By 1953, the United States had in place a Doctrinal Warfare Program to counter the one operated by the Soviet Union. Ideas were essential to winning the Cold War because ideas are necessary to the structure of any organization or system whether that be political, economic, social, religious, or whatever. Ideas are essential to winning any war, or conflict. Therefore, it is important to discredit the ideas of the enemy because that goes towards winning hearts and minds, while demoralizing, dividing and destroying those who do not go along with you. And at the same time it is important to promote your own ideas and belief systems. The conflict of ideas, the war of ideas which is the essence of doctrinal warfare or ideological warfare, continues to this day. The enemy has a number of key ideas or doctrines that it is targeting, and one is American Exceptionalism, which is reality.
America came into being as a result of very unique set of historical conditions and events. A landed plutocracy in England, employing a constitution of accretion that favored them and their interests, used the colonies for their own benefit. One problem the landed plutocrats encountered was that a new and distinct people had developed, had arisen, by the 1750s, and this new people, the Americans, was growing more conscious of their – our — identity. Yet another problem that the English plutocrats encountered, and created, was that they crushed the Americans economically at a time of technological revolution. This was made more notable because Americans, in creating a new country, a new existence in North America, became notable, and remain notable, as an innovative, creative people. The English plutocracy was violating basic principles for the development of the person and that was bound to lead to changes.
The American Revolution was the creation of a separate country. Our struggle for independence from the British was a war of national self-determination, a principle that is enshrined in international law. To understand America, I believe one must understand the American Revolution which includes the run up to the war and the aftermath extending through the adoption of the Constitution with the Bill of Rights. There were a number of major principles that came out of this era, that remain with America, and that define America.
First, the concept of ordered liberty. This makes the human person important, and the development of that person an essential component of the American system. To facilitate that development, we created a flexible yet clear system of governance with a written constitution and the pre-eminence of the rule of law. The ideas of Federalism, which allowed local communities as well as the States to govern their daily lives as they pleased with some flexibility, and Liberalism which permitted different peoples, diversity in other words, to flourish in peace, safety and justice with each other thereby allowing the development of the person. Ordered liberty permits the peaceful integration of all peoples, of all individuals, for the benefit of all persons. It allows for solidarity.
Second, as alluded to earlier, self-determination of peoples. This concept lead to the end of colonialism and is a real check on the power of tyrants. Third, that peace, not war, is the normal or natural way of existence. This was not the way of the empires, the ethnic states, and the religious regimes who sought war, often bloody war, against neighbors on a repeated if not continuous basis.
No other country had come about with these fundamental dynamics or principles. Added to all of this is the American sense of being with the world and not opposed to it as the empires and kingdoms of the world were. We see this in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation…..”
The American Founders were avid readers of Emer de Vattel’s Law of Nations which set forth the Law of Nations as understood at the time, and this profoundly affected the Founders and I submit American leadership across the decades. If you do a Google search of the term, the AI Assistant will come up with things like the Law of the Seas, the Law of Treaties, and the Law of Foreign Relations among other areas of laws. Vattel’s volume contained four books: “Of Nations Considered in Themselves” setting forth principles by which countries are to govern themselves rightly; “Of A Nation Considered In Her Relation to Other States” which establishes the rights and duties of states as between each other; “Of War” establishing rules for conducting war to include a definition of just war; and finally “Of the Restoration of Peace; And of Embassies” which sets out principles governing treaties and the conduct of Ambassadors.
At the beginning of this famous work, Vattel explained how the Law of Nations was a consequence of, and in accordance with, the Law of Nature. Hence, the significance of that phrase, the Law of Nature, in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Vattel wrote:
“The universal society of the human race being an institution of nature herself, that is to say, a necessary consequence of the nature of man, — all men, in whatever stations they are placed, are bound to cultivate it, and to discharge its duties. They cannot liberate themselves from the obligation by any convention, by any private association. When, therefore by any convention, by any private association. When, therefore, they unite in civil society for the purpose of forming a separate state or nation, they may indeed enter into particular engagements towards those with whom they associate themselves; but they remain still bound to the performance of their duties towards the rest of mankind.”1
To accomplish this duty, this obligation, two general laws applied. The first found in the “very object of the society of nations, is that each individual nation is bound to contribute everything in her power to the happiness and perfection of all the others.” The second is “that each nation should be left in the peaceable enjoyment of that liberty which she inherits from nature” as the “natural society of nations cannot subsist, unless the natural rights of each be duly respected.”2
The spirit, if not the letter, of the Law of Nations was part of the American project from the beginning and that was solidified in the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 states “The Congress shall have power to….define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the Law of Nations….” From the beginning, America was dedicated to this concept of right relations between countries including the concept of a juridical association to improve this community of nations. This is yet another instance of American uniqueness, American exceptionalism, which is to create a world juridical order for the benefit of all nations. With ordered liberty, the self-determination of peoples, and peace as the natural or normal means by which to conduct affairs, America is the ideal to implement a world order favorable to all peoples. This has long been a desire of philosophers and Catholic theologians for centuries, and America implemented it with the efforts of the Greatest Generation and the establishment of the United Nations with all that followed.
With Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September, 1939, United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull determined that “we must begin almost immediately to plan the creation of a new system.”3 The British and the Americans did most of the work in setting up the United Nations though there were meetings with the leadership of the Soviet Union and China between October, 1943 and February, 1945. The American and British designs were different in some respects and so there was some compromise, but key aspects of the American proposal came through. Among other things, the Americans wanted to ban the resort to military force in international relations; removal of traditional concepts of international relationships consisting of spheres of influence, balances of power, and unilateral action; and the most powerful allies (Russia, China, United Kingdom, United States) fighting the Axis Powers would be given a powerful role in keeping the peace. The result was a political entity “pursuing political objectives, albeit within a legal framework” with the Great Powers “safeguarding peace and security on behalf and in the interest of all nations of the world”.4
Pope Pius XII, and many Catholics of his day, were in large measure pleased with the United Nations (UN). Its Four Pillars were, and remain, consistent with Catholic Social Teaching. Both the UN and the Church seek to avoid war and promote peace, recognize and defend fundamental human rights, advance social progress and better living standards, and promote the rule of law.5 Despite propaganda to the contrary, the UN has admirably fulfilled these missions.
The UN, created largely through the initiative and efforts of the United States and the United Kingdom after World War II, is the best manifestation in recent times of the natural community, or society, of nations, a concept held by Catholics for centuries.6 It operates on the primacy of law which means we use reason and not guns and bombs to resolve disputes. The peoples of the world benefit from this international order. All of this is now under attack by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and others.
Russia today is a revanchist power meaning it wants empire. It is like China in that they are revisionist meaning they are intent on putting an end to the current system of international order. They are attacking it and violating its principles and doing more in the hopes of remaking the United Nations, not necessarily destroying it. The attacks are kinetic as in Ukraine and elsewhere, but they are also psychological. The chief tool of that assault is disinformation, a program the Russians developed and have implemented with amazing success since 1958.
Disinformation is the malicious creation of a narrative based on lies, incomplete information, information taken out of context all for the purpose of inflaming emotions, changing perceptions and motivating actions so as to cause division and discord or to amplify conflicts.[7] Some of those narratives are that the West and America is degenerate, Russia is an innocent victim, the “color revolutions” are CIA operations, Russia is a Christian country, there is an American Deep State that is evil, America is evil, America is not exceptional, and more. Disinformation is lies, and that is evil. The governments of Russia and China, as the source of lies, are evil.
Our best defense is truth and patriotism, as the two go hand in hand and they require us to recognize that we are exceptional. That exceptionalism is found in, among other things, our right ordering of the world, and that is best for all of us for it allows for the peaceful and proper development of the person. So, when people ask, is America exceptional? The answer is, yes, America is exceptional.
1 Emer De Vattel, The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, (The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., Clark, New Jersey, 2020), lx.
2 Ibid., lxi.
3 Cordell Hull, Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1948), ii at 1625
4 Cassese, 317-320
5 H.E. Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, “Archbishop Caccia Addresses `The United Nations at 75: Catholic Perspectives’,” October 22, 2020, Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations as accessed at https://holyseemission.org/contents//statements/5f920c719bf29.php on December 31, 2024. The presentation states: These Four Pillars or areas were, and remain, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”; “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women”; “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”; and “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”
6 John Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Lawbook Exchange Ltd. Clarke, New Jersey 2012), 247-275; Hyginus Eugene Cardinale, The Holy See And the International Order (MacMillan of Canada Maclean-Hunter Press Toronto, Ontario, 1976), 229-257.
7 Michael J. Kelley, “Understanding Russian Disinformation and How the Joint Force Can Address It,” May 29, 2024, Army War College Publications.