Asle Toje, American exceptionalism: an idea that made a nation and remade the world. By Hilde Eliassen Restad, International Affairs, Volume 91, Issue 3, May 2015, Pages 677–678, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12328
Navbar Search Filter Mobile Enter search term Search Navbar Search Filter Enter search term SearchAmerican exceptionalism: an idea that made a nation and remade the world. By Hilde Eliassen Restad. London: Routledge. 2014. 180pp. £85.00. ISBN 978 0 41581 751 6. Available as e-book.
In American exceptionalism, Hilde Restad provides a tightly argued and provocative overview of America's sense of self. The topic is of interest to the world beyond because America's self-perception of its benign distinctiveness has played a tremendous role in shaping and justifying US foreign policy. Given the inherent complexities of the topic, readers will appreciate the author's clear, tightly structured and playful prose.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as the United States suffers an economic setback, another debate on American exceptionalism is about to commence. To non-Americans the debate is outlandish, bordering on puerile, since to the non-American mind the US is quite clearly not exceptional, or at least no more so than powerful nations of the past, say the Greeks or the British. The end of American exceptionalism has long been anticipated. In the opening volley of the mid-1970s exceptionalism debate, for instance, Daniel Bell (The winding passage, Transaction Publishers, 1991) argued that ‘today the dream of American exceptionalism has vanished with the dream of empire’. Those were fighting words. American exceptionalism is inextricably tied to the notion of primacy—of being not only different, but also better than the rest. One man's nationalism is another man's patriotism. Hilde Restad is, if anything, bold to seek an ideational study of exceptionalism amid the mine-strewn landscape of the ongoing American culture wars. The exceptionalism debate has been going for so many years that it has become an identity marker, where one's inclination is assumed to indicate other tenets of the proponent's or opponent's worldview. Sidestepping identity politics, Restad arrives at a simple yet persuasive conclusion, namely that American exceptionalism ‘refers to America's constant goal of changing the world without changing itself’ (p. 228).