History 291: SUPERPOWER AMERICA
(Advanced Level)
The
Versailles Treaty concluding World War I represented a tragic defeat for Woodrow
Wilson. He failed 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, confirmed in fundamental respects
for the vast majority within the policymaking and informed public communities
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 seized on this "second chance" to wield its power for the purpose of
constructing the international environment that Wilson had prescribed: a Wilsonian world. Notwithstanding the vicissitudes inherent in historical
evolution and the intent of each president to stamp his personal imprimatur on
the foreign policies of his administration, this effort has remained the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy
ever since.
This course traces the ebb and flow of America's pursuit of a Wilsonian World. It will begin with the consequences of America's "Rendezvous With Destiny": 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; in other words, the Cold War. From Truman to Johnson, the United States waged the Cold War relentlessly. The ever-increasing reliance on nuclear weapons with ever-increasing megatonnage did not produce Armageddon, as many feared. But it did produce stalemate in Korea, fiasco and crisis in Cuba, and quagmire in Vietnam among its spectrum of outcomes. Nixon's solution to the nuclear predicament was to count on Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) and triangular diplomacy (one component of which was detente) 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 H. W. Bush's rhetorical "New World Order" and the inchoate efforts of Bill Clinton to "enlarge" global democracy and promote free market economies, a rudderless policymaking community in Washington could find no one to whom to turn other than--Woodrow Wilson.
It is far too early to draw confident judgments about the foreign policies of George W. Bush. What is clear is that there has been a notable gap between rhetoric and behavior. Despite Bush's disparagement of so many Wilsonian precepts during his campaign for the presidency, he has committed the United States more deeply to nation-building than even did John F. Kennedy, and he waged war on Iraq for reasons that included and went beyond "making the world safe for democracy." Conversely, by bypassing the UN Security Council in order to launch a preemptive (in contrast to preventive) attack on Iraq, the current administration has manifested little concern for the principles of collective security, multilateralism, and the norms of international law that form the core of Wilsonianism. As a result, the international image of the United States is at a historic low. The Bush administration would argue, however, that international respect for the United States is at a historic high, and Bush's approval ratings domestically remain significantly better than the nation's economic performance would historically warrant. What effect these interrelated phenomena will have on the foundations of U.S. foreign relations remains to be determined. This course will seek to answer this question even as the presidential election season unfolds.
Overlaying
this narrative history are multiple interrelated themes the course will explore.
These themes include the political economy of national security; 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. and since the end of the Cold War, the creation of a
"unilateral moment"; atomic diplomacy and the balance of terror;
"existential deterrence" and arms limitation; crisis management and
avoidance; the end of the Cold War and implications of the former
Soviet (i.e., Russian) empire's collapse for
restructuring the global system, reordering America's international priorities,
and producing a national strategy that succeeds "containment;"
the relationship between intelligence collection, assessment,
and policy formation; and,
finally (gasp), the challenges confronting the United States as it seeks to manage its
contemporary empire by concurrently institutionalizing its global military and
economic supremacy, retaining the allegiance of its allies, punishing the
"evil-doers," brokering regional disputes, building states and
societies, constructing defenses against all forms of weapons of mass
destruction, and, of course, waging a war on ill-defined terrorists, In
short, this course examines war, peace, stability, and everything in between.
