American Century^[1][2] is a term used to describe the United States' dominance of much of the 20th century, in political, economic and cultural terms. The United States' influence grew throughout the 20th century, but became especially dominant after the end of World War II, when only two superpowers remained, the United States and the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States remained the world's only superpower,^[3] became the hegemon, or what some have termed a hyperpower.^[4]

Description[link]

Term origin[link]

The term was coined by Time publisher Henry Luce to describe what he thought the role of the United States would be and should be during the 20th century.^[5] Henry Luce, the son of a missionary, in a February 17, 1941 Life magazine editorial^[6] urged the United States to forsake isolationism for a missionary's role, acting as the world's Good Samaritan and spreading democracy. He called upon the U.S. to enter World War II to defend democratic values:

Throughout the 17th century and the 18th century and the 19th century, this continent teemed with manifold projects and magnificent purposes. Above them all and weaving them all together into the most exciting flag of all the world and of all history was the triumphal purpose of freedom.
It is in this spirit that all of us are called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each in the widest horizon of his vision, to create the first great American Century.^[7]

According to David Harvey, Luce believed "the power conferred was global and universal rather than territorially specific, so Luce preferred to talk of an American century rather than an empire."^[8] In the same article he called upon United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." ^[9]

American Century characteristics[link]

Early characteristics[link]

Beginning at the end of the 19th Century, with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Boxer Rebellion, the United States began to play a more important role in the world beyond the North American continent. The government adopted protectionism after Spanish-American War and built up a powerful navy, the "Great White Fleet". When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, he accelerated a foreign policy shift away from isolationism towards foreign involvement, a process which had begun under his predecessor William McKinley. For instance, the United States fought the Philippine-American War against Filipino nationalists to solidify its control over the newly acquired Philippines.^[10] In 1904, Roosevelt committed the United States to building the Panama Canal, creating the Panama Canal Zone. Interventionism found its formal articulation in the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming a right for the United States to intervene to stabilize weak states in the Americas, a moment that underlined the emergent U.S. regional hegemony.

The United States also played an important role in the World Wars era (encompassing World War I and World War II).

Pax Americana[link]

Pax Americana represents the relative liberal peace in the Western world, resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States of America starting around the turn of the 20th century. Although the term finds its primary utility in the late 20th Century, it has been used in other times in the 20th century. Its modern connotations concern the peace established after the end of World War II in 1945.

Post-1945 characteristics[link]

The American Century existed through the Cold War and demonstrated the status of the United States as one of the world's two superpowers. After the Cold War, the most common belief held that only the United States fulfilled the criteria to be considered a superpower.^[3] America's geographic area composed the fourth largest country in the world, with an area of approximately 9.37 million km².^[11] America's demographic exhibited a population of 248.7 million in 1990, at that time the fourth largest on Earth.^[12]

Regarding the Mid-to-Late-20th Century characteristics, America's political status was a strong capitalist federation/constitutional republic. America had a permanent seat on the UN Security Council plus two allies with permanent seats. America had strong ties with Western Europe, Latin America, British Commonwealth, and several East Asian countries. America wielded influence by supporting right-wing dictatorships in undeveloped countries and democracies in developed countries.^[13]

Though, the term American Century refers not only to the political influence of the United States. As to the United States' economic influence, many states around the world would over the course of the 20th century adopt the economic policies of the Washington Consensus. America's economic force was powerful at the end of the century due to America being by far the largest economy in the world. America had large resources of minerals, energy resources, metals, and timber, a large and modernized farming industry and large industrial base. U.S. Dollar was the dominant world reserve currency under Bretton Woods. American systems were rooted in the western economic theory based on supply and demand: production determined by customers' demands. America was allied with G7 major economies. American economic policy prescriptions were the "standard" reform packages promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, DC-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the US Treasury Department.^[14]

America's military strength was an essentially naval-based advanced military with the highest military expenditure in the world.^[15] America had the world's largest navy with largest number of aircraft carriers, bases all over the world, particularly in an incomplete "ring" bordering the Warsaw Pact to the West, South and East. America had the largest nuclear arsenal in the world during the first half of the Cold War. America had one of the largest armies in the world. America had one of the two largest air forces in the world. America's powerful military allies in Western Europe (NATO) had their own nuclear capabilities. America possessed a global Intelligence network (CIA).

America's cultural impact is seen in the influence of music, TV, films, art, and fashion, as well as freedom of speech and other guaranteed rights for residents. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.^[16]

Criticism[link]

Critics have condemned Luce's "jingoistic missionary zeal."^[17] Others have noted the end of the 20th Century and the American Century, most famously the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson who titled his autobiography Kingdom Of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of A Star Crossed Child in the Last Days of the American Century.

With the advent of the new millennium, critics^[who?] have stated that it is a matter of debate whether America's influence is leading it to be a hegemon or if it is losing its superpower status.^[18]

See also[link]

• American Empire
• New World Order
• Pax Americana
• Project for the New American Century

References[link]

External articles[link]

• Henry Luce, The American Century, Life Magazine (February 17, 1941)
• Andrew Bacevich, Farewell to the American Century, Salon.com (April 30, 2009)
• Terry Michael, The End of the American Century, Reason (February 16, 2011)
• The Unmaking of a Company Man By Andrew Bacevich

Further reading[link]

• Michael J. Hogan, The Ambiguous Legacy: U.S. Foreign Relations in The "American Century" (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). A symposium of scholarly articles assessing aspects of Luce's editorial and its significance originally published in Diplomatic History 23.2 (1999).

Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. (born 1947 in Normal, Illinois) is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired career officer in the United States Army. He is a former director of Boston University's Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), and author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002), The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008). He has been "a persistent, vocal critic of the US occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure."^[1] In March 2007, he described George W. Bush's endorsement of such "preventive wars" as "immoral, illicit, and imprudent."^[1][2] His son, also an Army officer, died fighting in the Iraq War in May 2007.^[1]

Biography[link]

Bacevich graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971. Later he held posts in Germany, including the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the United States, and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank of Colonel in the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.

On May 13, 2007, Bacevich's son, 1LT Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governate.^[3] The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army,^[4] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.

Bacevich also has three daughters, and is of Lithuanian origin.^[4]

Writings[link]

Bacevich has described himself as a "Catholic conservative"^{[Need quotation to verify]} and initially published writings in a number of politically oriented magazines, including The Wilson Quarterly. His recent writings have professed a dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of American foreign policy.

On August 15, 2008, Bacevich appeared as the guest of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS to promote his book, The Limits of Power. As in both of his previous books, The Long War (2007) and The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005), Bacevich is critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially movies) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the U.S. population to produce in the American people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service are really like.

Bacevich conceived The New American Militarism not only as "a corrective to what has become the conventional critique of U.S. policies since 9/11 but as a challenge to the orthodox historical context employed to justify those policies."

Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of an American tradition going back to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century: Charles A. Beard and William Appleman Williams.

Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate about American foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one President (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, Bacevich sees both Republicans and Democrats as sharing responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation's best interest.

In March 2003, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bacevich wrote in The Los Angeles Times that "if, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history."^[1]

An editorial about the Bush Doctrine was published by the Boston Globe in March 2007.^[2]

In an article of The American Conservative dated March 24, 2008, Bacevich depicts Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama as the best choice for conservatives in the fall. Part of his argument includes the fact that "this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival."^[5] He also goes on to mention that "For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion."^[5]

In the October 11, 2009 issue of The Boston Globe,^[6] he wrote that the decision to commit more troops to Afghanistan may be the most fateful choice of the Obama administration. "If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama’s presidency — as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea did for Harry Truman — the inevitable effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly," Bacevich wrote.

In his article "Non Believer" in the 7 July 2010 issue of The New Republic, Bacevich compared President George W. Bush, whom he characterizes as wrong-headed but sincere, with President Obama, whom he says has no belief in the Afghanistan war but pursues it for his own politically cynical reasons: "Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?"^[7]

In an October 2010 interview with Guernica Magazine, Bacevich addressed his seemingly contradictory stance on Obama. While Bacevich supported Obama during the 2008 presidential race in which Obama repeatedly said he believed in the Afghanistan War, Bacevich has become increasingly critical of Obama's decision to commit additional troops to that war: "I interpreted his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan as an effort to insulate him from the charge of being a national security wimp. His decision to escalate was certainly not a decision his supporters were clamoring for." ^[8]

His papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Macmillan, USA, 2010) ISBN 0-8050-9141-6 ^[9][10]
• The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Macmillan, USA, 2008) ISBN 0-8050-8815-6
• The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II (Columbia University Press, USA, 2007) ISBN 0-231-13158-5
• The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford University Press Inc, USA, 2005) ISBN 0-19-517338-4
• American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-674-01375-1

Journal Articles[link]

• "America Decides: Is Change in the Heir?". The Diplomat 7 (3): 28–30. Sep/Oct 2008. 
• "Breaking Washington's Rules". The American Conservative 10 (1): 23–26. January 2011. 

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	United States Army portal

• Republican and conservative support for Barack Obama in 2008
• The Imperial Presidency

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Andrew Bacevich

• "Is the war in Afghanistan worth fighting?" Great Debate at Boston University, November 4, 2009
• "Moral Obligations in the Global War on Terror: Who Owes What?" Talk given at Boston University, March 21, 2009
• Prophets and Poseurs: Niebuhr and Our Times, World Affairs
• Illusions of Victory By Andrew Bacevich
• Is Perpetual War Our Future? By Andrew Bacevich
• I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose, Washington Post, May 27, 2007
• Andrew Bacevich webpage at Boston University
• Interview with Andrew Bacevich in Bostonia, alumni magazine of Boston University, Seduced by War
• Extensive excerpts from The New American Militarism
• Conversations with Andrew Bacevich
• Archive of Bacevich's writings for The Nation
• Andrew Bacevich bloggings at HuffPo
• Iraq panel's real agenda: damage control for The Christian Science Monitor
• Sycophant Savior General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington—if not in Baghdad.
• Bill Moyers Journal interview of Andrew Bacevich
• Amy Goodman interviews Andrew Bacevich about his book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
• Online book discussion of Andrew Bacevich's "The Limits of Power"
• The Camp Doha Incident Report
• Video discussion between Bacevich and Heather Hurlburt on Bloggingheads.tv
• Andrew Bacevich on Afghanistan War: The President Lacks the Guts to Get Out on Democracy Now!
• Jake Whitney in Guernica Magazine interviews Bacevich