The Wars of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and America’S Rise to Power

The Wars of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and America’s Rise to Power

VOLKER DEPKAT

Explanations for the United States’ rise to power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are manifold.1 Some draw on the unique geographical circumstances that endowed the country with abundant natural resources and pro- tected it from foreign threats by two oceans serving as effective natural barriers. Complementing this favorable geographical situation was the fact that the United States did not have a powerful neighbor. The combination of geography and geostrategy allowed the United States to expand over the continent and gradually develop into a great power.2 A second grand narrative of American foreign policy sees the liberal and democratic values of the »American Creed«3 as the ideological driving force behind America’s rise to power. According to this interpretation, America’s foreign policy was thoroughly idealistic from its inception. The United States was an essentially peaceful country with strong anti-colonial and anti-imperi- alist traditions and became involved in foreign affairs only to promote democratic and liberal values on behalf of mankind. A sense of mission designed to build the »Empire of Liberty« merged with a notion of the United States as a »Beacon of Liberty.« In its pursuit of foreign policy, the United States aimed at reforming the world by creating an international environment supportive of natural rights, liberalism, and democracy.4

1 Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Walter LaFeber, The Amer- ican Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (2nd ed., New York: Norton, 1994); Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Thomas Andrew Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (10th ed., Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1980). 2 Some of the recent works on geostrategy include: Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic, 1997); Martin Sicker, The Geopolitics of Security in the Americas: Hemispheric Denial from Monroe to Clinton (Westport: Praeger, 2002); Geoffrey R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, 1890-1987 (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988); Stephan G. Bierling, Geschichte der amerikanischen Außenpoli- tik: Von 1917 bis zur Gegenwart (3rd ed., München: Beck, 2007), pp. 9-12. 3 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper, 1944); Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s Na- tional Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 46-9; Rogers M. Smith, »The ›Amer- ican Creed‹ and American Identity: The Limits of Citizenship in the United States,« Western Political Quarterly 41 (1988), pp. 225-51. 4 George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Knud Krakau, Missionsbewußtsein und Völkerrechtsdoktrin in den Vereinigten Staaten 34 Volker Depkat

This grand liberal interpretation of United States foreign policy was harshly criticized by William Appleman Williams and his Wisconsin School of historians. They saw America’s foreign policy as driven primarily by economic interests. According to this »realistic« view, the willingness to promote and encourage economic growth in a burgeoning free-market economy motivated an American foreign policy of reckless expansion in the quest for overseas markets.5 As different and multifaceted as all these approaches are, war does not figure prominently in them as a factor of America’s rise to power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The liberal interpretation regards democracies as inherently peace-loving, non-aggressive systems. Wars are understood to be exceptions and an aberration from the »true« course of their policy. For schol- ars arguing in the liberal tradition, war was thrust upon the United States by external circumstances and autocratic regimes, and Americans only reluctant- ly accepted the challenge to protect and spread liberalism and democracy. In the liberals’ view, there was no imperial design behind America’s foreign policy. The United States accidentally stumbled into its great power status, and the empire created in this process was one »by invitation.«6 Surprisingly enough, wars also do not figure prominently in the »realistic« interpretation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries United States foreign policy. Rather they were seen as an integral part of an American foreign policy supportive of economic expansion. The exigencies and pressures of capitalism and industrialization, however, primarily drove this economic expansion. Therefore, the focus of the scholarship circling around the Wisconsin School was on those policy measures that furthered America’s economic expansion into the world through indirect forms of domination like the systematic expansion of international trade relations by way of reciprocity treaties, the protec- tion of American trade with the build-up of a system of military bases, and the »Open Door« policy, to name just a few.7 In this context, war was not central for explaining America’s rise to power. The country’s emerging great power status was supported by war, but not driven by it.

von Amerika (Frankfurt a. M.: Metzner, 1967); Kurt R. Spillmann, Amerikas Ideologie des Friedens: Ursprünge, Formwandlungen und geschichtliche Auswirkungen des amerikanischen Glaubens an den Mythos von einer friedlichen Weltordnung (Bern: Lang, 1984); Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 5 William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland: World Publish- ing Company, 1959); William Appleman Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York: Random, 1969); A William Appleman Williams Reader: Selections from His Major Historical Writings, ed. Henry W. Berger (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1992). 6 Geir Lundestad, The American »Empire« and Other Studies of US Foreign Policy in a Com- parative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press; Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1990). 7 Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1963; Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1998); Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Der Aufstieg des amerikanischen Imperialismus: Studien zur Entwicklung des Imperium Americanum, 1865-1900 (2nd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987).