Empire: A Brief History of America’s Global Influence
Dennis Schroader
HIS 204
Lynn Elisabeth Marlow
May 4, 2009

“Can you feel it coming? Empire!” (Queensryche, 1990).

America’s rapid rise to global dominance has been steady and a nearly foregone conclusion. With the exception of a few periods of stalled territorial expansion and/or projection of political and economic interests, America’s story is that of rapid expansion, rise to the status of world power and eventual emergence as the sole remaining Superpower. Today, America stands alone as the dominant military, economic and political force in the world.

State of the Union, 1865: Distractions
The War Between the States shook America to its very foundation and challenged the basic principles upon which the country was founded. After the eventual defeat of the Confederacy, America faced the long, arduous task of bringing its fractured pieces back together and reforming the Union, a process called Reconstruction. It was not enough to pass legislation to bring former Confederate states back into the fold. The aim of Reconstruction was primarily to win back the people of the South (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 474).

Another major problem facing America immediately after the Civil War was dealing with the repercussions of the Thirteenth Amendment. Of course, ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was a part of Reconstruction as a whole, but once again, passing laws do not change the hearts of men. Integrating the Freedpeople was more problematic after Lincoln’s assassination than it might otherwise have been. In any event, the whole ordeal made impossible any notion of consolidating America’s power base within the country or expanding American influence abroad.

Manifest Destiny
With the annexation of the Oregon Territory in 1846, America’s reach extended from sea to shining sea and achieved the vision of Manifest Destiny. Of course, with new lands came new challenges. Native Americans were no strangers to the white man, but relations with them became continuously more strained as more and more settlers moved west. Regular skirmishes with settlers and the U.S. Army served only to strengthen the resolve of politicians in Washington D.C. Treaties with the tribal nations were enacted to confine the tribes to specific lands called Reservations. Settlers regularly ignored these treaties when it suited their purposes. Military attention to the Native American “problem” was the most visible sign of the white man’s dominance, but it was the linkage of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 that spelled the eventual doom of their nomadic culture. Rapid transportation meant more people coming west and more land being used by them, and hunters and traders killing off entire herds of buffalo, which the tribes used for much of their subsistence. Eventually, Indian resistance subsided and they retired to their Reservations where they – for the most part – remain to this day, though now by choice rather than force.

These events coupled with the Mexican Cession of 1848 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 from Russia effectively marked the end of American expansion on the North American continent. By 1900, after Hawaii became a U.S. Territory, all of the present day states had come under control of the United States government. With the aspirations of domestic imperialists realized, they began to cast their gaze overseas.

Big Stick Moves South
As Americans saw the colonial empires of England, France and Spain reach across the globe, ambitions of parity began to foment. Manifest Destiny not only gave justification for the conquest of what is now the continental United Sates, but also laid a foundation, a way of thinking, which made projection of American influence not merely justifiable but a moral obligation. Charles Denby, lawyer, diplomat, Minister to China and member of the U.S. Philippines Commission said in 1898, “We are stretching out our hands for what nature meant should be ours. We are taking our proper rank among the nations of the world... along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions, and humanity will bless us” (Nostro, 2008). It was this manner of thinking which influenced Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy and shaped the American approach to our neighbors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Spanish-American War, set off by the destruction of the USS Maine in February 1898, was a short-lived but hard-fought conflict over which country would shape the future of Cuba, and by extension the entire Caribbean (Events – Spanish-American War, 1998). Although the exact cause of the explosion on the Maine is still not completely certain, popular opinion at the time was that Spain was at fault. That tragedy, along with the now-long-standing rationale of the Monroe Doctrine, was all Congress needed to authorize military action. After a few months, American forces were victorious, thus confirming America’s dominance in the Caribbean (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle & Stoff, 2007, p 617).

