What Washington's Farewell Address Really Said About Foreign Entanglements

Ask ten people which Founder warned America against "entangling alliances" and nine will say Washington. The tenth will say Jefferson and be correct, and nobody at the table will believe him. It is the great misattribution of American foreign policy, repeated in speeches, in textbooks, and in more than a few Senate floor debates, and it is wrong in a way that matters. The phrase is Jefferson's. The thought Washington actually left us is both subtler and more useful.

Washington's Farewell Address is among the few political documents that deserve the word "foundational" without a trace of irony. It was never spoken. It was published in a Philadelphia newspaper on September 19, 1796, as an open letter to the American people, and for generations it was read aloud in the Senate every February on his birthday. Let us read what it says about the world, and then ask what it implies for the world we have.

What was in the letter, and who wrote it

The address was Washington's, though he drew on help. In 1792, when he had thought of retiring after one term, James Madison had drafted a short farewell. In 1796 Washington returned to the project, sent a draft to Alexander Hamilton, and worked with him through the summer on revisions. The final text is a blend of Washington's own convictions and Hamilton's polished prose, and the foreign policy passages in particular reflect the pressures of the previous three years.

Those pressures are the key. When Washington wrote about foreign influence, he was not theorizing from an armchair. He was writing as the man who had just lived through the most serious foreign-policy crisis of the young republic, and who had been accused of everything from monarchism to treason in the process.

The passages, exactly

The foreign policy section opens by urging good faith and justice toward all nations and the cultivation of peace and harmony with all. Then comes the first operative principle:

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible."

Notice the shape of the sentence. Extend commercial relations; minimize political connection. It is a recommendation to trade widely and to bind ourselves narrowly. It is not a recommendation to withdraw.

Next comes the reason:

"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns."

And the practical conclusion, in the form of a rhetorical question: why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

Now the sentence that is quoted as an absolute prohibition, and which is anything but:

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements."

Three limits are built into the sentence. The word is permanent, not any. The clause "so far as we are now at liberty to do it" means the policy applies to future commitments and not to treaties already in force. And the last clause is a plain statement that the country must keep its word. Washington was not telling America to tear up its treaties. He was telling it not to sign new ones that would bind it forever.

A few sentences later, after repeating that existing engagements must be observed, comes the next passage:

"Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies."

There it is, in plain English. Temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies are acceptable. A respectable defensive posture, which means a real military, is required. Anyone who cites the address for the proposition that America should have no allies and no army has not read to the end of the paragraph.

The passions section

There is a second foreign-policy thread, and it is the more original. Washington warns against the nation's passions. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness, he writes, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. He then lists what happens when a country conceives a passionate attachment to another: it produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest where no common interest exists, infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the first into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the second without adequate inducement or justification.

That is an analysis of how factions form around foreign powers, and it is worth reading twice. In the 1790s, American politics was split between those who sympathized with revolutionary France and those who favored Britain. Washington saw in that a danger that the country's decisions would be made in someone else's interest, by citizens who cared more about a foreign flag than their own.

Notice that the warning cuts in both directions. A hatred of a foreign nation is as dangerous as a fondness for one. A conservative who is tempted to apply the passage only to an opponent's favorite foreign cause should apply it also to his own.

The history behind the words

To see why Washington wrote this, you need three episodes.

The French alliance of 1778. The Treaty of Alliance with France, signed on February 6, 1778, was the diplomatic keystone of the Revolution. It brought French money, ships and soldiers. It also contained a guarantee: the United States promised to guarantee French possessions in America. When France went to war with Britain in 1793, the question was whether that guarantee required America to join the fight.

The Neutrality Proclamation. On April 22, 1793, Washington issued a proclamation declaring the United States impartial toward the belligerents. It was an act of executive judgment in a matter the Constitution committed to Congress's power to declare war, and it provoked a pamphlet fight between Hamilton and Madison, the "Pacificus" and "Helvidius" essays, over how much power the President had in foreign affairs, a fight that never really ended and that is picked up in Commander in Chief Means Less Than Presidents Claim and More Than Critics Say. The same year, the French envoy Edmond Genet tried to outfit privateers in American ports and appealed over the President's head to the people, and Washington demanded his recall.

The Jay Treaty. In 1794, Chief Justice John Jay negotiated a treaty with Britain to settle outstanding disputes, including the British retention of forts in the Northwest, and to avert a war. It was signed on November 19, 1794. It was bitterly unpopular. Opponents said it sold out the French and gave away too much. The Senate ratified it in June 1795, by exactly the two-thirds vote the Constitution requires. Then the House fought a second battle, demanding the papers on the negotiation as a condition for funding the treaty. Washington refused the request in the spring of 1796, on the ground that the treaty power belonged to the President and the Senate. The House voted the money in the end, narrowly.

The Farewell Address came a few months later. Its text on foreign policy is the lesson of those three episodes: do not form a bond so close that it dictates your choices; do not be captured by a foreign faction; keep your word to those with whom you have already made a bargain; make your defense strong enough that you need not beg.

The correction: "entangling alliances" is Jefferson

The most common error about this address is the attribution of the phrase "entangling alliances" to Washington. It does not appear in the Farewell. It comes from Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1801, in which he listed among the essential principles of the government "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

The difference is not pedantic. Jefferson's formulation is flatter. "Entangling alliances with none" is a rule; Washington's is a judgment, with qualifications for temporary alliances, existing engagements and emergencies. The rule has been quoted for two centuries by people who wanted to forbid something. The judgment has been ignored by the same people because it requires thought. A citizen who knows the difference is already a better participant in the argument than most members of the commentariat.

