Good Manifest Destiny?

This morning I'm reading Matt Ehret's essay, "Reviving a Sane Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine: A Last Chance to avoid WW3", because as a US Historian I am very interested in both topics and as a person I'm in favor of avoiding WW3. Ehret begins this post with an image that includes a map of current Asian transportation projects with Ben Franklin standing in front of it, looking at the reader sidelong with his arms crossed.

Ehret begins by agreeing that a lot of evil has been done in the name of Manifest Destiny in American History. But he insists that in addition to the well-known problems, "great good was done by great moral heroes against imperialism and the Anglo-American deep state following these doctrines as well." This seems to be a sort-of thesis statement; so let's see how he supports it. Ehret continues by saying John Winthrop's vision of Boston as a "City Upon a Hill" was the earliest expression of Manifest Destiny and a statement of hope that "America’s identity should serve as a beacon and role model of liberty for other nations". I disagree, for several reasons. First, Winthrop was talking about Boston, not America. Second, there are plenty of other expressions of what became known as Manifest Destiny. Hakluyt's lobbying the crown to support colonialism in America, for just one example. Ehret should read more primary sources. Finally, Winthrop was not talking about an example of Liberty at all. He was talking about creating a pious Theocracy.

While he’s still talking about early America, Ehret inserts a map of "Nations Divided" that shows how both the contiguous US and China are much more densely populated in their eastern regions than in the west. This wasn't a surprise to me, since I'm aware his project is largely about supporting the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The article is heading there, be patient. The next clue to this is that in a list of the "wiser anti-slavery voices" of the "good" form of Manifest Destiny, Ehret includes Franklin, John Jay, John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, Charles Sumner, William Seward, and William Gilpin. All these names were familiar to me except the last. Gilpin, it turns out, was Governor of Colorado during the Civil War. He was a huge proponent of Manifest Destiny and he wrote several books about it, including one promoting a rail system that might in the future connect with Asia. He’s not better-known because he was discredited in a huge land speculation scandal and faded from the public scene.

Ehret says these men "were too often subverted by an anglophile Deep State parasite class that ran both Wall Street in the north and the southern slave power." This is a bit much. It's hard for me not to think of John Jay as an anglophile. And this is also typical of the type of unsubstantiated claims Ehret liberally salts his writing with. He may think he has adequately proven this point elsewhere, but not all of his readers have read all his work. He might at least provide a link (although, frustratingly, many of the links he does provide don't connect to anything).

Returning to the historical narrative, Ehret says Manifest Destiny was perverted by people like Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Albert Pike, who were all committed to a style of territorial expansion that resulted in an extension of slavery and a genocide against Native Americans. He also mentions the Mexican-American War (1846-8) and the Annexation of Hawaii (1893) as versions of a corrupted Manifest Destiny. The "legitimate defenders" of the concept worked through diplomacy rather than war, he claims, citing the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the Oregon Territory, and the Alaska Purchase. This seems a bit short-sighted. Napoleon only HAD Louisiana because of War. And the possession of Oregon and Alaska by Great Britain and Russia are hard to explain without discussing imperialism. Does Ehret believe the buyer of a stolen car isn't implicated in the theft?

Along the way, Ehret inserts an image of Alexander Hamilton, William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, William Garfield, and William McKinley. These six "nationalists" were all intent on creating state-run banks and promoting internal improvements and protective tariffs, Ehret says. He suggests they were all killed by British Deep State Globalists. Really? Is this necessary? Does it really enhance his argument for China's Belt and Road Initiative?

Ehret's insistence that history has been shaped by a persistent globalist conspiracy is not only at odds with his Chinese agenda; it doesn't really hang together. He berates the "'America' of Wall Street and Virginia", but Jefferson was the quintessential Virginian. It's difficult to understand whom he likes and whom he dislikes, and why. The groupings of “good guys” and “bad guys” often seems arbitrary. But I'm not completely convinced that none of his points are valid. The whole thing reminds me a bit of Eric Weinstein's reaction to Terrence Howard. 95% bathwater, but maybe 5% baby.

This is especially the case when he leaves behind the questionable history and turns to his main point, praising China's "Manifest Destiny with Dignity". This seems to be the core of the article: that China claims to be doing Manifest Destiny in a way that doesn't erase the cultures it is rolling over in its expansion. I don't know enough to say this is accurate or not, by a long shot. But I think there's an interesting element here, of considering cultural colonialism (of, for example, the internet era) in addition to territorial expansionism. And he makes some points about the style of economic colonialism practiced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that I think are accurate.

I'd like to learn more about the Chinese and Russian efforts to expand trade and to push into less-developed regions like Central Asia and the arctic. I suspect things may not be as rosy in Tibet and western China as Ehret claims, but I'm willing to accept the idea that the media westerners consume doesn't portray these regions without bias. It's much easier for me to imagine that "China’s approach stands in stark contrast to those IMF-World Bank-USAID programs that have systematically kept poor nations in usurious debt-trap enslavement for decades" than that a cabal of British imperialists has been directing the course of history from the shadows for a couple of centuries (although I am a bit creeped out by Cecil Rhodes and the people who've won his scholarship). Why can't we hear more about this?