Events in the Philippines went in much the same order, although without the sinking of a U.S. vessel. The Treaty of Paris in 1898 ended the war with Spain and resulted in the U.S. gaining Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The Philippines ended up being more difficult to bring under American rule with a bloody, three year long guerilla war ensuing from the time the U.S. assumed control of the islands. This rebellion was quelled in 1902.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick diplomacy also led to increasing American activity in Latin American affairs. He was once quoted, “If we intend to say hands off to Europe, then sooner or later we must keep order ourselves,” referring to the tenets of the Monroe Doctrine which told Europeans to mind their own hemisphere. This came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary which led to direct American involvement in Latin American affairs (p. 663). This policy led to the building of the Panama Canal and direct U.S. responsibility for territories throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

President Taft, who immediate succeeded Roosevelt, preferred flexing economic muscles. According to the U.S. Department of State’s website:

“From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as "dollar diplomacy." Taft shared the view held by Knox [sic] that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests” (2009).

The State Department’s site goes on to say, “In spite of successes, ‘dollar diplomacy’ failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China” (2009).

By the time of the First World War, the new President (Wilson) had a new idea. He saw the war in Europe as an opportunity for America to emerge as a leader on the world stage. “Only if the United States stood above the fray could it lead the way to a higher peace. ‘Americans must remain impartial in thought as well as action,’ Wilson insisted in 1914” (p 670). For all his good intentions, the Wilson Administration ended up supplying the war effort. At first, both sides could purchase from the United States. The Allied blockade of Central Powers’ ports, however, made America’s pretense of neutrality moot. With the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, Wilson had little choice but to enter the war full force in support of the Allies.

Failure of the League of Nations
Wilson’s dream of American global leadership did not die in the mustard gas filled trenches of Europe. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, was to be Wilson’s masterpiece and he worked tirelessly for a League of Nations. He was successful with the Europeans. Not so much within the halls of Congress. By the time the treaty was passed out of committee, Wilson’s essential Article X, which required member nations to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack, had been all but gutted. The amendments to the bill assumed no responsibility under Article X unless prior Congressional approval was obtained (p 686).

Congressional Republicans were loathed to cede control of American foreign policy to international treaty. Due to the unwillingness to compromise on the part of the Congressional Republicans and President Wilson alike, the Treaty of Versailles – and by extension the League of Nations – was never ratified by the United States. With Wilson’s failure to bring the United States into the League, global support evaporated. Wilson’s dream died not on the battlefields of Europe, but in the halls of Congress.

According to Charles Townsend, Professor of International History at Keele University:

“How the League would have worked with American participation remains one of the great 'what ifs' of modern history. As it was, the direction of the system was left in the hands of states - primarily Britain and France - whose altruism was questionable and whose economic resources had been crippled by the war” (2003).

After World War I, American attention turned back toward its own hemisphere. By the time of the Coolidge Administration, the appetite for military conflict in Washington had long been sated. Instead of sending troops to deal with Mexican confiscation of American properties, Coolidge sent an ambassador. President Hoover held a similar attitude when he ordered the withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua. This departure from the Roosevelt Corollary came to be known as the “Good Neighbor” policy (p 763).

Franklin Roosevelt wholeheartedly embraced this policy. In 1933 and 1934 his Administration signed agreements renouncing America’s right to involve itself in the internal or external affairs of its neighbors. Roosevelt instead preferred exerting American influence through politics and economics. Unlike Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”, however, Roosevelt was largely successful in spreading American interests and influence abroad.