It is worth noting, too, that Jefferson himself did not hold to the slogan as an absolute. As President he bought Louisiana, which required diplomacy of a very entangling kind, and he said in 1802 that in the event France took New Orleans, the United States would have to marry itself to the British fleet and nation. A man who writes that sentence knows that principles meet circumstances.

A test, in five parts

If you strip the address of its eighteenth-century dress, you get a usable test. Call it the Washington test. It asks five questions about any commitment to a foreign power.

1. Is it permanent or temporary? Permanent commitments reduce your future freedom of choice. Temporary ones can be tailored to a specific emergency.
2. Is it grounded in interest or in passion? A commitment based on sentiment ("we are kin," "we are old friends") is fragile. One based on a clear and shared interest is durable.
3. Does it hand the decision to someone else? An ally can drag you into a war in which your interests are remote. The question is whether the instrument gives you a veto.
4. Do you maintain a respectable defensive posture? If you are weak, every alliance is a dependency. If you are strong, it is an option.
5. Do you keep faith with what you have already promised? The address insists on this. A country that breaks agreements when they become inconvenient will not be believed when it makes new ones.

Apply the test honestly and you will find that it condemns some modern commitments and endorses others. That is what a good test does.

Applying it to NATO, fairly

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington. The Senate consented to it in July 1949 by a vote of 82 to 13. Its key provision, Article 5, says that the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and that each of them will assist the party attacked by taking such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. The article is worth reading in its entirety, and it is among the treaties covered in Read the North Atlantic Treaty, All Fourteen Articles Take Ten Minutes.

Run the five questions.

Permanent or temporary? On its face the treaty is long-lived. Article 13 allows any party to withdraw one year after giving notice, after the treaty has been in force twenty years, so it is not an eternal bond. But in practice it has lasted for more than seven decades. Washington would have called it permanent in effect, and he would have asked whether that is a feature or a flaw.

Interest or passion? The original treaty was a response to the Soviet threat to Western Europe, a clear and shared interest. The more sentimental arguments for the alliance, kinship and shared culture, are real, but they are not the foundation. A defender of NATO can say, with the address on his side, that this is an alliance of interest.

Does it hand the decision to someone else? Here the Senate's drafters were careful. Article 5 says each party takes "such action as it deems necessary." The phrase leaves the nature of the response to each member, and the constitutional power to declare war remains in Congress. A critic can reply that the political pressure to honor an Article 5 commitment is much stronger than the legal text suggests. Both are true.

Defensive posture? This is where the alliance question becomes a spending question. The pledge made at the Wales summit in 2014 to move toward spending two percent of national income on defense is the alliance's own acknowledgement that a pact without capacity is a promise without weight. The history of the pledge is in The 2014 Wales Pledge Explained, Where NATO's Two Percent Came From.

Keeping faith? The commitment was made, ratified and relied upon for generations. A country that walked away without notice would pay a price in credibility that no accountant can calculate.

My own verdict, for what a verdict is worth: NATO passes Washington's test better than most alliances in history, and fails it in the one place a conservative should insist on, because the burden of the common defense has fallen on America more heavily than interest requires. The remedy is not to burn the treaty. It is to hold the allies to their own commitments, which is a position Washington would have understood perfectly well.

The objection

The strongest objection to this reading is that it makes the address mean whatever one wants. If temporary alliances are acceptable and permanent ones are not, and if the difference is a matter of degree, then the address supports every position from isolation to empire.

It is a good objection, and the answer is that the address is a guide to judgment and not a formula. Washington did not write a statute. He wrote a counsel, and counsel works by identifying the dangers a wise person will watch for. The two dangers he named, permanent entanglement and passionate attachment, are real, and the remedy for both is the same: make each foreign commitment as a decision, in the open, on the merits, with the people's representatives involved. That is the principle that the address and the Constitution share.

And one thing it does settle. It settles the matter against anyone who pretends the address has no use. The nation's first President, writing as his last act in office, regarded foreign policy as a subject on which a republic could go badly wrong, and he left a text to prevent it. We should read it with the seriousness he intended.

Washington's closing thoughts on the subject are consistent with the rest of the letter. He hoped that his country would be able to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. That does not describe a nation hiding behind an ocean. It describes a nation that keeps its word, builds its strength and acts as a confident, independent country.

The case in brief

1. The phrase "entangling alliances" is Jefferson's, from the first inaugural of March 4, 1801; Washington's Farewell of September 19, 1796 says something more careful.
2. Washington urged commercial ties with little political connection, steering clear of permanent alliances, honoring existing engagements, and trusting temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies, behind a respectable defensive posture.
3. His warning against habitual fondness and habitual hatred for other nations is as relevant to modern factions as to the French and British parties of the 1790s.
4. The Washington test, permanent or temporary, interest or passion, who decides, how strong, and whether we keep faith, is a fair way to judge any commitment, NATO included.
5. A republic makes foreign commitments as decisions, in the open, through its representatives, and not by drift.

What you can do: read the foreign policy section of the Farewell Address in full, then read Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and write your senator one sentence about which of Washington's five questions the next alliance proposal fails.