SUPERPOWER
AMERICA
(Advanced Level)
The
Versailles Treaty concluding World War I represented a tragic defeat for Woodrow
Wilson. He failed, abysmally, both to steer the United States toward an
irrevocable commitment to global engagement, and to establish and
institutionalize a new framework and set of norms for the international order
based on U.S. leadership. The attack on the United States by a foreign aggressor
in December 1941 and America's participation in an Allied coalition during the
Second World War, however, in many respects confirmed the foresight of Wilson's
policies. Indeed, when the United States emerged from the rubble of World War II
as the world's leading economic and sole atomic power, Washington policymakers
seized on this "second chance" to wield this power for the purpose of
constructing the international environment that Wilson had prescribed: a
Wilsonian world. This effort has remained the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy
ever since.
This
course traces the ebb and flow of that effort. It will begin with the diplomacy
of World War II and Franklin Roosevelt's vision of "Open Spheres"
patrolled by "Four Policemen." With Roosevelt's death and the War's
abrupt and violent termination, the ideal of multilateral cooperation rapidly
gave way to bipolar competition: the Cold War. From Truman to Johnson, the
United States waged the Cold War relentlessly, alternating, often reflexively in
fits and starts, between strategies of "containment" and
"liberation." The
ever-increasing reliance on nuclear weapons with ever-increasing megatonnage did
not produce Armageddon, as many feared. But it did produce stalemates in Korea,
fiascoes and crises in Cuba, and Quagmires in Vietnam. Nixon's solution to the
nuclear predicament was to count on Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) and
Triangular Diplomacy to deter war and promote stability. Reagan tried to escape
the predicament by imagining "Star Wars." Then the sudden end to the
Cold War caught everyone by surprise. As attested to by George Bush's rhetorical
"New World Order" and the inchoate efforts of Bill Clinton to
"enlarge" global democracy and free market economies, a rudderless
policymaking community in Washington knows of no one to whom to turn other
than--Woodrow Wilson. The evidence thus far
does not provide much reason to be optimistic that George W. Bush administration
will prove itself to be creative and innovative. Yet those who charge the
Bushites with rejecting Wilson in favor of isolationism and/or unilateralism may
well be misreading the young administration's admittedly inchoate policies.
Overlaying
this narrative history are multiple interrelated themes the course will explore.
These themes include: the rise and fall of the United States as a creditor
nation; the tension between America's idealistic impulses and the perceived need
to behave "realistically" in a frequently hostile environment; the
impact of domestic (political, economic, cultural, ideological, and
psychological) influences on foreign policy; the emergence of bipolarism and
Soviet-American antagonism; the challenge to bipolarism posed by the Third World
and regional disputes; atomic diplomacy and the balance of terror;
"existential deterrence" and arms limitation; crisis management and
avoidance; and, finally, the end of the Cold War, the implosion of the former
Soviet Union, and the implications of the Russian empire's collapse for
restructuring the global system, reordering America's international priorities,
and producing a national strategy that succeeds "containment." In
short, this course examines war, peace, stability, and everything in between.
The
assigned readings reflect an array of interpretations and approaches to the
study of the history of U.S. foreign policy.
Although no "formal discussions" are scheduled, students will
be provided the opportunity--and encouraged--to discuss freely their responses
to and questions about these interpretations, those of the instructor, during
every class. In additions, at least once each student will be required to
present a succinct oral summary of the fundamental issues raised in the previous
session, and time will be allotted to examine and dissect the documents that are
either available on line or in our assigned readings. Consequently,
notwithstanding the relatively hefty readings for some weeks, each student will
be expected to complete all assignments with the care and thoroughness
necessary to formulate questions and participate actively in class discussions:
challenging, probing, even arguing.