Harry Targ
It is also clear that justification for empire and military spending
has necessitated the construction of an enemy, first the Soviet Union and
international communism; then terrorism; and now China. The obverse of a
demonic enemy requires a conception of self to justify the imperial project.
That self historically has been various iterations of American exceptionalism,
the indispensable nation, US humanitarianism, and implicitly or explicitly the
superiority of the white race and western civilization. (Harry Targ, “United
States foreign policy: yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” Monthly Review
Online, Oct 23, 2019)
Henry Luce, founder of the publishing empire of Time,
Life, and Fortune magazines, wrote in 1941 that the twentieth century was to be
“the American Century.” Once the United States, in conjunction with the former
Soviet Union and Great Britain, led the way to the defeat of fascism and
militarism in Europe and Asia, he wrote, it could begin the process of
promoting democracy and market economies everywhere. This vision of the United
States as “the beacon of hope” for humankind would find its way into the foreign
policy pronouncements and political rhetoric of virtually every president since
the end of World War II.
President Reagan spoke about the US as “the city on
the hill.” President Clinton rekindled the vision of the American Century when
he proclaimed the US commitment to fight “rogue states” and to create “market
democracies” around the world. George W. Bush declared that the United States
represents what is good in the world. President Obama also claimed that the
United States has a special role to play in the world. He and others from both
political parties often refer to the US as the “indispensable nation.” And
today, President Biden has argued that the United States has the responsibility
to defend the “democracies” threatened by “authoritarian” regimes.
Supporters of US foreign policy believe that the
United States has been motivated in its participation in international
relations by altruism, by the vision of democratic values, and free markets.
“Political realists,” however, claim that US foreign policy, like the foreign
policy of all big powers, should be based upon their core interests defined as
achieving power, not moral values. Policymakers err if they make policy based
upon universal abstract principles and use those principles to justify foreign
policy.
Contrary to the realist view that US foreign policy
often has been made by abstract and unachievable moral principles rather than
careful calculations of interest and power, the “historical revisionists” have
argued that US foreign policy has always been designed to serve the economic
interests of the nation’s rulers. They remind us that the US has been an
imperial power ever since the “new nation” swept across the North American
continent, seized land held by its original settlers, and massacred those
Native Americans who resisted the seizure and occupation of land. For these
writers, the United States imperial vision turned global with the industrial
revolution after the Civil War. By the 1890s the US began constructing an
informal empire (from Cuba to the Philippines) that ultimately has stretched
all across the globe.
From this last point of view, US foreign policy since
World War II, with the struggle against the former Soviet Union and communism,
to wars in Korea and Vietnam, to military and covert interventions in
Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Nicaragua, to the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq constitute the continual drive for US empire, largely to
maximize economic gain. These theorists see historic links between the changes
and growth in the capitalist economy and imperial policies overseas. It is not
naïve ideas about promoting high principles that drives foreign policy but
material, largely economic interests, that are the root cause of such policies.
The wars of the 21st century have raised again debates
about the uses and purposes underlying US foreign policy as the United States
declared its intentions to unilaterally fight a war on terrorism all across the
globe, launched wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, expanded NATO, funded the war in
Ukraine, and become more combative with China.
Political realists thinkers have become major critics of some of these
policies particularly including the United States military response to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. Many realists see US policy as driven by an ideology that
claims that somehow the country’s mission is to remake the world. The realist
critique of altruistic claims made by US policymakers for sending massive
amounts of military aid to Ukraine, expanding NATO, and threatening China, they
say, emphasizes the unachievable ideology of decisionmakers, to promote
“democracies” that are challenged by “authoritarian” states. The realist
critique does not, however, address the economic and political stakes of the
United States as it seeks to defend and reestablish its global economic and
political hegemony in an increasingly multipolar world.
On the Ideology of American Exceptionalism
Andrew Bacevich (“After the
American Century,” Tom Dispatch, July 12, 2022) taking off from an
earlier essay by David Bessner (“Empire Burlesque,” Harper’s, July, 2022), enriches our
understanding of the ideology that served to justify the United States drive to
global hegemony after World War Two.
Both
authors argue that the turning-point in the thinking of policymakers and
political and cultural elites as to the goals of the United States in the world
was inspired by the famous essay by Time/Life Magazine publisher Henry
Luce. The essay entitled “The American Century,” appeared in Life
magazine shortly before the entry of the United States into the World War. It
urges policymakers and the citizenry to commit to creating a new century in
which the model of the United States, its democracy, its economic system, and
for Bacevich its religiosity, should serve as a “beacon,” “a city on the hill,”
and the “US as the indispensable nation.”
