Twilight of the American Century

by Andrew J Bacevich

  So rather than ending, the Hundred Years’ War for the Hemisphere had merely gone on hiatus. In the 1950s, the conflict resumed and even intensified, with Washington now defining threats to its authority in ideological terms. Leftist radicals rather than feckless caudillos posed the problem. During President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term, a CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala tacitly revoked FDR’s nonintervention pledge and appeared to offer a novel way to enforce regional discipline without actually committing US troops. Under President John F. Kennedy, the CIA tried again, in Cuba. That was just for starters.

  Between 1964 and 1994, US forces intervened in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, and Haiti, in most cases for the second or third time. Nicaragua and El Salvador also received sustained American attention. In the former, Washington employed methods that were indistinguishable from terrorism to undermine a regime it viewed as illegitimate. In the latter, it supported an ugly counterinsurgency campaign to prevent leftist guerrillas from overthrowing right-wing oligarchs. Only in the mid-1990s did the Hundred Years’ War for the Hemisphere once more begin to subside. With the United States having forfeited its claim to the Panama Canal and with US-Cuban relations now normalized, it may have ended for good.

  Today the United States enjoys unquestioned regional primacy, gained at a total cost of fewer than a thousand US combat fatalities, even counting the luckless sailors who went down with the Maine. More difficult to say with certainty is whether a century of interventionism facilitated or complicated US efforts to assert primacy in its “own back yard.” Was coercion necessary? Or might patience have produced a similar outcome? Still, in the end, Washington got what it wanted. Given the gaping imbalance of power between the Colossus of the North and its neighbors, we may wonder whether the final outcome was ever in doubt.

  The War for Pacific Dominion

  During its outward thrust of 1898, the United States seized the entire Philippine archipelago, along with smaller bits of territory such as Guam, Wake, and the Hawaiian Islands. By annexing the Philippines, US authorities enlisted in a high-stakes competition to determine the fate of the Western Pacific, with all parties involved viewing China as the ultimate prize. Along with traditional heavyweights such as France, Great Britain, and Russia, the ranks of the competitors included two emerging powers. One was the United States, the other imperial Japan. Within two decades, thanks in large part to the preliminary round of the War for the West, the roster had thinned considerably, putting the two recent arrivals on the path for a showdown.

  The War for Pacific Dominion confronted the US military with important preliminary tasks. Obliging Filipinos to submit to a new set of colonial masters entailed years of bitter fighting. More American soldiers died pacifying the Philippines between 1899 and 1902 than were to lose their lives during the entire Hundred Years’ War for the Hemisphere. Yet even as US forces were struggling in the Philippines, orders from Washington sent them venturing more deeply into Asia. In 1900, several thousand American troops deployed to China to join a broad coalition (including Japan) assembled to put down the so-called Boxer Rebellion. Although the expedition had a nominally humanitarian purpose—Boxers were murdering Chinese Christians while laying siege to legations in Peking’s diplomatic quarter—its real aim was to preserve the privileged status accorded foreigners in China. In that regard, it succeeded, thereby giving a victory to imperialism.

  Through its participation in this brief campaign, the United States signaled its own interest in China. A pair of diplomatic communiqués known as the Open Door Notes codified Washington’s position by specifying two non-negotiable demands: first, to preserve China’s territorial integrity; and second, to guarantee equal opportunity for all the foreign powers engaged in exploiting that country. Both of these demands would eventually put the United States and Japan at cross-purposes. To substantiate its claims, the United States established a modest military presence in China. At Tientsin, two days’ march from Peking, the US Army stationed an infantry regiment. The US Navy ramped up its patrols on the Yangtze River between Shanghai and Chungking—more or less the equivalent of Chinese gunboats today traversing the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Minneapolis.

  United States and Japanese interests in China proved to be irreconcilable. In hindsight, a violent collision between these two rising powers appears almost unavoidable. As wide as the Pacific might be, it was not wide enough to accommodate the ambitions of both countries. Although a set of arms-limiting treaties negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 put a momentary brake on the rush toward war, that pause could not withstand the crisis of the Great Depression. Once Japanese forces invaded Manchuria in 1931 and established the puppet state of Manchukuo, the options available to the United States had reduced to two: either allow the Japanese a free hand in China or muster sufficient power to prevent them from having their way. By the 1930s, the War for Pacific Dominion had become a zero-sum game.

  To recurring acts of Japanese aggression in China Washington responded with condemnation and, eventually, punishing economic sanctions. What the United States did not do, however, was reinforce its Pacific outposts to the point where they could withstand serious assault. Indeed, the Navy and War Departments all but conceded that the Philippines, impulsively absorbed back in the heady days of 1898, were essentially indefensible. At odds with Washington over China, Japanese leaders concluded that the survival of their empire hinged on defeating the United States in a direct military confrontation. They could see no alternative to the sword. Nor, barring an unexpected Japanese capitulation to its demands, could the United States. So the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor came as a surprise only in the narrow sense that US commanders underestimated the prowess of Japan’s aviators.

