Katy Oliveira
December 11, 2006
Foreign Policy: Final Paper
Question 2
A New Brand of Imperialism
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines imperialism as “the policy, practice, or
advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial
acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other
areas; broadly: the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence.”1
According to this definition the American role in the world from the late 19th century
forward can be described as imperialist. Although the acquisition of territory has not
been used as the United States’ primary strategy of imperialism, it has used a
combination of economic supremacy and cultural influence to institute its hegemony
throughout the globe. The United States’ assertion of power worldwide is not an isolated
reaction to perceived Cold War Era threats, but rather direct actions born from economic,
political, and cultural conceptualizations and ideologies of American policy makers and
elite classes. The ability to establish the United States’ imperialism not only depended
upon foreign policy initiatives which promoted broad influence and control overseas, but
was also reliant upon the maintenance of domestic support for such initiatives.
One ideological foundation for expansionist American foreign policy and
economic principles is evident in Anders Stephanson’s book Manifest Destiny: American
Expansionism and the Empire of Right. This work contends that the concept of Manifest
Destiny has shaped the foreign policy ideology of the United States from the seventieth
1
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “imperialism.”
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century to the Cold War. Manifest Destiny is a tenet put forth in the mid ninetieth
century that the territorial expansion of the United States was not only inevitable but also
divinely ordained. Stephanson’s argument outlines how this principle has been applied
first to westward continental expansion and then broadly applied in the twentieth century
to international commercial expansion. Stephanson’s interpretation of American foreign
policy ideology suggests a long history of expansionist designs.
Even before the concept of Manifest Destiny was articulated its tenets could be
seen in the rhetoric and policies of early leaders. The notion that expansion is central to
the political economy, the role public policy plays in influencing economic and social
prosperity, appears in the policy and rhetoric of early Revolutionary leaders like Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison. Drew McCoy demonstrates these concepts in his book
The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America. McCoy’s analysis is
valuable to the discussion of the United States’ imperialism because it highlights the
early realization that American success and prosperity are dependent upon foreign
markets and free trade decades before the concepts of the Open Door or Manifest Destiny
were ever formally expressed. Even at its earliest stages the United States’ leaders had a
keen awareness that American wealth is reliant upon expansion and global economic
interaction.
Chief among concerns of political economy was American imitation of the
European mercantilist system, even in these early conceptualizations of the economy the
idea that there should be an Open Door existed. Many Republican leaders rejected a
manufacturing based economy and closed trading systems. Instead they embraced the
virtues of an agriculturally based system. The Jeffersonian promotion of an agriculturally
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based society, however, did not mean that America would remain an isolated subsistent
economy. Instead Jeffersonian thinkers promoted the concept of free trade so that surplus
goods could be sold to markets worldwide. As the republic aged its leaders soon realized
that the agricultural free trade system coupled with continental westward expansion were
necessary to America’s economic prosperity. Although Jefferson’s purchase of
Louisiana in 1803 provided opportunities for westward expansion, efforts to preserve the
agriculturally based economy like the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812 soon
undermined Jeffersonian hopes for an agriculturally based economic system and resulted
in the ultimate acceptance that manufacturing was necessary for American economic
success and advancement. The political economy of this early period demonstrates that
certain economic realities had to be embraced in order to facilitate the expansion the
American economy required to maintain its growth and prosperity.
The Jeffersonian proprietary-competitive market capitalism of the ninetieth
century required new markets and constant expansion, but central to the formation of the
United States’ economically expansive foreign policy in the twentieth century is the rise
of the corporate-administered market system. To truly understand the economic
determinates motivating much of the United States’ imperialist foreign policy, we must
also understand the evolution, or creation rather of America’s economic and political
systems. In The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The
Market, the Law, and Politics, Martin Sklar argues that a corporate reconstruction of
American capitalism emerged from two competing capitalist ideologies: the proprietarycompetitive market stage and the corporate-administered market stage in the period
between 1890 and 1916. Not only did the rise of corporate capitalism alter the capitalist
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market and property relations, but it also transformed the role of the federal government.
Many engaged in proprietary business sought the protection of the federal government to
provide coexistence, stability, and fair play within the new system, leading to greater
support for government regulation of economic institutions. Like its predecessors
corporate capitalism required economic expansion abroad as well as the maintenance of
trading partners and constant growth in markets.
