How To Understand The History Of The United States

THE GLOBAL POWER OF UNITEDS STATES: FORMATION, EXPANSION AND LIMITS JOSÉ LUÍS FIORI The desire of every state and its rulers is to reach, through the conquest of the entire world, a condition of perpetual peace. Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Essay on the Perpetual Peace, 1795. The Formation of the American Minotaur The history of the United States does not constitute an exception in relation to the European model of states and national economies. On the contrary, unlike many social scientists and historians, including the Marxist, think, it is a product, and an essential part of the process of expansion of the model itself. The birth of the United States, as its capitalist development, was not an exclusive accomplishment of its great private corporations, it is inseparable from the competition and the wars between the Great European Powers. And it would be unthinkable without the decisive intervention of the State and the American wars, and without the initial and permanent support of the English financial capital. The rise of the United States was doubtlessly a revolutionary fact in the history of the worldwide system, since it was the first national state formed outside the European continent. But this revolution did not fall from the sky; it was provoked by the contradictions of the political system created by the Europeans and the expansion of its Great Powers. Therefore, although the United States has been a novelty, they have not been an 1

exception, however, and they would soon be transformed into a new part of the system itself. To begin with, the American independence was a European war, besides, as it happened with all the European state-empires that changed into Great Powers, the United States has expanded its power and its economic territory in a continuous form since the beginning of its independent history. The United States has assumed in the 20 th century the leadership of the system that formerly belonged to the Europeans and has taken to the utmost limits its contradictory trend towards the formation of a worldwide empire and, at the same time, the strengthened of its power as a nation. Those are the two sides of the contemporary impasse that faces the worldwide system and the unknown that lies in the future of the global power of the United States on the threshold of the 21 st century. The War of Independence and the Formation of the First Extra-European State The United States has been the first national state born outside Europe, and at the same time was a late national state, since it was born amidst a system of states that already were formed into a hierarchy and were, from the 17 th century on, in permanent expansion. Actually, its own birth constitutes an episode of this expansionist and competitive trend of the European states and their capitals. Moreover, the United States has been a colony that separated from a victorious imperial state, unlike all the others non-european states that form today s worldwide political system, which were born as a rule always from decaying empires or in an open process of dissolution. As it was the case with the 19 th century Latin American states, and with all the African and Asian states that were formed in 20 th century, particularly after World War II. The United States is the only case of a national state that leaves inside an empire in expansion, during the wars that had defined the English hegemony in Europe and its colonial world, and during the period when England made its industrial revolution and created the material and financial basis of the first international division of work. At the same time when mercantilist and colonialist citadel was 2

attacked by Adam Smith s economic liberalism, which suggested the exchange of the colonies for an imperialism of the free commerce. Therefore, when breaching its political ties with England, the United States were immediately transformed into a primary-exporter periphery of the English economy and industrialization. In this new historical context, absolutely original, one could not expect that the same process of accumulation of power and wealth that had occurred in Europe after the 15 th century would repeat itself in North America. Nor it would be possible that a state abruptly born out of a war between the Great European Powers could perform, at once, the accomplishment achieved precociously by England, the revolution that created the English national market: a political space transformed by the State, into an unified and coherent economic space, whose activities started to develop together in a same direction. (Braudel, 1987: 82). But, in spite of these differences and North American peculiarities, the United States has offered from the start an expansive trend, like the first European states that had been born in the form of minotaurs, half state and half empire; an expansive trend that is not found in the late states, which was created in Latin America at the beginning of the 19 th century. From our point of view, this characteristic of the United States is explained from two basic circumstances: one being its initial geopolitical insertion; and the other, its economic relation with the English metropolis, which was not severed by the independence. From a geopolitical point of view, the most determinant factor in the independence and formation of the American state was that it took place while the Great Powers disputed the European hegemony, between the end in 1763 of the Seven Years War, and the end of the Napoleonic wars, in 1815. And still more precisely during a period when the Ancien Régime was in a defensive position in almost the entire Europe, fearing in 1789 the French Revolution, and later the advance of Bonaparte s armies; at least until the consecration of the conservative victory in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. It is precisely during this period of European war that the United States conquers its independence, consolidates its territory, frames its Constitution at Philadelphia, and chose its first republican government, its territorial insularity in relation to the European continent using to its own profit, 3

