Michael R. Gonzalez - Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy

Author: Michael R. Gonzalez

Michael R. Gonzalez is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He studies the intersection of IR theory and the history of American foreign policy, as well as the conflict between classical Christian and early modern political philosophy. He received his doctorate in political science from Baylor University after undergraduate studies at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

Circumspect Foreign Policy: Washington and Eisenhower’s Farewell Addresses

Michael R. Gonzalez

January 17, 2024

While Washington famously urges America in his 1796 Farewell Address to focus on preserving union at home for the “permanency of [its] felicity as a people,” Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address identifies extensive foreign involvement as a necessity to preserve peace and “enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among people and among nations.” These two presidents seem to offer very different visions of American foreign policy’s basic purposes. Can the principles of the two speeches admit reconciliation?