Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938

“The Big Three mistrusted each other, but each of the partners knew he needed both of the others. No combination of two was powerful enough to defeat Germany. It took all three to do the job.”

The authors emphasize the fact that the World War II Allies were also called the “Strange Alliance.” They credit the power of Hitler’s army of bringing the three unlikely countries together. Ambrose and Brinkley suggest that all three were necessary to beat Nazi Germany, and that, despite its contradictions, the Alliance was successful.

“American domination of the Alliance reflected, in turn, a new era in world history. The United States had replaced Great Britain as the dominant world power.”

The authors underscore the American domination of the Grand Alliance in the realm of the decisions made about the western front of Europe by the US and Britain. As Britain waned as the dominant colonial power in the world, the US rose as a superpower out of the Second World War.

“When the first atomic bomb went off, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the temperature at Ground Zero was 100 million degrees Fahrenheit, three times hotter than the interior of the sun and ten thousand times the heat on its surface. All life, plant and animal, within a mile radius of Ground Zero simply vanished.”

The question of nuclear weapons is one of the authors’ main themes during the Cold War. This period began with the successful testing of the Manhattan Project and the use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Their sheer destructive power highlights both their danger and the limitations of threatening their use to achieve political goals.

“In a world full of hatred, death, destruction, deception, and double-dealing, the United States at the end of World War II was almost universally regarded as the disinterested champion of justice, freedom, and democracy. American prestige would never be as high again.”

One of the core arguments in Rise to Globalism is that America became less safe as it became more powerful after World War II. The authors begin the book by underscoring the relative safety of the US in 1938 despite the tense situation in Europe because of Hitler’s rise and in Asia due to Japanese expansion. In each chapter, they document the increased number of challenges and threats to the US as it extended its influence on a global scale. Some of these challenges, like the Vietnam War, significantly damaged the American image at home and abroad. In this framework, it was the end of the Second World War that served as a pinnacle of American status.

“The Soviet Union occupied East Europe. This crucial result of World War II destroyed the Grand Alliance and gave birth to the Cold War.”

The authors describe Stalin’s belief that whoever occupies a territory during the Second World War gets to control it. For example, Stalin accepted the Anglo-American control of Italy. The authors argue that Roosevelt pragmatically accepted this reality, whereas Churchill did not. Truman was less pragmatic and more ideological than Roosevelt and failed to accept the Soviet control of Eastern Europe, even though the Red Army was responsible for most of the Nazi losses, and even though Stalin accepted the Anglo-American control of the west. Indeed, the US is safely located on another continent protected by oceans, whereas Russia, and the Soviet Union, were invaded through Eastern Europe by Napoleon and Hitler. This disregard for the Soviet legitimate security concerns gave birth to the Cold War.

“For the first time in its history, the United States had chosen to intervene during a period of general peace in the affairs of peoples outside North and South America.”

In May 1947, the US Congress issued $400 million to aid Turkey and Greece as part of the Truman Doctrine did to face the perceived threat of Communism. The practical application of this policy was to be both military and economic in nature. As a result, the United States began to extend itself, like an empire, beyond its traditional sphere of influence in the Americas.

“The sentence in Mr. X’s article that was most frequently quoted, however, and the one that became the touchstone of American policy, declared that what was needed was ‘the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.’ This implied that crisis would follow crisis around the world, as the Soviet-masterminded conspiracy used its agents to accelerate the flow of Communist power into ‘every nook and cranny.’”

American statesman, George Kennan, was one of the architects of the Cold War containment policy. Penned using the pseudonym Mr. X in 1947, Kennan’s article “The Sources of Soviet Conflict” suggested the essential ways of countering the Soviet Union and its ideology around the world. It was this hyperbolic quote about Soviet threat in “every nook and cranny” that became the basis of American foreign policy rather than Kennan’s belief that the USSR did not pose a serious threat nor sought war.

“The Cold War would be fought Truman’s way. There would be clashes on the periphery but none between the major powers. America would extend her positions of strength around the Communist empire. The military-industrial complex in the United States would become a major social and economic force.”

Ambrose and Brinkley argue that the Truman Doctrine—with all its ideological and practical implications—defined the entire period of the Cold War. One of the implications from the name itself is the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union did not fight each other. However, many proxy conflicts occurred in other parts of the world, supported by the two sides, within the framework of a geopolitical power shift. Truman also laid the foundation for the expansion of the military-industrial complex through the relationship between the government, weapons manufacturers, and the intelligence networks.