Luce
called on the United States to be prepared to replace Great Britain as the
power to guide the world into the future and at the same time to preserve and
promote democracy and free enterprise. He quoted a British diplomat and an Economist
editorial proclaiming that Great Britain, an island nation of 50 million
people, was prepared to follow the US lead in defeating Nazism on the
continent and constructing a post-war world order overseen by the US. Above
all, Luce made it clear that the United States, a wealthy country, should
encourage the development of market economies, promote free trade, stimulate
technological developments, and in these ways oppose state interference in
economic life, for him exemplified by the Soviet Union globally and the New
Deal domestically.
In
contrast to Luce, Bacevich and Bessner argue that a wiser US foreign policy,
should be based on a complementarity of the nation’s fundamental goal, its
national interest, and a careful assessment of
its material resources to achieve it. National interest, not some
messianic ideology should govern policy. Some realists during the Cold War were
critics of US policy because the vision of transforming the world, as Luce
envisioned it, transcended careful and modest calculations of national
interests and how to achieve them. The most distinguished realists, such as
Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan became critics of the virulent anti-communism
that drove the public discourse on US foreign policy. In this regard,
envisioning an “American century” or promoting “the free world,” realists
claimed, well exceeded the interests and/or the possibilities of United States
foreign policy.
George
Kennan on “Moralism/Legalism”
One
prominent realist, George Kennan, referred in his essay, American Diplomacy
1900-1950, to the propensity of US leaders to embrace “moralism/legalism”
when making foreign policy. Kennan traced that error back to John Hays’ (author
of the “Open Door” Notes) 1898 warning to European nations that they should not
carve up spheres of influence in China to the exclusion of the United States.
For Kennan, leaders were incorrect to think that using threats and making grand
declarations, would lead to positive results. In addition, he critiqued other “moralists/legalists” such as
Theodore Roosevelt who saw the white man’s destiny to civilize the world or
Woodrow Wilson’s desire to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Bacevich
and Bessner develop a compelling narrative beginning with Henry Luce’s dramatic
call for an “American Century.” For them, the Henry Luce essay was the clarion
call, that shaped the thinking and policymaking of every US administration
about foreign policy since 1941.
Bringing
Class Back In
What is lacking in these, otherwise valuable
contributions to our understanding of the roots of United States foreign policy
is the class character of that policy and the underlying material interests
that have driven that policy at least since the industrial revolution. A
compelling way to describe the “class struggle” elements of US foreign policy
as the Cold War was about to begin is to compare the Luce essay, which promoted
a global US economic presence, with a long-forgotten speech Vice President
Henry Wallace made in the fall of 1942, after the World War began (“The Century of the Common Man” May 8, 1942, Grand Ballroom, Commodore Hotel,
New York, NY). Peter Dreier reminds us of the progressive vision in and around
the Roosevelt Administration before and during World War II which was the basis
of the struggles over the future of the US domestically and internationally
after the war. https://portside.org/2013-02-04/henry-wallace-americas-forgotten-visionary
What was clear in the comparison of the two speeches,
Luce versus Wallace, was that the United States would have to choose between
two paths after fascism was defeated. For Luce, altruistic words would be used
to rationalize the pursuit of global hegemony and crushing worker rights
at home. For Wallace, US policy should be to help build a multipolar,
multicultural world based on the principles of economic and social justice
embedded in the post-war Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This choice was
not just about ideology but about economic interests. And it is this, economic
interests at home and abroad, that the realists leave out of the story.
Henry Wallace and the Century of the Common Man
“Some have spoken of the "American Century." I say that
the century on which we are entering -- the century which will come into being
after this war -- can be and must be the century of the common man.” (Henry Wallace, “The Century of the Common
Man.”). https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/henrywallacefreeworldassoc.htm
In this speech Henry Wallace praises the evolution of human
society over the course of several hundred years. Particularly, he alludes to the “Great Revolutions of the people,
there were the American Revolution of 1775, the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin-American revolutions of the
Bolivarian era, the German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 191[7].” This evolution
involved the march of science, increased industrial progress, rising literacy,
and broad access to education. He proclaimed that “everywhere the common people”
were “on the march.”
Then Wallace
addressed the main point of his argument, the freedom from want. And to that
want, much work, he suggested, needed to be done. “But when we begin to
think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we
know that the revolution of the past 150 years has not been completed, either
here in the United States or any place else in the world. We know that this
revolution cannot stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.”
The Political and Economic Contexts of the Luce and Wallace
Statements
“Everywhere, reading and writing are accompanied
by industrial progress, and industrial progress, sooner or later, inevitably
brings a strong labor -- labor movement. From a long-time and fundamental point
of view, there are no backward peoples which are lacking in mechanical sense.
