Describe and explain the myth of the reluctant superpower. What historical events serve to justify and legitimize this social construct? In your opinion, is the United States a “reluctant superpower”, an accident of providence? Or, is it an ambitious political entity seeking to “manage” world affairs in order to protect and promote its national interests? Provide examples to support your argument.
The myth of the reluctant superpower can be seen as the conventional interpretative narrative of American foreign policy since the Spanish/American War of 1898. In this narrative version of American foreign policy, the intervention of the United States in conflicts outside its borders is always reluctant, as its name suggests, and is often disguised in the rhetoric of democracy and freedom; by the same token, America’s opponents since 1898 are usually stigmatized through rhetoric as immoral, evil and ideologically opposed to the those same ideals of freedom and democracy. Thus a moral gloss is applied to U. S. interventions overseas which seeks to portray the United States as motivated by a higher purpose than mere self-interest and to act as the moral policeman to the world. In addition, this view of American history, this narrative interpretation of American foreign policy, presents successive policy decisions as unplanned and spontaneous reactions to circumstances over which America has no control – hence its appellation as “reluctant.”
The historical events which justify this social construct are littered throughout the history of the twentieth century, and it is not so much the events themselves, but rather their interpretation which serves to legitimize this narrative. For example, the war in 1898 was one that America only entered into only when the “continuing depredations of Spain’s General Valeriano (“Butcher”) Weyler in Cuba had become intolerable.” (Bacevich, 7). In the Great War (so this version of America’s history goes) America remained neutral for most of the conflict and then only responded to “Germany’s violation of U. S. neutral rights.” (Bacevich, 7). Bacevich (7) also argues that unlike the other countries which took part in the war, the U. S., in this version of history, was motivated by “altruistic purposes,” a desire to bring the war to an end, and by the desire to promote democracy. Similar justifications are given for American involvement in the Second World War and the Cold War. In the former, America was neutral until “provoked by Japan” to enter yet another “crusade for democracy. (Bacevich, 8); in the latter, American involvement was, according to Schlesinger (quoted by Bacevich, 8), “the brave and essential response of free man to Communist aggression.” Even more recent events such as the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, are conventionally described in moral terms as a fight for democracy against despotism.
In my opinion, it is possible to see American intervention overseas as partly accidental – after all, it is impossible to predict in the long-term what events will occur all around the world. Therefore, an element of the myth of the reluctant superpower does withstand scrutiny. However, it does not follow logically from this that the U. S. is always motivated in its foreign policy decisions by concerns about democracy and freedom. Indeed, the conventional narrative can be contradicted by a different interpretation of the motives behind U. S. involvement in the conflicts mentioned above in the last paragraph. Furthermore, America’s covert intervention in Chile in 1973 to remove the democratically-elected government, its involvement in Nicaragua in the early 1980s, and , more recently, its hostile rhetoric towards Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, reveals that behind the rhetoric of a desire to promote democracy and freedom, in these lesser-known conflicts it can be seen that America’s perceived national self-interest and its commercial interests above all are arguably more importnat than democracy. Nonetheless, it is hard to accuse America of deliberately and cynically “managing” global affairs: the last ten years have seen many of the countries of Latin America install left-wing, socialist governments – developments that might have been expected to result in covert intervention by the U. S.. However, perhaps because of its commitments in the Middle East, America has inadvertently allowed these governments to remain in place.
Turning back to the twentieth century’s major conflicts, it is still possible to interpret them very differently from the conventional narrative which portrays America as the reluctant superpower. Becevich (14) quotes the once-influential American historian, Charles A. Beard, who asserted that America’s primary purpose in the First World War was “to advance commercial interests,” and that America’s years of neutrality were actually “self-serving, reflecting an eagerness to cash in on Europe’s misfortunes.” As Bacevich (14) claims America’s neutrality allowed “a massive trade in arms with the Allies, propped up by American loans.” The same might be argued for the Second World War – as indeed Beard did argue – a stance so at odds with the conventional narrative that his career ended in failure and disappointment, especially once Roosevelt died and the start of the Cold war gave further credence to the myth of the ethically-driven reluctant superpower. Lend-lease, from Beard’s point of view, is less a moral support for democracy than a way of ensuring the dominance of American commercial and industrial interests, and the reduction of American unemployment, still languishing after the Great Depression. The United Kingdom paid for every bullet it used in the fight against fascism and did not repay its war-time loans to the U. S. government until 2006. Beard’s iconoclastic stance on American foreign policy and his way of seeing America’s self-interest predominant was continued in academic circles by the historian, William Appelman Williams whose view of the Cold War challenges the conventional narrative. Bacevich (28) writes that Williams “could find no useful moral distinction between one side of the Iron Curtain and the other, and he promulgated the notion that, as with eveyr conflict in the twentieth century, America pursued the Cold War because it suited U. S. self-interests – in the commercial and industrial spheres.
In my opinion, the myth of the reluctant superpower is exactly that – a myth. It is convenient and straightforward, and it allows American politicians to disguise their real motives behind a veneer of rhetoric which plays well at home and all over the globe. However, despite the way that foreign policy has been designed to promote American business interests, it is difficult to see this as American “management “ of the world – it is a response to circumstances, but circumstances which threaten American domestic well-being, rather than the principles of freedom and democracy.
Work Cited
Bacevich, Andrew J. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
