America on the World Stage

The City Upon a Hill

• "We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us” – John Winthrop aboard the Arabella, 1630

• America’s universalistic, religious mandate for the world

Still the City Upon a Hill• I've spoken of the shining city all my

political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still – Ronald Reagan, 1984.

• I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us“ – John Kennedy, 1961

Manifest Destiny

The Closing of the Frontier, 1890

• Where should Manifest Destiny take us now?

• What is America without frontiers?– Frederick Jackson Turner

• US Relationship to Europe

War With Spain

An Imperial Republic?

• Arguments against imperialism– European analogies– Race (White Man’s

Burden)– Power projection

• Arguments for– Pacific expansion is the

natural course for US– Resources– Global Reach for US ideals

US Power Projection

• The “Great White Fleet” circumnavigates the globe, 1907

• Boxer Rebellion• Interventions in

Latin America

American Reactions to the Outbreakof War in Europe in 1914

• “Again and ever, I thank Heaven for the Atlantic Ocean” – US Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, July 29, 1914 describing “The Great Smash”

• What is the role of a “great power”?

Neutrality

• What did the term mean?

• Equal impact on all sides?

• No impact on the war at all?

• Total US freedom of action?

The Germans are killing people. The British are merely inconveniencing them – Wilson on the two blockade strategies.

The Rivals

Woodrow Wilson• Born 1856• Governor (NJ): 1911-1913• President: 1913-1921• Died: 1921 (stroke in 1919)

Theodore Roosevelt• Born 1858• Governor (NY): 1899-1901• President: 1901-1909• Died: 1919

Roosevelt’s Critiques

• Neutrality is “utter folly” akin to disarming the NYPD to fight crime in Central Park

• US policy should be “righteousness backed by force.”

• Wilson’s policy is “object cowardice and weakness.”

Plattsburg Camps

A World Power?

• US Army smaller than Romania’s

• Equipment, doctrine, knowledge of European war all badly out of date

• “I watched them leave and wondered how they could possibly do any good” – Elizabeth Coles Marshall.