Russians, Chinese, and the Indians both of India and the Americas, all learn to
read and write and operate machines just as well as your children or my
children. Everywhere the common people are on the march. By the millions they
are learning to read and write, learning to think together, learning to use
tools. They're learning to think and work together in labor movements, some of
which may be extreme or a little impractical at first, but which eventually
will settle down to serve effectively the interests of the common man.” https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/henrywallacefreeworldassoc.htm
It is critical
to assess the Luce and Wallace statements in the context of the times when they
appeared. The Luce essay appeared in Life magazine shortly before the
United States entered World War II and Vice-President Wallace’s speech, for the
most part a challenge to the Luce perspective, was presented after the US
entered the war.
In both
cases, the speeches were inextricably connected to intense political and
economic struggle that characterized the 1930s. Of course, this context
included a Great Depression; modest but then substantial programs to stimulate
economic recovery (the New Deal); the mobilization of millions of workers who
were demanding the right to form unions; the continued though tarnished
reputation of a socialist alternative to capitalism, the former Soviet Union;
vibrant Communist movements in the United States and around the world; and a
broad-based “cultural front” of artists, intellectuals, trade unionists,
anti-racists, and anti-fascists who envisioned a radically different post-World
War from what preceded it.
It was no
accident that the Luce speech referred to the world order that existed in the
era of the British Empire and Wallace referred to the revolutionary ferment in
the United States, Germany, France, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and China,
and elsewhere in the Global South. Luce wanted to recreate the capitalist world
order of the past while Wallace spoke to the creation of a revolutionary order
that privileged the “common man” in the future. And the Vice-President
specifically mentioned labor as a key player in his vision of a post-war world
order.
US Labor’s Vision of the Post-War
Period: To Limit the Power of Capitalism at Home as well as Overseas
To more
effectively prosecute the war effort, leaders of the new vibrant and militant
trade union confederation, The Congress of Labor Organizations (CIO) and the
older American Federation of Labor (AFL) agreed to postpone “class struggles”
at the workplace. With much protest from the rank and file the CIO signed a “no
strike pledge” to be in effect for the duration of the war. In exchange, the
Roosevelt Administration agreed to oppose efforts to bust unions and to
establish price controls (along with wage freezes).
Leaders of
the labor movement assumed that after the war, labor which had earned a right
to collaborate with capital and the government in policymaking, would assume an
ever-larger role in public policymaking. CIO militancy in the late 1930s, the
organizing of four million industrial workers in key industries, such as steel,
auto, electronics, railroads, meat packing, meant that labor would, while not
overthrowing capital, be co-equal with capital. And this assertion of labor
rights would parallel the anti-colonial struggles occurring throughout Asia and
Africa. This was to be, in Henry Wallace’s words, “the century of the common
man.”
But, as was said above, the Luce vision was
one of reestablishing the hegemony of capital over labor at home and abroad.
The clash of visions could be seen in the turbulent year of 1946: on labor’s
side the largest strike wave in American history driven by its demand to be
part of economic planning, wage increases, and the right of all workers to
choose to join unions; and on capital’s side demands on government to end price
controls and establish laws limiting the rights of workers to form unions.
The
turbulence, capital against labor at home, occurred as tensions rose between
the United States and the former Soviet Union abroad. The Truman Administration
embraced the Churchillian vision of “an iron curtain descending across Europe,”
launching covert campaigns against Communist parties in Europe, preparing to
enter the Greek Civil War on the side of its reactionary government, and
beginning the campaign against “domestic communists.” The clarion call of a new
era, in the spirit of Luce, was President Truman’s famous “Truman Doctrine”
speech in March 1947, warning of the dangers of “international communism.”
Domestically, the new Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act,
significantly weakening workers’ ability to form unions. It included a
provision requiring union leaders to sign a pledge that were not “communists.”
Comparing the competing Luce/Wallace visions of the
post-war world suggests that the outcome, a clear victory of the Luce
perspective, was about more than ideology-the American Century, American
Exceptionalism, etc. It was about material interest. Was public policy to serve
the interest of capitalism or would it serve the interest of labor? From this
point of view ideology is a tool used by political and economic elites to argue
for given policies, particularly in an increasingly centralized media and
popular culture, rather than the roots causes of that policy. When Truman
advisors were meeting in February 1947 to discuss the “communist threat” to
Greece, the Republican Senator from Michigan Arthur Vandenburg (a former
isolationist) declared that the Republican Party would support a global
mobilization against the Soviet Union (and one could surmise against labor
militancy at home) but he advised the president to “scare hell out of the
American people.”
