Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
6 - The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
Summary
Independent Internationalism Revisited
When Gertrude Stein dogmatically asserted that the twentieth century began in 1920, she did not know that it also marked the beginning of modern U.S. foreign policy. The First World War and its aftermath set in motion on its bloodthirsty course what would become the American Century. The century proclaimed American in 1941 by publisher Henry R. Luce commenced in the 1920s because the nineteenth century did not end until 1914 with the events following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which led to World War I. The century ended in 1991 with acts of destructive ethnic cleansing that began in the same historic city. In both 1914 and 1991, the killings in Sarajevo were inextricably associated with violent national self-determination. Given the horrors of this century it is conceivable that we should not want to remember it as American.
The worldwide ramifications of occurrences in Sarajevo at the beginning and end of what Eric Hobsbawm has called the “short twentieth century” (with the American portion of this century being even shorter) are sobering rather than uplifting and say more about the irrational human conditions leading to self-determined nation-states than the rational practice of democracy so prominent in the rhetoric of American diplomats during these same time periods. Moreover, there is little reason to believe, other than on the grounds of ethnocentrism, that democracy as a political base for nation-states was divinely intended to triumph in any enduring sense at the end of the American Century.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Ambiguous LegacyU.S. Foreign Relations in the 'American Century', pp. 183 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 1
- Cited by