  That said, the ensuing conflict was from the outset a huge mismatch. Only in willingness to die for their country did the Japanese prove equal to the Americans. By every other measure—military-age population, raw materials, industrial capacity, access to technology—they trailed badly. Allies exacerbated the disparity, since Japan fought virtually alone. Once FDR persuaded his countrymen to go all out to win—after Pearl Harbor, not a difficult sell—the war’s eventual outcome was not in doubt. When the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the fighting, the issue of Pacific dominion appeared settled. Having brought their principal foe to its knees, the Americans were now in a position to reap the rewards.

  In the event, things were to prove more complicated. Although the United States had thwarted Japan’s efforts to control China, developments within China itself soon dashed American expectations of enjoying an advantageous position there. The United States “lost” it to communist revolutionaries who ousted the regime that Washington had supported against the Japanese. In an instant, China went from ally to antagonist.

  So US forces remained in Japan, first as occupiers and then as guarantors of Japanese security (and as a check on any Japanese temptation to rearm). That possible threats to Japan were more than theoretical became evident in the summer of 1950, when war erupted on the nearby Korean peninsula. A mere five years after the War for Pacific Dominion had seemingly ended, G.I.’s embarked on a new round of fighting.

  The experience proved an unhappy one. Egregious errors of judgment by the Americans drew China into the hostilities, making the war longer and more costly than it might otherwise have been. When the end finally came, it did so in the form of a painfully unsatisfactory draw. Yet with the defense of South Korea now added to Washington’s list of obligations, US forces stayed on there as well.

  In the eyes of US policymakers, Red China now stood as America’s principal antagonist in the Asia-Pacific region. Viewing the region through rose-tinted glasses, Washington saw communism everywhere on the march. So in American eyes a doomed campaign by France to retain its colonies in Indochina became part of a much larger crusade against communism on behalf of freedom. When France pulled the plug in Vietnam, in 1954, the United States effect
ively stepped into its role. An effort extending across several administrations to erect in Southeast Asia a bulwark of anticommunism aligned with the United States exacted a terrible toll on all parties involved and produced only one thing of value: machinations undertaken by President Richard Nixon to extricate the United States from a mess of its own making persuaded him to reclassify China not as an ideological antagonist but as a geopolitical collaborator.

  As a consequence, the rationale for waging war in Vietnam in the first place—resisting the onslaught of the Red hordes—also faded. With it, so too did any further impetus for US military action in the region. The War for Pacific Dominion quieted down appreciably, though it didn’t quite end. With China now pouring its energies into internal development, Americans found plentiful opportunities to invest and indulge their insatiable appetite for consumption. True, a possible renewal of fighting in Korea remained a perpetual concern. But when your biggest worry is a small, impoverished nation-state that is unable even to feed itself, you’re doing pretty well.

  As far as the Pacific is concerned, Americans may end up viewing the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first as a sort of golden interlude. The end of that period may now be approaching. Uncertainty about China’s intentions as a bona fide superpower is spooking other nearby nations, not least of all Japan. That another round of competition for the Pacific now looms qualifies at the very least as a real possibility.

  The War for the West

  For the United States, the War for the West began in 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson persuaded Congress to enter a stalemated European conflict that had been underway since 1914. The proximate cause of the US decision to intervene was the resumption of German U-boat attacks on American shipping. To that point, US policy had been one of formal neutrality, a posture that had not prevented the United States from providing Germany’s enemies, principally Great Britain and France, with substantial assistance, both material and financial. The Germans had reason to be miffed.

  For the war’s European participants, the issue at hand was as stark as it was straightforward. Through force of arms, Germany was bidding for continental primacy; through force of arms, Great Britain, France, and Russia were intent on thwarting that bid. To the extent that ideals figured among the stated war aims, they served as mere window dressing. Calculations related to Machtpolitik overrode all other considerations.

  President Wilson purported to believe that America’s entry into the war, ensuring Germany’s defeat, would vanquish war itself, with the world made safe for democracy—an argument that he advanced with greater passion and eloquence than logic. Here was the cause for which Americans sent their young men to fight in Europe: the New World was going to redeem the Old.

  It didn’t work out that way. The doughboys made it to the fight, but belatedly. Even with 116,000 dead, their contribution to the final outcome fell short of being decisive. When the Germans eventually quit, they appealed for a Wilsonian “peace without victory.” The Allies had other ideas. Their conception of peace was to render Germany too weak to pose any further danger. Meanwhile, Great Britain and France wasted little time claiming the spoils, most notably by carving up the Ottoman Empire and thereby laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the War for the Greater Middle East.

  When Wilson’s grandiose expectations of a world transformed came to naught, Americans concluded—not without cause—that throwing in with the Allies had been a huge mistake. What observers today mischaracterize as “isolationism” was a conviction, firmly held by many Americans during the 1920s and 1930s, that the United States should never again repeat that mistake.

  According to myth, that conviction itself produced an even more terrible conflagration, the European conflict of 1939–45, which occurred (at least in part) because Americans had second thoughts about their participation in the war of 1914–18 and thereby shirked their duty to intervene. Yet this is the equivalent of blaming a drunken brawl between rival street gangs on members of Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a nearby church basement.

