The
modern United States is the most powerful country in human history. With over 800 military bases and 37% of global military spending, the United States has become the leader of a vast interconnected global system that
has helped usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity and low levels of
conflict.
To
understand America’s position in the world, and why it’s so pivotal for
world politics as we know it, you have to go back to the country’s founding back
to when America wasn’t a global power in any sense of the word.
During
the first 70 years of its existence, the United States expanded
in both territory and influence in North America eventually reaching the
Pacific Ocean in a wave of expansionism that resulted in the wholesale
slaughter of the indigenous people who populated the continent. But early Americans
were deeply divided as to whether the country should expand beyond the Pacific
and Atlantic oceans.
This
became a major debate after the civil war, when some leaders, like post-war Secretary
of State Seward, argued that America should push to become a global
power. Seward succeeded in pushing a plan to purchase Alaska from
Russia, but his attempts to buy Greenland and Iceland, as
well as annex territory in the Caribbean, were all blocked by Congress.
That’s
because some Americans, including many on Capitol Hill, had a
strong anti-imperialist bent. These people worried about America getting
more involved in global politics, as well as having to integrate populations
from “inferior” races. And this opposition applied major checks on the
imperialist urge to expand. But something was happening in the late 1800s
that would change the debate about American expansionism.
The
industrial revolution produced explosive economic growth and the bigger US economy
required a more centralized state and bureaucracy to manage the growing economy.
Power became concentrated in the federal government, making it easier for
expansionist presidents, like William Mckinley, to unilaterally push United
States influence abroad.
The
key turning point came in 1898, when President McKinley dragged
the country into war with Spain over the island of Cuba despite
intense opposition. The rising US easily defeated the Moribund
Spanish Empire, acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
in the process (1898).
Over
the next two years, the US would annex the Kingdom of Hawaii
(1898), Wake Island (1899), and American Samoa (1900). A few
years later the US took control of the Panama Canal Zone (1903)
and sent troops to occupy the Dominican Republic (1916), it also
purchased the American Virgin Islands (1917).
This
period of rapid acquisition of far-flung territories put the US on the
map as a truly global power. During this time, America also began using
its influence to protect its growing commercial and military interests abroad, installing
pro-American regimes in places like Nicaragua and playing a major role
in international diplomacy regarding the Western presence in China.
World
War I showed how just how much America’s influence had
grown. Not only was American intervention a decisive factor in the war's
end But President Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference
which ended the war and attempted to set the terms of the peace.
He
spearheaded America’s most ambitious foreign policy initiative yet, an
international organization, called the League of Nations, designed to
promote peace and cooperation globally. The League, a wholesale effort
to remake global politics, showed just how ambitious American foreign
policy had become.
Yet
isolationism was still a major force in the United States. Congress
blocked the United States from joining the League of Nations,
dooming Wilson’s project. During the Great Depression and
the rise of Hitler, the US was much more focused on its own region than on European affairs
Ultimately, though, America’s ever-growing entanglements abroad made it
impossible for it to stay out of global affairs entirely.
In East
Asia, the growing Japanese empire posed a direct threat to American
possessions and troops bringing the United
States and Japan into conflict. This culminated in the Pearl Harbour
attack bringing the United States into World War II.
World
War
II would transform America’s global presence forever. The United
States was the only major power to avoid economic ruin during the war, and it
was the sole country equipped with atomic weapons. As such, it was in unique
position to set the terms of the peace — and, with the aim of preventing
another war in mind, it took advantage.
The
most famous example of this is the creation of the United Nations. The UN
charter set up a system of international law prohibiting wars of conquest, like
the ones waged by the Nazis and the Japanese. It also served as a
forum in which the international community could weigh in on disputes, and help
resolve them.
This
way, the Americans hoped, great powers could resolve their differences
through compromise and law rather than war. But
while the UN is the most famous of the post-war institutions, it isn’t
the only one. 730 Delegates from all 44 Allied Nations came together
in a small vacation haven in New Hampshire.
What
was Their goal?
To
establish a global financial system that would prevent another Great
Depression and World War. The resulting agreement called the Bretton
Woods Agreement ultimately became the bone of the global financial system.
Resulting
in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
By
creating these Institutions, the United States committed itself to being
deeply involved in the world’s problems. The issue, though, is that the
world’s second-largest power — The Soviet Union saw things differently.
World
War II had made allies out of the democratic West and Communist
East in the fight against Hitler, but that couldn’t last. The United
States saw Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe and elsewhere
as a direct threat to its vision of a free-trading world.
"To
a substantial degree, in one form or another" Socialism has spread the
shadow of human regimentation. Over most of the nations of the earth And... the shadow is encroaching on our
own liberty.
Fearful of Soviet intentions towards Western Europe, the
US and other European nations created the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, a Military Alliance meant to stop Russia
from invading other countries in Europe.
Globally,
the US committed to a strategy called “Containment” — so called
because it was aimed at containing the spread of Communism everywhere on
the globe. This new global struggle meant that the US had to exert
influence everywhere, all the time. Instead of disbanding the massive military
machine created for World War II, its wheels mostly kept turning.
This
had two main results:
Ø first,
the US was pulled into unlikely alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia,
Israel, and South Korea, seeing each of them as bulwarks against communist influence
in their region.
Ø Secondly,
the US began intervening, often secretly, in dozens of countries to contain Soviet
influence.
Sometimes
this meant propping up sympathetic dictators like in Iran, other times supplying
rebels with arms and money like in Afghanistan in 1979 and Nicaragua
in 1985.
Over
the course of the Cold War, the US intervened in hundreds of
disputes around the globe, ending up with a complicated set of alliances,
tensions, and relationships in basically every corner of the earth. After the Berlin wall fell, the US
could have withdrawn from this system, severing ties with its allies and
drawing down the size of its military. And while the US did military
spending, much of the military infrastructure and alliances from the Cold
War remained.
Presidents
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton decided that it was
in both America and the world’s
interests for the United States, now the sole superpower on earth, to
continue actively managing global affairs.
"We
should be and we must be Peacemakers" NATO, created solely as a
tool for countering the Soviets, stayed together and even expanded, a
way of keeping European nations united in the absence of the Soviet
threat.
Washington’s
support for countries like Israel and Japan stayed intact, ostensibly as a
means of preventing war in those regions. The global system of alliances and
institutions created to keep the peace during the Cold War became
permanent — as did the American military and political commitments
needed to keep them running.
This
system remains in operation today, and no leading American politician
since the Cold War has seriously called for dismantling them — except,
perhaps for Donald Trump. Trump has said contradictory things
about these commitments. But he’s consistently argued that American
allies are not paying America enough for its protection, and questioned
the value of free trade.
That
calls NATO and even the World Trade Organization into question. At
some point, we have to say, you know what, we're better off if Japan protects
itself against this maniac in North Korea. We're better off if South
Korea is going to start to protect itself and Saudi Arabia? Saudi
Arabia? Absolutely.
This
is a sharp divergence from the consensus that has dominated US foreign
policy since 1945, and something closer to the isolationism that came
before it. So will President Trump act on some of candidate Trump's
ideas, and reverse decades worth of institution-building and alliances? We'll
find out, soon enough.
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