“Dulles’s policy was based on a bipolar view of the world. He believed that the United States could make the major decisions for the Free World while Russia would make them for the Communists. He refused to accept, or perhaps even recognize, the diversity of the world, for he thought all important issues were related to the Cold War and was impatient with those who argued that the East-West struggle was irrelevant to many world problems.”

The CIA Director Allen Dulles advocated for a policy of massive retaliation during the Eisenhower Presidency in the mid-1950s. The authors describe his worldview as narrow—solely informed by the Cold War geopolitical power shift rather than perceiving international relations in a broader way.

“The events in the year following Sputnik had the effect of establishing ground rules for the Cold War. By staying out of the Lebanon situation the Soviets indicated that they recognized and would not challenge the West’s vital interests. By refusing to take the easy way out of the missile gap controversy, Eisenhower indicated that he did not want an arms race and was eager for détente. Through their negative signals both sides showed that they would keep the threshold of conflict high.”

The Soviet Union launched the first satellite in 1957 and had many other successes in the Cold War space race, such as putting the first human in space in 1961. The authors refer to the Sputnik launch as a marker for the undeclared Cold War rules in the latter part of the 1950s. These rules comprised a balance between Eisenhower’s cautious approach and Khrushchev’s understanding of vital American interests in such regions as the Middle East.

“Fundamentally, Eisenhower had rejected the idea that there could be a military solution to Cold War problems or that America could shape the world’s destiny. He had accepted limitations on America’s role. Kennedy did not. Where Eisenhower had been passive, Kennedy would be active. Where Eisenhower had been cautious, Kennedy would be bold. Kennedy and his aides were especially interested in restoring the prestige and primacy of the presidency, which they felt had fallen under Eisenhower.”

The authors compare the foreign-policy approach of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Eisenhower was more pragmatic in his view of international relations and cognizant of other major players’ capabilities. For example, he recognized the implications of getting bogged down in the Korean War, which is why he ended it with an armistice. In contrast, Kennedy subscribed to the messianic aspects of American foreign policy and overestimated American capabilities as was the case with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

“America fought in Vietnam as a direct result of a world view from which no one in power dissented and as a logical culmination of the policy of containment. Vietnam was the liberals’ war. It was based on the same premises that Truman and Acheson had used. The United States, as Sorensen put it, ’could supply better training, support and direction, better communications, transportation and intelligence, better weapons, equipment and logistics” to halt Communist aggression.”

The costly Vietnam War changed the public perception of America’s international role domestically—through mass-scale protests—and damaged the American reputation abroad. Ambrose and Brinkley argue that this drawn-out conflict was the direct result of the American ideology of Cold War containment on a global scale. Democrats like Truman, Kennedy, and Acheson acted more hawkish than the Republicans. They also subscribed to the erroneous world view that superior equipment and intelligence would guarantee a victory underestimating the resilience of a national uprising defending its own land.

“The college students of the fifties had not questioned the policy of containment for many reasons, but the most important was probably that, after the Korean War, containment did not entail the death of thousands of young American men, the squandering of billions of dollars.”

The authors examine the public reception of the Vietnam War, some of which involved debates and the biggest antiwar protests in American history. Only when America’s foreign wars began to affect the country’s own citizens did the public begin to seriously question the US foreign policy.

“Far from making progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons, the Carter administration continued to increase the American nuclear arsenal at about the same rate as had the Nixon and Ford increase the American nuclear arsenal at about the same rate as had the Nixon and Ford administrations. American arms sales abroad actually increased during the Carter years. Furthermore, Carter’s emphasis on human rights badly damaged America’s relationship with many of her oldest allies; it caused resentment in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries that contributed to the failure to achieve such major goals as arms control or genuine détente; it contributed to the downfall of America’s oldest and staunchest ally in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, with consequences that were also disastrous for Carter himself.”

Even though human rights are ensured in the UN Charter, the mechanisms of uniformly enforcing them do not exist. Therefore, the question of using human rights in foreign policy as a pressure point is problematic. President Carter was the first US leader to use human rights as an issue on a significant scale. The authors believe that this subject undermined the established relationships both with American allies and its opponents alike. Overall, they evaluate Carter’s presidency critically and list several of his failures as compared to the president’s goals.

“Reagan’s actions confused many Americans. They wondered why, if the U.S.S.R. was their enemy, the United States was selling it badly needed commodities and goods. And if the U.S.S.R. was not America’s enemy, then why was the United States spending such enormous sums on missiles directed against Russia?”

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration maintained a policy of selling significant amounts of commodities to the Soviet Union, such as wheat. At the same time, the US spent half of its defense budget on NATO to counter the Soviet Union, while nuclear arsenals grew. Reagan also attempted to prevent western Europe from trading with the Eastern bloc. This behavior confused Europeans and Americans alike.

