The dilemmas of US internationalism

[xchrom]

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/The/dilemmas/of/US/internationalism/elpepusoc/20110902elpepusoc_6/Tes

How has it been possible to make the costs, commitments and inevitable interventionism of America's rise to global primacy acceptable in the United States and to the rest of the world? This is the complex problem that, historically, has been faced by US internationalists of all schools of thought. In order to play a greater and a proactive role in world affairs, America needed domestic and international agreement on her choices, actions and strategies. Domestic consensus was obtained by justifying choices and actions as necessary for US national security, or by presenting them as a way to fulfil America's historical mission to spread freedom, democracy, and free trade. Making US global primacy palatable, or at least tolerable to other countries, or to their ruling elites was more complicated. Clearly defined common interests and enemies - as was the case during the Cold War - made this task easier. The United States played a leading role in designing the rules of the international system - defining the rewards for inclusion and the price of exclusion. This also allowed the US to assume a more or less commonly agreed global leadership. However, the real asset in America's rise to superpower status was the extraordinary attraction of the American model of modernisation and mass consumption.

During the first 20 years of the Cold War, Washington was able to preserve and even expand domestic and external consensus. Most Americans supported the post-1945 internationalist agenda pursued by US administration, endorsing the policy of global containment of the Soviet Union and communism. Outside the United States, the American model of modernity and prosperity proved almost irresistible, and became the benchmark for the other experiences of modernization and economic development.

Nevertheless, the complementary relationship between domestic and international consensus was neither given nor natural. What became known as 'Cold War Liberalism' began to crumble in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The United States suffered what was, in many ways, a crisis of hegemony. In the end, Washington weathered the crisis by re-launching a new, albeit more fragile and contradictory, internationalist discourse. Domestically, calls for more international action were justified through a strongly nationalist and exceptional narrative, reaffirmed in Ronald Reagan's belief that America was "... still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home". Outside the United States, consensus on US primacy was promoted through a model of globalisation based on deregulation of capital flows, liberalisation, and greater economic integration. Consensus was achieved by accepting various forms of interdependence that, in the end, limited America's sovereignty, as evidenced by the increasing US dependence on foreign investments. A typical expression of such dependence was the significant growth of the US public debt, with substantial amounts of Treasury securities being held by Japan and China.