Another American Century? -- America and the World After 2000

Author: (American) Gaite, translated by Ding Junyu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-09-01
Features: This book is small, but it discusses a very big topic: the relationship between the United States and other countries and regions in the world at this stage. First, I should point out some shortcomings of this book. Although my title is "Another American Century?—The United States and the World After 2000," this is not a book with predictive nature, nor is it primarily discussing events that occurred after 2000. I just want to outline some of the United States' recent actions internationally, from which to derive the general patterns of U.S. foreign policy and its impact on other regions of the world in terms of economy, politics, military, and ideology. The dissolution of the Soviet Union—the "historic end" celebrated by many—along with the inevitable economic and political victory of the West, provided an excellent opportunity for such research. Therefore, I dare to focus the research on the U.S. government after the 1990s—especially the Clinton administration. However, one of the most important themes of this book is that in the past decade, the mainstream political debates between the United States and many other parts of the world have become increasingly aligned. For example, in the United States, former left-wing parties (such as the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton) have adopted many policies of their right-wing competitors, especially in the economic sphere. It is clear that the Clinton administration does not represent a break in the period of left-wing party rule in American history, but rather a reasonable convergence of contemporary mainstream political thought. Therefore, this statement is particularly true when we discuss foreign policy and international economic issues rather than social issues, and I will continue to emphasize this in the following discussion. As we will see, Bill Clinton (Bill Clinton) achieved remarkable success in promoting U.S. economic policies to the world. This fact also supports my view. Clinton was the U.S. president elected after the Cold War and also the U.S. leader, after Franklin D. Roosevelt, to formulate international policy free from Soviet influence. He boosted American morale and established a set of effective rules through the management of the government. His eloquence and oratory skills inspired high expectations in the United States and provided a useful standard for evaluating the performance of the government under his leadership. It should be noted that this book is not a report on the foreign policy of the Clinton administration, but rather a broader attempt to assess these most important trends and conditions—that is, these trends and conditions that shaped the relationship between the United States and other countries in the late 20th century. Although I have devoted a great deal of space in the book to the actions and beliefs of government officials, I also want to more generally explain certain basic frameworks of American society. This is clearly very difficult, but I hope at least to explain American influence on the world from a broader perspective—commercial, media, and a broader public perspective. I also want to encourage readers to think about these issues in the context of history and, moreover, to view them from the perspective of the next few decades. I do not want to answer whether the 21st century will be the century of the United States, but I believe we should pause and carefully consider the conditions and implicit assumptions behind this question, as well as the triumphant sentiment of many Americans who assert that the future belongs to the United States. In February 1941, exactly ten months before the United States was drawn into World War II, Henry R. Luce, a millionaire in the publishing industry, published an article on the state of the nation in his magazine Life. Luce pointed out that in the first 40 years of the 20th century, the United States had not realized that it had already controlled the fate of the world, and thus human history had experienced an unfortunate turn. "Think of the 20th century. It is our century—not just because we happen to live in it, but because it is the American century. So far, this century has been profoundly meaningful, yet filled with tragedy and disappointment. No century has been so great in bringing progress and happiness to humanity. No century has seen so many men, women, and children suffer such harm, distress, and painful death." Of course, because Luce lived in an era when he witnessed large-scale wars, he came to this conclusion; but his view was not pessimistic, and he did not want to call on readers to lower their expectations. On the contrary, Luce believed that the greatest problem facing the world was that the United States had acquired ownership of the 20th century and had fully taken on the responsibility of maintaining this ownership. The United States became isolationist and was reluctant to extend a helping hand to others in the world. Luce set a better model for American obligations and presented it as a challenge to his readers: "America as the dynamo of vibrant enterprise, America as the center for training skilled workers to serve humanity, America as the Samaritan of goodness"—once again affirming that giving is more important than receiving and that America is the source of freedom and justice, from which we can shape the 20th century and in which we can and will find joy and happiness, vitality and passion." Therefore, Luce believed that it was time for Americans to reconsider, based on the title of his article, to embrace "The American Century." Sixty years later, Luce was welcomed as a prophet because of his insight—reality has proven that Americanization of the 20th century was the Americanization of the world, and this process has continued to advance since then. In January 1999, President Bill Clinton responded to Luce's encouragement to embrace "the next American century" in his State of the Union address. At the end of the 1990s, Luce's original idea was seen by politicians and commentators as a fitting declaration of victory—a summary of America's achievements since World War II—or as an undeniable description since 1900. However, it is easy to forget that since Luce's article was published, it has sparked fierce debate, largely because it carries strong anti-American sentiment and extreme nationalism, even in that wartime, it seemed somewhat extreme. Henry A. Wallace, Vice President of Franklin D. Roosevelt, explicitly quoted Luce's "American Century" in a speech he gave in 1942, which was widely printed and circulated during the war. Wallace succinctly opposed Luce: "Some have talked about 'the American century.' But I believe that the century we are in—this century that will emerge from war—must and will be the century of the common people. Perhaps it provides America with an opportunity to guarantee that the freedom and democracy essential to the common people are not exploited by any nation with a privileged right. Advanced nations have a responsibility to help emerging nations on the path to industrialization, but not through military or economic imperialism. The practices of the 19th century will no longer work in the coming century of the people." Wallace was particularly uneasy with the blatant selfishness and commercial tone revealed in Luce's article, including Luce's fervent hope for the "great possibilities" of world trade. To counter Luce's view of global Americanization, Wallace proposed "the century of the people," expressing his hope for a post-war international order that would be vastly different, one in which a more equal global order could control the complex social and political forces of developing countries. I review the debate between Luce and Wallace because these two viewpoints persisted for more than 40 years during the Cold