  Although the second European war of the twentieth century differed from its predecessor in many ways, it remained at root a contest to decide the balance of power. Once again, Germany, now governed by nihilistic criminals, was making a bid for primacy. This time around, the Allies had a weaker hand, and during the war’s opening stages they played it poorly. Fortunately, Adolf Hitler came to their rescue by committing two unforced errors. Even though Joseph Stalin was earnestly seeking to avoid a military confrontation with Germany, Hitler removed that option by invading the Soviet Union in June 1941. Franklin Roosevelt had by then come to view the elimination of the Nazi menace as a necessity, but only when Hitler obligingly declared war on the United States, days after Pearl Harbor, did the American public rally behind that proposition.

  In terms of the war’s actual conduct, only the United States was in a position to exercise any meaningful choice, whereas Great Britain and the Soviet Union responded to the dictates of circumstance. Exercising that choice, the Americans left the Red Army to bear the burden of fighting. In a decision that qualifies as shrewd or perfidious depending on your point of view, the United States waited until the German army was already on the ropes in the east before opening up a real second front.

  The upshot was that the Americans (with Anglo-Canadian and French assistance) liberated the western half of Europe while conceding the eastern half to Soviet control. In effect, the prerogative of determining Europe’s fate thereby passed into non-European hands. Although out of courtesy US officials continued to indulge the pretense that London and Paris remained centers of global power, this was no longer actually the case. By 1945 the decisions that mattered were made in Washington and Moscow.

  So rather than ending with Germany’s second defeat, the War for the West simply entered a new phase. Within months, the Grand Alliance collapsed and the prospect of renewed hostilities loomed, with the United States and the Soviet Union each determined to exclude the other from Europe. During the decades-long armed standoff that ensued, both sides engaged in bluff and bluster, accumulated vast arsenals that included tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and mounted impressive displays of military might, all for the professed purpose of preventing a “cold” war from turning “hot.”

  Germany remained a source of potential instability, because that divided country represented such a coveted (or feared) prize. Only after 1961 did a semblance of stability emerge, as the erection of the Berlin Wall reduced the urgency of the crisis by emphasizing that it was not going to end anytime soon. All parties concerned concluded that a Germany split in two was something they could live with.

  By the 1960s, armed conflict (other than through gross miscalculation) appeared increasingly improbable. Each side devoted itself to consolidating its holdings while attempting to undermine the other side’s hold on its allies, puppets, satellites, and fraternal partners. For national security elites, managing this competition held the promise of a bountiful source of permanent employment. When Mikhail Gorbachev decided, in the late 1980s, to call the whole thing off, President Ronald Reagan numbered among the few people in Washington willing to take the offer seriously. Still, in 1989 the Soviet-American rivalry ended. So, too, if less remarked on, did the larger struggle dating from 1914 within which the so-called Cold War had formed the final chapter.

  In what seemed, misleadingly, to be the defining event of the age, the United States had prevailed. The West was now ours.

  War for the Greater Middle East

  Among the bequests that Europeans handed off to the United States as they wearied of exercising power, none can surpass the Greater Middle East in its problematic consequences. After the European war of 1939–45, the imperial overlords of the Islamic world, above all Great Britain, retreated. In a naïve act of monumental folly, the United States filled the vacuum left by their departure.

  For Americans, the War for the Greater Mid
dle East kicked off in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter designated the Persian Gulf a vital US national security interest. The Carter Doctrine, as the president’s declaration came to be known, initiated the militarizing of America’s Middle East policy, with next to no appreciation for what might follow.

  During the successive “oil shocks” of the previous decade, Americans had made clear their unwillingness to tolerate any disruption to their oil-dependent lifestyle, and, in an immediate sense, the purpose of the War for the Greater Middle East was to prevent the recurrence of such disagreeable events. Yet in its actual implementation, the ensuing military project became much more than simply a war for oil.

  In the decades since Carter promulgated his eponymous doctrine, the list of countries in the Islamic world that US forces have invaded, occupied, garrisoned, bombed, or raided, or where American soldiers have killed or been killed, has grown very long indeed. Since 1980, that list has included Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, but also Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Syria. Of late, several West African nations with very large or predominantly Muslim populations have come in for attention. At times, US objectives in the region have been specific and concrete. At other times, they have been broad and preposterously gauzy. Overall, however, Washington has found reasons aplenty to keep the troops busy. They arrived variously promising to keep the peace, punish evildoers, liberate the oppressed, shield the innocent, feed the starving, avert genocide or ethnic cleansing, spread democracy, and advance the cause of women’s rights. Rarely have the results met announced expectations.

  In sharp contrast with the Hundred Years’ War for the Hemisphere, US military efforts in the Greater Middle East have not contributed to regional stability. If anything, the reverse is true. Hopes of achieving primacy comparable to what the United States gained by 1945 in its War for Pacific Dominion remain unfulfilled and appear increasingly unrealistic. As for “winning,” in the sense that the United States ultimately prevailed in the War for the West, the absence of evident progress in the theaters that have received the most US military attention gives little cause for optimism.