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It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely when ‘The American Century’ died, but close
observers place its passing somewhere between the 9th and 16th
of July, 2018 after a long Illness. Cause of death has been tentatively listed
as complications due to ‘heart failure.’
Credit: USAF
Born in 1941, it was christened by Time/Life media founder Henry Luce just
as the United States was emerging from a Depression decade marked by isolationism
and severe economic hardship, and mere months before the nation would be
plunged into the Second World War. The fresh and timely concept was quickly
adopted, for better or worse, by key architects of the coming transformation of
America’s postwar foreign policy into one of internationalism, intervention and
global leadership.
Reflecting the
optimistic side of a victorious and expanding middle-class society, ‘The American
Century’ grew to express a strong belief in sharing the benefits and bounty of
a booming domestic economy along with the energetic promotion of democratic-capitalist
ideology abroad. Despite debilitating setbacks and growing pains in the late
1960’s and 1970’s as a consequence of deep racial conflicts at home and the
country’s failed policies in Southeast Asia, belief in the concept rebounded
strongly in the 1980’s and 1990’s, particularly during the nation’s brief
appearance as sole global hegemon following the fall of the Soviet Union.
The 9/11 terrorist attack on the
homeland, however, coupled with disastrous and inconclusive interventions
abroad and a serious economic debacle in the early decades of the twenty-first
century drained its reserves, leaving it much more vulnerable than many knew to
the next new contagion that might come along. Ironically, the fatal infection came from within in the guise
of a virulent campaign to “Make America Great Again,” against which the
national immune system proved ineffective.
With an alternative and distorted image
of both the postwar world and American
values in mind, and in the service of his own much narrower and darker
nationalist vision, once in power Donald Trump moved rapidly and effectively to
devalue, reverse and ultimately erase the very policies Luce and other leaders of
that era had spent decades putting in place to stabilize a troubled world.
In rolling back America’s
leadership promoting worldwide democracy, and in erecting barriers to free trade
and the easy movement of goods, ideas and people across boundaries, demeaning
and demonizing allies and carefully-constructed institutions like NATO and the
EU, Trump offered in their place only a world of competition, conflict,
contention—and often chaos.
If Luce’s “Century” represented an overly
optimistic missionary American spirit, often blind to its own failings, Trump’s
stands for its opposite, one which is fearful, suspicious of others, anxiously
hoarding its own resources, and hostile to realities which might challenge its
own preconceptions. Rather than celebrating and spreading America’s political
norms and the nation’s ideals of inclusion, equality and opportunity—even if
imperfectly achieved—Trump celebrates their disruption, while actively generating
and directing the resentments of those left behind against minorities and real
or imagined aliens or other foreign elements.
The final blow came with Trump's public
attacks on core institutions and allies and his embrace of old foes. When the call came from Helsinki this week, it only
confirmed what many had already suspected. The decedent's last words were incoherent--disjointed phrases about a missing server--and it was noted in passing
that a Do Not Resuscitate order was on file.
Emeritus Professor of History
Sonoma State University
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A slightly different version of this commentary was also published on OpEdNews.
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