The Second World War, which arguably started shortly after Adolf Hitler’s accent to the German Chancellorship in 1933, affected U.S. economic interests abroad, but since America was still in the grips of the Great Depression, scant attention was paid to goings on in Europe. Roosevelt struggled in the 1930s to bring America out of the Depression by implementing his New Deal policies and, in part, by advancing U.S. business interests with our neighbors. American economic salvation, as it turned out, was to be delivered not by bills in Congress, but by bombs in Hawaii.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on the naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, galvanized the American populace and government alike, who were otherwise content to sit this one out. The massive industrial mobilization to rebuild the navy, beef up the Army and create an Army air corps (later the U.S. Air Force) was to the American economy what a bucket of ice water is to a sleeping person. With America back at work and a two-front war to fight – some might argue that the North Africa campaign was a third front, but it was really just an extension of the European Theater of War – the United States was once again able to project its military might across oceans. After the Allied defeat of the Axis Powers, the U.S. established a permanent military presence throughout Western Europe – in Germany and England in particular – and in Asia – in Australia, Japan, and other small Pacific islands – primarily to help prevent another such World War.

Cold War Expansion
The defeat of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese threats gave rise to the new threat of global Communism. The Soviet Union sought to expand its influence and territories for much the same reasons as Western powers: to prevent the reoccurrence of the destruction of World War II. Unlike the West, however, Russian expansion meant not self-determination and alliances formed, but the installation of puppet governments whose strings were pulled from Moscow. Soviet Socialism was brutal and benefited only those in power, and left those for whom the powers-that-were had no use out in the cold. By some estimates, Lenin’s non-war-related body count dwarfs even the war deaths caused by Adolf Hitler.

The conflicts in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s through 1975 were, in effect, proxy wars where Communist forces fought against Western, pro-Democracy armies. The Korean conflict was fought to a stand-still which remains to this day. The armistice which ended the fighting did not establish a peace agreement. Accordingly, the De-Militarized Zone is still one of (if not the) most heavily guarded borders in the world and relations between the Communist North Korean government and the rest of the free world can only be described as coolly hostile.

This is contrasted by the results in Vietnam. By all military accounts, the American and South Vietnamese forces utterly destroyed those of the Communist North Vietnamese Army regulars and the Viet Cong guerillas. The body count is not even close. The Communists won this conflict in the media, not the battlefield. It is important also to note that American anti-war sentiment, although certainly present, did not flair to its history making heights until the selective service draft was activated and expanded. Today, however, much of the West has somewhat normalized relations with Vietnam since the government there embraced economic policies more in-line with free societies.

During this period, American ties with pro-democratic governments across the globe were strengthened, as were America’s economic interests. The first country to develop nuclear power (and the only country ever to use it in anger) had become a true global Superpower. The development of nuclear arms and their delivery methods, however, were not the only fronts of the Cold War. Every aspect of national identity became a front in that conflict from the Space Race to the 100 meter dash at the quadrennial Olympic Games.

1970’s – Misery Index and Moral Equivalence
The end of the conflict in Vietnam marked a shift in American thinking. The perception at the time, which endures to this day, was that the Americans lost the war. Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian soldier in the 18th and 19th centuries, famously stated that “War is a continuation of politics by other means” (Brassford, 1994). In so keeping, the American psyche and belief in the irresistible force of Jeffersonian democracy was damaged after the “loss” in Vietnam.

Compounding the problem were the scandal of Watergate surrounding Richard Nixon’s re-election (and eventual resignation), lingering resentment from the Civil Rights movement and the abuse received by veterans returning from Vietnam, and a stagnant economy brought quickly to its knees by oil shortages (Heritage). President Carter, by all accounts a good man, nevertheless presided over what is arguably the worst period in American history since the Great Depression. Under his Administration, the Misery Index rose from 12.72 to 19.72, and averaged out at 16.26, the highest average for any president on record and the second highest raw increase from the beginning to the end of his single term in office (U.S. Misery Index).

So poor was American self-confidence that President Carter spoke about living with and accepting the reality of a long-term Soviet Union. In a commencement address at Notre Dame University in May of 1977, Carter said, “We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear” (Lord, 2009). His disastrous point-of-view made Communism – which was responsible for unimaginable human suffering and corruption – morally equivalent to the governments of the free world.