American economic expansionism prior to the Cold War is also evidenced in the
work of William Appleman Williams. William’s interpretation of American foreign
policy in the twentieth century emerges from the ninetieth century policy of the Open
Door. In a time when European Spheres of Influence controlled world trade, the United
States’ economic prosperity depended upon entrance into the international economic
system in order to dispose of surplus goods and secure raw materials. The United States
was in no position to enter into the colonial system which dominated the international
economy and had to find alternative ways to enter into the system. Written in 1899 by U.
S. Secretary of State John Hay, the Open Door Notes called for equal and impartial trade
with China as well as the continuation of Chinese territorial and administrative control.
This policy is the first overt expression of American economic intentions abroad and has
also laid the ideological foundation for much of America’s foreign policy formation in
subsequent decades. According to Williams this principle of access to “open” trade
abroad has informed the formation of foreign policy throughout the twentieth century.
He argues that the policy of the Open Door is no less imperial than the system it sought to
overturn. Williams’ thesis asserts that instead of an empire of territory the Open Door
policy informed the creation of an empire of economics, bases, and ideology.
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These themes of American expansion in the early part of the twentieth century
emerge in Emily Rosenberg’s Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and
Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945. Rosenberg chronicles America’s economic, cultural,
and political expansion abroad, which she refers to as “Americanization.” She argues
that initially American commercial and cultural interests where promoted abroad by
private individuals. But in the twentieth century this spreading of the American dream
became the interest of the federal government. Private interests increasingly entered into
the public sphere and were incorporated into the United States’ official foreign policy
objectives. Rosenberg describes this shift toward public administration of private
interests abroad as “liberal developmentalism,” or the integration of economic needs with
the liberal ideologies of democracy and free market trade. According to Rosenberg the
emergence of such tenets promoted the expansion of American influence and the creation
of an informal empire through its foreign policy initiatives, commerce practices, and
military action.
Thomas McCormick’s work America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign
Policy in the Cold War draws from Williams’ ideas regarding the Open Door as well.
Rather than the traditional school of thought which describes American foreign policy
during the Cold War as a protective reaction to a looming Soviet threat to democracy,
McCormick asserts that the traditional American practice of economic expansion
discussed by Williams’ advanced the Cold War. McCormick’s argument couples
Williams’ thesis that American foreign policy is driven by the Open Door with the worldsystems theory developed by French historian Fernand Braudel. The central theme in
McCormick’s analysis is that since its inception in the fifteenth century capitalism has
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been an inherently expansionist economic system. Although capitalism has gone through
many incarnations the theory of world-systems describes basic traits of the capitalist
economic system. According to this system the world is usually divided into three
groups: the core, periphery, and semi-periphery. He argues that normally this system is
governed by a balance of power between leading core nations, however, despite this
general pattern a single hegemonic power has emerged twice during the history of the
capitalist world economy. Great Britain first emerged as a hegemon between 1815 and
1870; followed by the United States rise to dominance between 1945 and 1970.
The devastation brought by World War II to Europe as well as the United States’
new economic supremacy lead to its emergence as a hegemonic center. McCormick
argues that economic dominance is essential to any hegemony, and that the primary
driving force behind the United States foreign policy in the decades following World War
II was the maintenance of this hegemonic role and the capitalist world system it depended
upon. Key to maintaining power was the United States’ economic control and continued
prosperity. McCormick demonstrates economic tactics such as militarization, military
Keynesianism, Dollar Diplomacy, and a search for markets in the core, periphery, and
semi-periphery used by the United States to preserve its hegemony. McCormick argues
“economic supremacy is the indispensable base of hegemony.”2 Not only is power
dependent upon economic superiority, but achieving economic strength and control fuels
a need to intervene or interfere with the economic, political, and cultural systems of other
countries. This leads to American practices, such as the exportation of its economic
Thomas McCormick. America’s Half-Century: America’s Half-Century: United States
Foreign Policy in the Cold War. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
5.
2
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principles and the expansion of its influence abroad, to quickly become mechanisms in
the maintenance of an imperial system.
