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| The
American Century
as defined in this essay began to unfold in the late 19th century.
The United States had already been in existence for over 100 years at that point of time. Thus the principles that governed the thoughts and acts of US policy-makers seem to have a tradition older than the American leap onto the stage of the great powers. Historian James Brown Scott claims that “the foreign policy of a state or nation necessarily presupposes its existence as a political body”.[5] But probably even before the War of Independence patriots such as Benjamin Franklin considered international alliances to gain support in their struggle for freedom. The second Continental Congress appointed a Com mittee of Secret Correspondence and sent agents to the capitals of nations inimical to Britain in the search of foreign aid for the rebels’ cause. They found it in the French who helped with their troops to defeat the British at Yorktown, VA in 1783.[6] The diplomatic recognition of the break-away colonies by France and their Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1778 who had provided for this were the first official diplomatic steps the newborn nation had taken.[7] Although before the late 19th century US foreign policy had little or no impact on the great world powers or other countries not situated on the North American con- tinent and was not taken very seriously by them ,[8] the ideas and principles deve- loped back then largely shaped the ways in which the US contemplated the outside world and the relations that would be maintained with it. Thus it is crucial to understand the fundamental ideas and traits of US foreign policy that became the arsenal for the debates between isolationist and interven- tionist policy makers during The American Century. |
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copyright 1998 by Benedikt Wahler
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