“Western European commentators found it ironic that the United States was practicing old-fashioned ‘Big Stick’ diplomacy in its backyard at the moment when the Soviets were showing remarkable restraint during the unraveling of Communist regimes in the traditional Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe.”

The authors are discussing the developments in Latin America in the late 1980s when the US interfered in several countries. The Americans also invaded Panama, captured Manuel Noriega the former leader of Panama, and brought him to Florida on drugs trafficking charges. The Europeans compared American behavior to the outdated Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary.

“This was the beginning of a debate over fundamentals—What should the foreign policy of the U.S. be in a totally new situation? The Cold War was over, no one threatened the security of the United States, indeed the Gulf War of new situation? The Cold War was over, no one threatened the security of the United States, indeed the Gulf War of 1990-91 made the United States and Russia virtual allies.”

The late 1980s and early 1990s embody a radical transformation of the world order with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, the United States lost its main ideological adversary and began to search for its new role in the world. One of the questions for this new role was the American relationship with the emergent post-Communist Russia.

“In the twentieth century, the United States turned back the forces of totalitarianism—the Kaiser’s Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Japan’s militarist and expansionist government, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and Soviet Communism. Surely justice has never been better served. The legacy of the American Century is a world in which more people are relatively freer to make their own choices, certainly far freer than they were under any of the isms, than ever before. That is a splendid legacy. The counterpart is American hubris. The experience of the Cold War gives Americans a sense that they can run the world because their military power is so much greater than that of any other nation or group of nations.”

Ambrose and Brinkley reflect upon the benefits and drawbacks of America’s superpower status during the end of the Cold War. On the one hand, the US attempted to support democracy and freedom around the world. On the other hand, Americans subscribed to the belief in their exceptionalism, which was reflected in the economic and military aspects of the US foreign policy all around the world.

“These actions marked a potential turning point in world history, the point at which the UN finally began to realize its potential and to fulfill the hopes of its founders. The overwhelming reason for the relative failure of the UN during the Cold War had been superpower hostility. With that factor gone, the UN was bound to be different.”

The authors are describing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991. They assert that in the past, the United Nations were hampered by the ideological differences between the superpowers. As the Cold War ended, however, the UN had the potential to live up to its role and provide the mechanisms to solving international crises rather than simply debate.

“Clinton saw his primary goal as President to make the world safe for U.S. business and its global system of capital accumulation. Only one other aspect of foreign policy, besides Russian aid and nuclear reduction, seemed to engage Clinton: global trade policy.”

The authors contrast the first term of President Bill Clinton with previous administrations. Clinton appeared to be disinterested in foreign policy issues as such. For him, foreign policy was an instrument for promoting American business interests around the world. The authors call Clinton’s style of foreign policy “amorphous” (403).

“To the surprise of many, NATO was proving to have a viable role in the post-Cold War world. After the Berlin Wall fell, many analysts assumed that with no Soviet threat NATO itself would disintegrate. After all, logic dictated that for a military alliance to exist, it had to have enemies. But the Bosnian NATO mission proved to be a model for cooperative deployments in the burgeoning catchall of ‘operations other than war.’ NATO’s credibility was enhanced by its performance in Bosnia, and the transatlantic link was suddenly touted as more important than ever.”

After the collapse of the Cold War world order, both the US and its military enforcement organization in Europe, NATO, found a new role by getting involved in the multilayered conflict in the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia.

“Because Russia had been invaded with tragic results by both Napoleon and Hitler, there was an understandably pessimistic reaction to the notion that NATO troops should ever be positioned anywhere near the Russian border in the coming years.”

Ambrose and Brinkley acknowledge Russian security concerns. The question of NATO’s role after the dissolution of the Soviet Union was debated in the US and Europe. The Americans decided to expand NATO toward Russia’s borders by accepting new members, such as the Baltic states, despite the verbal promises given to the Russian leadership and despite the warning of many American foreign policy specialists, such as Kennan and Kissinger.

“What shocked Americans was how well-coordinated the 9/11 attacks were. To say they were brazen is a gross understatement. It was a terrifying strike. Somehow nobody except the FBI considered that al Qaeda was capable or willing to hijack airplanes in flight and crash them into buildings. With all American airspace suddenly shut down on September 11, it felt like the United States itself was being held hostage.”

Rise to Globalism dedicates a separate chapter to the September 11, 2001 attacks on American soil. The book discusses a range of issues from the public response to the debates within the government. One of the most important questions about this act of terrorism is how it could have been prevented.