it's in Rachel's essay where, as she quotes Adams's response, Adams was very involved in these debates at the time of the farewell address. And he says, look, you know, as Blake said, Washington's talking about a very specific moment in our history. And it is 1826. We've already grown so much that, you know, check, we've got it. We can now go on to the next phase of Washington's plan. So, you know, I would argue that the farewell, that Adams is right, the farewell address. is, you know, meant for a very particular set of circumstances, but that, you know, you can see how America's foreign policy starts changing as our circumstances improve. Yeah, what strikes me about the founders in the aggregate,

in addition to some of the things that you guys have already pointed out, you know, they are, for the most part, one way or the other, committed to a certain vision of America as exceptional. They may disagree about the details about what that exceptionalism involves. and they certainly, many of them, disagree about how to effectuate it. But the ones who actually end up governing, the presidents, the really prominent figures who have power, they're very pragmatic. There's a pragmatism that comes through in them all.

Even Jefferson, who you guys may correct me here, but it seems to me the most radical of them, the one who actually writes the declaration, a lot of talk about watering trees of liberty with blood of tyrants at various points in his career. Like, that's pretty frothy stuff. Yeah. When he's president, you know, whatever we'll say about his foreign policy, he hardly goes about the world instigating global revolution. He's hardly Lenin.

And it's pretty capable of ruthlessness in pursuit of the American interests at home and abroad. So it's the pragmatism that comes through for me. So I'll ask you to comment on that. And let me tack on a question to it, which is I'm pretty well up. I've spent a fair amount of my life in recent years becoming pretty well educated in the isolationist or non-interventionist tradition in the 20th sense. century, now into the 21st century, and I feel like I could do a pretty good. I would pass the set exam on 20th century American isolationism. But I'm curious you guys spent all this time looking at the

founding. Where do you trace its roots to? Is it in those anti-federalists, in the anti-federalist movement? The isolationist movement, whether on the left or the right, which is very much aliving with us today in 2026, where does it actually start? You know, I actually think that the earliest version of this is in the Continental Congress where a lot of the members of it thought, once we get independence from Great Britain, then we're not going to have to think about Europe ever again because they're going to stay on their side of the ocean, we'll stay on our side of the ocean. And most of those people had figured out by the end of 1776 that that was just not how the

world works. And there's nonetheless this very strong, I would say it's, you know, utopian thinking. There's this very strong strain of this that you see it over. over and over again, you know, it pops up with the anti-federalists, it pops up with the Jeffersonians. It pops up with some of the Jacksonians. As you point out, though, that, you know, not every president, or most presidents don't be, they're not as ideological as some of their supporters are, right? So you see different pockets of people who pop up at different times who are supportive of various candidates because there's this very strong yearning, I think, for peace, which is in many ways a good thing.

but it's just the kind of piece they expect to find is not one that we're likely to see in this world. And the way that you get the kinds of pieces that are attainable are just not through the methods that they're described, that they want to follow. I think the impulse that you describe was already deeply rooted in the American people at the time of the founding. So whenever you get to the constitutional convention, the anti-federalists are, have plenty of ammunition. at their disposal. And, you know, they're talking about historical cases from the previous century in England, like, you know, first royal tyranny and then parliamentary tyranny under Cromwell. And so there's kind of an English tradition of liberty that is very suspicious of how state power can be abused and how, you know, perhaps that means that you should be very suspicious

of creating too big of a mechanism to defeat your foreign adversaries because it could always be turned inward. So I think that that was already, that was already latent. I think, you know, many founders felt that tension themselves because they had some degree of sympathy with it, but they also had, you know, a very acute sense of the danger that America in those early days faced and they had to grapple with it. But the solution that they came to, certainly with the ratification of the Constitution, was that we can vigorously defend ourselves and be involved in the world through the creation of a standing army through a vigorous foreign policy. And we can guard against the danger of tyranny at home by how we structure our government and through our

vigilance. So I think they came to, it was not, it was by no means sort of a repudiation of their belief in America's exceptional character. It was rather a, it was rather a, a comparable, a political compromise that was intended to guard against both of those ills, the external threats and the internal threat of unchecked power. So many of these debates feel so familiar. Some of what you just said reminds me of debates over the Patriot Act in the early part of this century. You know, again, having immersed yourself in this material for some time to put this volume together. And I know you both have also thought about this period independently of this project. What is most familiar to you about these debates?

