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The dismantling by the Trump administration of venerable foreign policy agencies such as the USAID, and the hobbling of venerable multilateral institution such as NATO, the World Health Organization, the UN, and many others, seems unquestionably to have brought to a sudden, and shocking, end the exercise of American power on the global stage. I write at some length about many of these institutions, and the vigorous support of them by Americans and global partners, in my book. I give primary attention to what American multilateralism meant for post-WWII Dutch reconstruction and renewal. But the work of these institutions and practices carried similar consequences for nations and communities around the world, for decades after the end of World War II.  The shield used to promote the Marshall Plan, recognizable to millions of Europeans in the years after World War II. Unfortunately, our coarsened contemporary political dialog seems to understand global power solely in terms of military capability. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of actual power. Military power has its uses, but as the bloody twentieth century has shown, American military power is seldom—by itself—geopolitically determinative. Far more successful in shaping the postwar world have been a host of economic, technological and scientific, intellectual, and cultural institutions which have knit countries together—imperfectly to be sure—in common cause. We call these arrangements “multilateralism” and they are marked, generally, by cooperation and mutual interest. American leadership in and through such organizations has been marked and vital. It is these multilateral organizations, institutions, and practices that are currently being systematically dismantled in an act of political destruction that the historian Timothy Snyder (no relation) has described as “superpower suicide.”
So sudden has been the dismantling of American multilateralism, that I wonder if very many Americans understand, even in part, how American power was established in the first place, how it was sustained, and what it has meant for themselves and for millions around the world.
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 America's most successful and most notorious filibuster, William Walker (1824-1860). About a month ago ten individuals were shot or detained by Cuban authorities just off the northern coast of Cuba. Officials claimed the group was attempting to infiltrate Cuba, with unspecified “terrorist” aims in mind. Among the dead was a US citizen, one other US citizen was apprehended. Apparently the rest of the group were permanent US residents of one sort or another. There has been only sporadic follow-up reporting on what appears to be a highly unusual incident: a small party of armed Americans attempting to invade a sovereign foreign country inside the Western hemisphere.
For students of US diplomatic history, the affair is really not so unusual at all: |
AuthorI am an editor and historian of US history, diplomacy, and international relations. Archives
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Why empire?This blog presents new scholarship on American empire, places the American experience in a broader and global imperial context, explores imperial habits throughout American society and culture, uncovers the imperial connections between the foreign and the domestic, and develops “empire” as a critical perspective.
At least two features in the American experience are clarified through the lens of American empire: First, we better understand persistent social inequities in a nation professing a fundamental commitment to equality. Second, even a cursory glance at American history makes plain the chronic violence at the center of US foreign policy, which frequently mounts or supports bloody military conflict abroad. Empire helps us recognize how and why the United States seems to be constantly at war--including often with itself--with all the foreign and domestic consequences thereof. |
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