In the decades following World War II America did not expand and maintain
its imperial foreign policy objectives only through direct political initiatives or military
interventions and actions, but also through the extension of its consumer culture to a
larger world market. In Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century
Europe, Victoria de Grazia argues that after World War II the United States established
itself as a Market Empire. De Grazia primarily focuses upon the American standard of
living’s influence upon the European way of life following the war and also its eventual
ability to become a global cultural hegemon. Like Rosenberg and McCormick, De
Grazia’s work is written in the spirit of William Applemen Williams’ thesis suggesting
the Open Door’s influence of the U. S.’s foreign policy motives. She argues that
America’s market empire swept through Europe by spreading its consumer-capitalism
and overturning the bourgeois social system.
Despite the effort by many European’s to preserve their traditional class
system, consumer-capitalism came to dominate European economies in the decades
following World War II. De Grazia demonstrates how America’s market imperialism
successfully influenced European systems using subtle soft power rather than overt
dominance. Her analysis begins by discussing the acceptance and expansion of
business oriented organizations like Rotary International by Europeans. De Grazia also
describes the adoption of a high standard of living similar to the American standard of
living. In Europe, however, mass consumption threatened established class systems by
providing mass access to luxury goods previously reserved for the bourgeoisie. Central
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to de Grazia’s argument is the soft or subtle nature of power used in a market empire.
Although American consumer-capitalism threatened many traditional European
systems, it was largely adopted because it provided a more luxurious living
accommodation for a wider number of people and could be easily absorbed and altered
to fit European needs and customs. This ultimately made the American Market Empire
more palatable to Europeans because it subtly engulfed established cultural and
economic structures rather than removing them; and also allowed Europeans to
comfortably function within the system.
Like De Grazia, Reinhold Wagnleitner’s book Coca-Colonization and the Cold
War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War
explores the expansion of America’s consumer-capitalist system and popular culture in
Europe. Wagnleitner’s analysis, however, focuses on the United States’ direct control
over avenues of culture and media in post war Austria. Rather than use direct marketing
and coercion, Wagnleitner argues that the United States capitalizes on her postwar
military and political advantage to subtly impart its consumer culture on Austria through
control of its cultural centers. Like McCormick, Wagnleitner describes America’s use of
its post war economic superiority and reconstruction efforts like the Marshall Plan to
emerge as an economic imperial power.
Traditional European bourgeois perceptions that American culture was base and
crass posed a challenge to American cultural and economic expansion. Wagnleitner
argues that United States was eager to prevent the expansion of Fascism and Communism
in postwar Europe because they threatened America’s desired free trade system. The
United States not only sought to export its consumer culture, but also had to gently
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encourage Europeans to accept it and internalize its practices as their own. Wagnleitner
presents his argument by discussing the major venues through which culture was
disseminated in post war Austria. According to Wagnleitner the American government
established the Information Services Branch to “de-Germanize” or “de-nazify” Austria
and demonstrate American cultural superiority. By influencing cultural expression and
practices through press, radio, literature, education, music, theater, and film the American
government spread not only its version of consumer-capitalist Democracy but also its
consumer based popular culture.
Wagnleitner’s work is an important addition to the historiography regarding
foreign policy and the United States economic imperialism. His analysis highlights that
not only are direct foreign policies used to infuse American Capitalist Democracy
throughout the world, but more subtle strategies of disseminating cultural practices are
also used to encourage acceptance of American economic hegemony and the creation of
consumer markets. In an age of mass political access, winning the cultural
conceptualization of mass populations is just as necessary for the maintenance of
hegemony as influencing foreign governments through overt foreign policy initiatives.
Although imperialism is generally defined by an aggressive world power’s
acquisition of territory, this is not the case in the United States’ version of imperialism.
Instead during the twentieth century U.S. imperialism is more broadly defined as the
expansion of its economic, military, political, and cultural influence abroad without the
direct attainment of foreign territory or government administration. U.S. dominance of
world markets, political interactions, and military intervention in the twentieth century
were not the result of defensive and protectionist reactions to Cold War threats, but rather
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the product of historical foreign policy conceptualizations based from traditional
economic ideologies and goals such as Manifest Destiny and the Open Door. In the
twentieth century these ideas are transformed into international policies and initiatives
that promoted the expansion of U.S. economic interests and cultural practices abroad.
And where heightened by the emergence of socialist systems during the Cold War that
threatened the U.S. vision of the world economic order. This promotion of U. S.
economic influence and superiority laid the foundation for American dominance of world
economic, political, and cultural systems.
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