War, revealing the important political and ideological differences between "Americanization" and "internationalization." For Luce, the United States had the opportunity to use its hegemony and dominance to expand new overseas markets and expand American political and cultural influence. However, Wallace emphasized more the responsibility of the United States toward developing countries (and most importantly) the right of poor countries to choose their own development paths with or without U.S. help rather than rule. The Cold War severely undermined Wallace's cause and the international political landscape he hoped to create; however, in the later stages of the Cold War, nearly 50 years after the debate between Wallace and Luce, the call for internationalism became more pronounced in American politics. The dissolution of the Soviet Union meant a significant dividend for peace; in 1992, the newly elected Democratic President, Bill Clinton, declared that he would strengthen the role of the United Nations and ensure that the United States fulfilled its obligations; and he pledged to promote technological advancement, enhance communication, and strengthen ties between the world's poorest and most remote regions and wealthy nations like the United States. This book tells the story of this advocated internationalism and the new wave of "Americanization" that emerged after the Cold War. Bill Clinton's triumphant inaugural address in 1999—"The Next American Century"—provides a useful starting point for our research, and the quotes in the following chapters are excerpts from Clinton's State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress in 1999. I hope to examine the discrepancies between Clinton's commitments (and by extension, the ideal of another "American century") and the historical record in recent years, while also attempting to describe the Clinton administration and other American thoughts and actions outside of Washington, D.C. This book is divided into four chapters, each of which discusses a separate aspect of the relationship between the United States and other countries—overall covering economic, political, military, and ideological relations with other countries and regions. The first chapter discusses the impact of the United States on the global economy since 1945, focusing on the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the demand for the United States to seek new overseas markets, and the shift from government intervention in the economy to a free-market orientation. I believe that the latter trend has become very pronounced since the 1982 global debt crisis and has had a particularly profound impact on developing countries. Moreover, although the government has withdrawn from the free-market model, evidence suggests that the United States has used significant government resources to push for its economic structure, compelling other governments to shift away from managing their national economies. To better illustrate the actual operations of the United States in this regard, I have provided three examples to demonstrate the impact of U.S. economic policies abroad: the 1994-1995 Mexican peso crisis; the ongoing effort to advance the U.S.-Africa Free Trade Agreement; and the plan to rebuild the Russian economy under U.S. leadership after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The second chapter primarily discusses the relationship between the United States and the United Nations, especially in the context of Bill Clinton's 1992 commitment to strengthen the relationship between the United States and the United Nations. I describe the emergence of "international society" in the U.S. context and evaluate the interests the United States advocates in adhering to such societal rules. Here, I primarily analyze the United States' response to two multilateral initiatives in the 1990s: the effort to establish an International Criminal Court and the international campaign to ban landmines. I also examine the United States' attempts to maintain peace over the past decade and provide a detailed analysis of the failure of the 1993 military action in Somalia, the disastrous consequences of U.S. appeasement policy in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the chaotic policies toward Bosnia before the 1995 Dayton Agreement. These independent events fully reflect the highly selective and selfish "internationalism" of the United States, which inevitably led to the deterioration of the relationship between the United States and the United Nations and the severe weakening of the United Nations in less than a decade under the generous hospitality of Clinton and his administration. The third chapter discusses the prospects for U.S. military in the aftermath of the Cold War, as well as the various schemes of the Pentagon and government officials to maintain high military spending even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In this chapter, I analyze the concept of "rogue states," which has justified increased U.S. defense spending and provided an excuse to expand NATO to maintain a strong Western alliance (even though the Soviet Union no longer existed). From this analysis, I argue that the United States currently has an extremely high defense spending ratio, and I will explain why they maintain such massive military spending by analyzing the relationship between the Pentagon and major U.S. arms manufacturers. In the latter part of this chapter, I will further analyze U.S. military actions abroad, providing two examples: the conflict with Iraq in 1991 (and the subsequent attack on the country) and the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. I am particularly interested in the U.S. military actions in the broader sense of foreign policy, especially the relationship between the actual U.S. military actions and their results and the (usually internationalist) explanations provided by the U.S. government after the Cold War. Finally, I examine the threat of terrorism and the potential alienation (or radicalization) of hostile forces abroad, particularly those who have personally experienced the impact of U.S. military actions. The fourth chapter shifts the perspective and attempts to delve deeper into the issues raised in the previous chapters. Although it is important to evaluate U.S. actions abroad, as observers of U.S. policy, we should not ignore the greater challenges—not only knowing what happened, but also why and how it happened. In the final chapter, I want to answer these questions, at least temporarily, by providing a detailed analysis of the various opinions in the United States and the different backgrounds from which these opinions arise. In the first part of this chapter, I provide a brief overview of some academic opinions on foreign relations in the United States and evaluate the relatively privileged environment in which these "experts" operate. The second part discusses the role of the U.S. government, universities, and think tanks in shaping U.S. foreign policy. I also examine the pressures that politicians face when formulating specific foreign policy, the constraints and biases of U.S. mass media (mostly controlled by corporate groups), and the views and concerns of the American public. I hope to clarify the international relations of the United States by breaking down each event and issue into a simple framework—whether economic or political. Although major U.S. corporations and the wealthy have a significant influence on U.S. foreign policy, U.S. actions abroad are complex and multifaceted. While U.S. actions may always represent the interests of a small number of wealthy individuals, as I have directly observed, I have also provided many other factors to explain why certain U.S. foreign policies have failed or been ineffective. Fully understanding U.S. thoughts and actions is crucial for repositioning U.S. international relations and for most American citizens to accept the fact that another American century is not a guaranteed outcome.