Tearing Down the Wall - Enter the Gipper
Not surprisingly, Carter was easily defeated in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Reagan ushered in a new era of optimism and spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” (1974) to which the whole freedom-loving world looked and admired. Reagan rebuilt the American military and ramped up spending on defense research projects. His most famous project was nick named Star Wars. In military parlance, it was (and is) known as SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative. For all practical purposes it was a proposal to deploy space-based anti-ballistic missile defenses.

During this time Reagan strengthened alliances throughout the free world which had been damaged by the specter of Vietnam, Nixon’s scandal, and Carter’s neglect, particularly with England and Israel. Reagan also took a page from Theodore Roosevelt’s playbook by taking a more active role in Latin America and ousting Manuel Noriega from Panama. Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are primarily credited with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Middle East
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, America’s role as the lone remaining Superpower has been one of world police force. In 1990, Iraqi forces, under the command of another brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded their oil rich neighbor Kuwait. Through the auspices of the United Nations, the U.S., then under President George H.W. Bush, led a coalition of allied countries in driving Iraq out of Kuwait and containing Iraqi aggression by establishing military bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and using the long standing base at Incirlik, Turkey, to patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones established by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East was seen by many in the Muslim world as an affront to Islam and a return to the Crusades, giving rise to international Islamic terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda.  Terrorists struck at the U.S. throughout the 1990s with minimal response from the Clinton Administration. It wasn’t until September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew commercial air planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the tragedy aboard American Airlines Flight 93 – where the passengers’ attempt to take back the plane resulted in its crash in a field in Pennsylvania – that America began to take international terrorism seriously.

President George W. Bush, the son of the elder President Bush, declared a Global War on Terror and quickly invaded Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was headquartered and received avid support from the Taliban government. In 2003, the younger President Bush, citing Iraqi defiance of 14 U.N. Security Council resolutions over 12 years, led a multi-national “Coalition of the Willing” in a six week rout of Saddam Hussein’s forces. The long-term occupation of Iraq proved to be much more difficult and controversial, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.

Conclusion: Going Forward Looking Backward
America has come a long way in the 233 years since the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence. In this relatively short period of time, the United States has risen from a rag-tag group of former European colonies into the undisputed leader of the free world. This long term trend of expansion, punctuated by periods of isolationist introspection, seems to lend credence to the 19th century idea of Manifest Destiny.

Whether by means of military, political or economic force, America has grown to a truly global empire. Not an empire under the iron fist of a dictator, such as envisioned by the likes of Roman Caesars and Communist oppressors, but an empire of interrelated societies with freedom of self-determination. Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan would be proud.

References

Bassford, C. (1994). Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945. New York: Oxford University Press

Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M., & Stoff, M. (2007). Nation of Nations, Volume 2, 6th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill

Lord, J. (2009). http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/31/jimmy-carters-spirit-of-notre/print

Nostro, R. (2008). Acquisition of the Philippines and Hawaii. Retrieved on April 29, 2009 from http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/comp/cw26HawaiiPhilippines_3hm.htm#note1

Phillips, J. (1979). The Iranian Oil Crisis. Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from the Heritage Foundation website: http://www.heritage.org/research/middleeast/bg76.cfm

Reagan, R. (1974, January 25). The Shining City Upon A Hill. Retrieved on April 28, 2009, from http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/quotes%20etc/Reagan_The%20Shining%20City%20Upon%20A%20Hill%20speech.htm

Tate, W. (1990). Empire (Recorded by Queensryche). On Empire album: EMI America

Townsend, C. (2003). The League of Nations and the United Nations. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/league_nations_02.shtml

U.S. Department of State. (2009). Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1913. Retrieved on May 2, 2009 from U.S. Department of State website: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ip/16324.htm

U.S. Misery Index. (2009). Retrieved on May 2, 2009, from http://www.miseryindex.us/

U.S. Territorial Maps (1996). Retrieved on May 1, 2009, from University of Virginia website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MAP/terr_hp.html