And what, same question, just different side of it is what is most alien? What has changed? I'll give you a good example on the familiar front. Without much urging from me, a number of our essayists immediately saw the parallels between the relationship between the early American Republic and its old imperial imperial master of Britain and the relationship between the United States and China today and the competition that's taking place between the United States and China. The parallels are fairly striking if you look at it. These are powers that had good reason not to trust each other,

but they also had many years of commercial ties. They had very robust trade ties. They depended on each other for their very prosperity. So as Amon-Bellon charts in his essay in the series, which is all about the relationship between the Great Britain and the United States in the decades after the American Revolution. They were caught in this, what he calls the wary piece and this dance of, you know, there would be ratcheting tension and then they would have to sort of de-escalate carefully whenever the risk of war became too great. Because, of course, from London's perspective, for a period of time, they couldn't,

they could not risk war with the United States because the great enemy, of course, was just across the channel in France. And so both sides had a number of reasons to keep things from escalating to the point of war. They didn't trust each other. They had, in some cases, reasons for war against each other, but they had to keep the peace for some period of time, at least until the war of 1812, precisely because of the ties. So certainly the parallel there comes to mind. That's really interesting.

Any other similarities or for that matter differences, Mike? Yeah, I think as we've talked about a lot, there are a lot of similarities. in how Americans today argue about their foreign policy, this idea of, you know, maybe if we leave everyone else alone, they'll leave us alone versus another view, which is the one I hold, that the world is, you know, we're too enmeshed, basically. There's no way out of international involvement. And the best way to secure all the things about our country that we love is by trying to shape international affairs in a way that favors us. So that, that's just a recurring debate that was really striking to see that as explicitly fleshed out as it was. You know, in terms of

dissimilarities, this part is similar. The world right now is very much in flux, much as the world back then was too, right? The founders realized that, you know, if they were able to succeed in making a large republic work, it was going to have a transformative effect on global politics. I think they're basically correct on that. And in the world where now, you know, various emerging technologies, there's the kind of global trends in politics that are affecting how a lot of people organize their societies and so on and so forth. There's a lot of disruption. And the thing that was really interesting to me about looking at the people who were writing about this at the time in the 1770s, 1780s, 1790s is that they're not that much older than,

you know, the three of us, in some cases they're younger than us. And you can kind of see this attitude you can just go do things, right? And there is not as much of a sense of optimism amongst the political class in the United States now about where things can go. I mean, you know, in the business world, there's certainly a lot of optimism, depending on which part of it you're in. There's all kinds of other parts of our society where I think there is a lot of sense of, you know, things could go badly, but ultimately, you know, like maybe for me or my family, I feel like things are going well. So there's a sense of tremendous optimism and possibility that you see there that I think actually is still pretty widespread in the United States, but you just don't see as much when people

start talking about politics. Then they start thinking about, oh, you know, all these challenges are too big. We can't just go, you know, pick something important and fix it. And, you know, I think that that is not as helpful as I wish it was. I think Mike is exactly right. And, you know, to go back to a point I made earlier, One of the things that I hope shines through in the volume, if you read the founders, then the boldness of their ambitions is very apparent. And, you know, I do hope as we get into the 250th anniversary of America that people read the founders, think seriously about the scope of what they accomplished.

You know, forming a republic on a scale never before seen in a new world and then protecting it. and vigorously expanding over the course of the next century. And then, you know, establishing America's position as the most powerful country in the world with much of the rest of the world shaped in important ways in our image. I hope that, you know, as you say, as Mike says, there is a tendency these days to be complacent to, to worry about what could go wrong if you dream too big and take big swings. But I hope that people will channel a little bit of the vitality of the founders as we go to the 250th year and realize that that is part of our heritage and part of what makes America

possible and special. Well, let me push on this a bit as we come to a close and I'll frame this last question, which I'd love for both of you to weigh in on in a way that's kind of pessimistic, but my challenge to you is, can you leave me feeling optimistic with your answers? But just on this theme, Blake, I was just having lunch with a friend, and we both concluded that it's sort of depressing compared to, you know, our youths, how European American politics now feel, this pessimistic sense that some problems are just intractable for sure,

but also now the sort of vigor of far ends of the political spectrum that we're not. as vigorous, at least in my youth, with their associated foreign policy doctrines as well. But, you know, socialism is now alive and well in America as a political entity, as is its mirror image on the right. What is the case for continued American exceptionalism if our politics seems suddenly, or at least if not suddenly, over the course of only a handful of decades, so old world? I think if you return to the founding. themselves and look at what they thought has made us exceptional, then you realize why it's so

important for the experiment to continue. So of course, you know, as you alluded earlier, there's kind of this debate raging now in public discourse about what does it mean to be an American? And, you know, there's a number of different camps. But if you distill them down, you know, one says America's an idea. And if you believe in the ideas, be an American. And then, you know, on the other side, there are people who say, well, yes, but America is also a place and it's a people. And, you know, maybe it's just because I'm not a philosopher, a historian, so I don't see why these are obviously irreconcilable. But, you know, as I was putting together the volume, I couldn't help but think that there is some sort of synthesis there and that there's something

