Changing American Priorities Pt. 1

By mid-1944, the end of World War II was in sight. The Americans and British had successfully landed in Western Europe and pushed through France, the Soviets made continuous advances in the East, Italy was all but a capitulated nation, and the Japanese were being forced ever closer to the home islands. So, the Americans began thinking about the end of the war and the world they wanted to create. It was evident to everyone that the United States was the most powerful country in the world at the time, seeing as it had the most significant industry, navy and wasn’t devastated by war. Hence, people assumed that the US would form a new type of colonial empire and continue what Western industrialized countries had done for the past two hundred years. But they didn’t.

With the advent of industrialization, the world changed from a zero sum game to a positive sum game. Suddenly, through mechanization, humans were able to produce much more than they had ever been able to; to an extent that made previously luxury goods almost affordable. And for the thunderdome that was pre Cold War Europe, it quickly became apparent that a more extensive industrial base would be greatly beneficial to the state, so it became a race to have the most industry (Tilly). But you need two things to sustain perpetual industrial growth: perpetually more raw goods and perpetually larger markets (Mäki). Luckily, for the Europeans, they discovered that with their new industrial power, it was very, very easy to conquer those that did not have the same technological prowess. Thus the game began to harvest necessary industrial goods from far off lands, bring them home to make into industrial products, then sell back to the conquered peoples where the good was collected in the first place (McGowan and Kordan). The British grew cotton in India to make it into textiles in Sussex, to sell back in India. But perpetually sailing goods halfway around the world is dangerous, especially when the French or anyone else could intercept your ships and take what you had rightfully stolen. So it became necessary to invest in a navy to protect your trade with your colonies (O'Brien). And that’s what Imperialism is. The need for ever-greater resources and markets necessitates more and more colonies, which in turn, require larger navies to protect them. But what the Imperial powers quickly found out was that the world is finite, and once you conquered everyone you consider to be “savage,” the only other way to expand is to fight those with the same technology as you. And that brings us back to the end of World War II.       

In 1944 the United States looked to the past, recognized the need for resources and markets, and quickly realized that this intense competition will eventually lead to war. The Treaty of Versailles proved that altering the system of industrial imperialism did not work to prevent war, so it became evident that the US had to change the system the world operated on. However, the US had only started to realize that the Soviets were less of an ally and more of a non-enemy, and it was a non-zero chance that they would be a threat after the war. So the US killed two birds with one stone and created the Washington Consensus. The US called its allies together in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and told everyone that they would open the US market, the largest in the world, and protect everyone’s trade with the US navy, which was the only one to survive the war (Eichengreen). The United States offered everyone the opportunity to export their way to affluence, but there was a price tag. Imperial powers had to dismantle their empires, and everyone who signed had to join the US against the Soviets (Pollard). For many of those at the conference, it was a deal too good to give up, so they signed. Thus the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT, and everything else that allows for international trade today were created with the hard power of the US navy backing it. The US playbook for the Cold War was created in which it would offer this deal to any country that wanted it to contain the Soviet Union.  And the plan turned out to work really well as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But then the US had to ask the question: what do we do next?

Apparently, not a whole lot. The Clinton campaign turned out to be extremely limited in international interest (Walt), W. Bush had a monochromatic policy that dealt with one issue in one region in one way (explosions), and Obama rarely engaged in real action in the international space (Guerlain). For 25 years, the United States was supporting a system designed to defeat an enemy that no longer existed. But then came the 2016 election, and America began to retreat from the international system. 

The 2016 US presidential election will be one that those who lived through it will tell their grandchildren about. There are a lot of reasons, but let’s focus on the international side. Both of the candidates championed a complete overhaul in the way the US operates on the international stage (Paletta). There were many differences between the two like style, organization, timing, and professionalism, but they both agreed that the international system was not working as well as it could for the United States. Under an imagined Clinton administration, the American retreat might probably have been orderly with every nation being informed of how the US is removing themselves from the region and would have been carried out over 4 to 8 years. But under a Trump Administration, the American retreat is happening at the speed of a tweet. But regardless of how it is happening, America is leaving the rest of the world, and understanding that that means everything has to change.

What happens to China (19.5% of Chinese GDP comes from trade) when the US removes itself from protecting international trade. What happens to Germany when the United States stops protecting European trade and all of Europe has to compete again. What happens to the Middle East when the US stops keeping the Straits of Hormuz open and ⅓ of global oil exports is in danger. Every single region is going to completely rethink the way their economies work and how to deal with the challenges they face. In a world where the US retreats, you have to retrain your thinking and go back to a time when security was not given. A world before World War II. For seventy years, the United States has put its hard power at the disposal of the global commons, and now that it no longer sees an advantage to that, it is taking its toys and going home.  

Bibliography:

Dept of Energy.  https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39932

Eichengreen, B. (2004). Global imbalances and the lessons of Bretton Woods. Economie internationale, (4), 39-50.

Guerlain, P. (2014). Obama’s Foreign Policy:“Smart Power,” Realism and Cynicism. Society, 51(5), 482-491.

Mäki, U. (2009). Economics imperialism: Concept and constraints. Philosophy of the social sciences, 39(3), 351-380.

McGowan, P. J., & Kordan, B. (1981). Imperialism in world-system perspective: Britain 1870–1914. International Studies Quarterly, 25(1), 43-68.

O'Brien, P. (1999). Imperialism and the Rise and Decline of the British Economy, 1688-1989. New Left Review, 48-80.

Paletta, Damian. “Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Stand on Foreign-Policy Issues.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 2016, graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-on-foreign-policy/.

Pollard, R. A. (1985). Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War: Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and American Rearmament, 1944–50. Diplomatic History, 9(3), 271-289.

Tilly, R. H. (2010). Industrialization as an Historical Process.

Walt, S. M. (2000). Two cheers for Clinton's foreign policy. Foreign Aff., 79, 63.

World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?locations=CL-CN