to be said about each of these things. Obviously, the story of America, like America could not have existed, we could not have risen to our present greatness without the ideas that drove the revolution. That is very core to everything else. But it was also, but it's also true that there was something about where America was itself. This was a land of plenty. And there was a particular people who came and settled it and they were, and they were dynamic. And they were always pressing against the boundaries of their own settlement in order to try to become more prosperous in order to try to expand the American sphere. And so the story of the past 250 years, I mean, yeah, you know, it's easy to look around today and find reasons for, to find reasons

to be pessimistic. But if you look at the world through a different lens, then you see great evidence of the very reason why America is exceptional. The Western European countries that you mentioned are for the most part no longer monarchies in a serious way. They are, you know, democracies. Some of them are republics. They're allies of the United States. We have successfully shaped them in our image. And I think that speaks that there's some deep wellspring of American strength that, you know, even if we go through rough patches here and now, there's just still evidence all around that we have vast untapped reserves of strength as well that we can call upon whenever we need them.

Mike Watson, last words to you. Yeah. You know, one of the things that really struck me when going back and reading, particularly the Federal's papers, but not only the Federal's papers, is how well-grounded in history a lot of these founders were. You know, Alexander Hamilton, you know, you could practically build a pretty, comprehensive bibliography of global history just off of his references in the Federalist papers. He does, you know, the kind of greatest hits of classical Rome. He also does some deep cuts

for Venetian foreign policy when he's trying to understand what republics are like and whatnot. And what they concluded was that what they were trying to do was going to be extremely difficult, that they were in a moment of great crisis, but that there was a way through it. And my own kind of amateur dabblings in history have indicated me that, you know, things are, not always right now the way that people would like it to be, but my goodness, things have been worse before. And one of the things we're trying to do here at the Alexander Hamilton Society is find really smart, talented people, help them get grounded in the, you know, not only our country's fundamental principles, but also in the kinds of things that they need to succeed in the

world and then help them really get their careers going. And so for me, you know, working with people like Blake, like the other contributors, is really encouraging for me seeing the differences that they're making, not just the intellectual contributions in this essay, but the differences that they're making in their careers now, knowing that there are many more Hamiltonians around who are working on these kinds of problems and that there are millions of other Americans who, you know, may or may not know it, but are aligned with us and are doing really good work. I think there's just a lot of great strength in this country left. And, you know, when Adam Smith was informed that about the Battle of Yorktown. Somebody told them, oh, this will be the ruin of the

British Empire. And Adam Smith said, well, there's a lot of ruin in the country. And, you know, the British Empire went on to its greatest successes after what people thought was a catastrophic failure. And on our end, we've had other failures we've seen as more catastrophic at the time. And then the lustre rebounded and done very well. And there's no reason that can't occur again. And to get even more specific about it as a final note, If you want encouraging signs, you don't even have to look that far. You can look at the headlines of the news. We just blackbagged Nicholas Maduro, one of America's greatest adversaries.

Earlier this year, we just put bombs on target on Iran's nuclear facilities. I think that shows that America has incredible strength that we can command whenever we want to. What's really needed is political willpower and statesmanship and all the other things that the founding fathers embodied in their time. You know, and in addition to those two pretty cool military successes of the last year, if I may editorialize just for a second, my thoughts on this question often go to the question of space and tech and the frontiers that exist there,

some of them kind of scary and heroin in the tech space, others of them objectively just exciting. You know, we may be alive at a time when all of these diseases, so many of them that have plagued mankind, since its inception, may many of them just be defeated as technology continues to increase in its pace of development. But that all said as well, just this question of space and what's next, it does feel like a moment where we and the other significant powers of the globe, I think particularly of the Chinese, are kind of plain for all the marbles. That is to say, whoever conditions the next few generations

of technology and whatever's to come beyond the earth is going to set the, it's going to, is going to participate on some level in a kind of new founding or certainly a founding of the next phase of humanity. And I would rather it be us. I remain enough of an exceptionalist to actively prefer that we set the terms of whatever comes next. And I, some might say, naively believe that it's probably better for the world if it's us rather than the Chinese. So those are my two cents, gang. Amen. I agree. Blake cites,

Mike Watson. It's always great to see you. It's a great conversation. Congratulations again to you, Mike, and congratulations Blake and you both on the volume, which is called 1776, the beginnings of American exceptionalism abroad. Thank you both so much for joining School of War. Thank you, Aaron. Thanks for having us.