and adopting a position of neutrality in relation to the conflict between the Great Powers. Actually, the American war of independence was a chapter of the great European war during which finally was decided the secular dispute between France and England for the European continent s hegemony. After the English victory in the Seven Years War, France lost its position in India, Canada and Louisiana, but nevertheless would lead her alliance with Spain, supported by the Netherlands, and encouraged by the anti-british positions of Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia in favour of American independence, playing a decisive role in the naval battle that decided the fate of England in Yorktown, on October 1781. However, in spite of this victory, France end up definitively defeated in Waterloo, being submitted from 1815 on to the policing of the Holy Alliance under the distant control of England. At this time, while Europe managed to arise after twenty years of continuous war, when its conservative forces and governments had managed to regain the control of its peripheries, defining the basis for a new worldwide political order, the United States was already on its own feet and, from viewpoint of its territory and state, definitively established after its last war with England in 1812. During this period of formation, the United States has had to negotiate with all the Great Powers present in North America, at a moment when they have been weakened by their fights and without the capacity to support their interests in territories regarded at that moment as distant, onerous and badly defended, except precisely for England. Therefore, the United States has negotiated its borders and commercial treaties since the first hour of its independence with the hard core of the Great European Powers, with which it had always kept privileged relations, in particular with England; it end up securing outstanding diplomatic victories, for it knew how to use on its favour the divisions of the Great Powers and their temporary frailty, starting with the peace treaty with England, the preliminary version of which was signed, in Paris, on November the 30 th 1782, and the definitive version, signed on September the 3 rd 1783, when the English would recognize the independence of each one its former colonies, and demarcated the borders of the new state: to the north, in the region of the Lakes; to the west, in 4

the Mississippi river; and to the south, in the region of Florida 1. It was in this same context of European fragility that the United States has managed to impose to the British, almost all of its conditions, in 1795 in Fort Greenville Treaty, regarding the aboriginal lands on the bordering region with Canada, where the state of Ohio was to be created; and the same happened in this very year with the treaties signed with Spain, defining the common borders in the southwest of the new American state. A little later, in 1803, the United States had still managed a new victory, when securing to buy from the French the territory of Louisiana, which was recovered in 1800 from Spain, by the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso. The same procedure was used in relation to Spain, in the case of the annexation of Florida in 1819. But amidst this history of small American battles and great negotiations done on shadow of the European war that last between the years of 1793 and 1815, the moment of paramount importance took place after the war between United States and Great Britain, which started in 1812 and ended in 1814, when the Treaty of Ghent was signed consecrating the principle of the arbitration for the new conflicts that could eventually arise between the two Anglo-Saxon countries. A principle that was activated with the disarmament agreement of the Great Lakes region, on the limits of Canada, signed in 1818 - The Rush-Bagot Agreement -, a real point of inflection in the geopolitical history of the United States, although the Anglo-American disputes would not cease definitively until 1871 with the signature the Treaty of Washington. Nevertheless, the 1818 treaty signed with England weighed decisively in favour of the American government during the negotiations with Spain that would culminate on the 22 nd of February 1819, when the Spanish king Fernando VII yielded to the United States all the territories situated between the east of Mississippi and the region of Florida. From an economic, or geo-economic point of view, the decisive point that set apart the formation of the American economy during the first decades of its independent life is its complementary, functional and privileged relation with the English 1 The information given in this paper about American diplomatic history especially those related to the 19th century up to the I World War were taken mainly from J.W. Pratt s book, A History of United States Foreign Policy, Prentice Hall. 5

economy, at that moment world s main capitalist economy in full process of industrial revolution. From the English point of view, the United States became a pioneering experience of its new system of international division of the work that would be extended during 19 th century to Latin America, North of Africa and some Asian countries. In this sense, there is no doubt that in the first half of 19 th century the United States had been, as many other countries worldwide, a primaryexporter economy, specialized in the production of tobacco and cotton for the English market. With the basic difference that England and its financial capital had privileged some of these countries much more than others, assuring them the essential capitals of investment for their great plantations, and the construction of the infrastructure to deliver the production. Angus Madison s study (2001) on 19 th century comparative development allows us to identify and rate the countries that had occupied privileged positions as English granaries, and were select as preferential receivers for investment of capitals; some Scandinavian countries and Argentina, and the British dominions or white colonies, as it was the case of Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The United States, however, as has been indicated by the figures, was the country that has occupied during all the 19 th century the main position inside of this group, which had the advantage of belonging to a kind of British zone of co-prosperity. In some occasions, and cases, the direct English investment in these territories went up to 60% of the total investment of the period, which could be understandable in colonies that have been great plantations or minerals suppliers of England. However, this was not the case of the United States that, although was no longer a colony, kept inside the Anglo-Saxon economic territory a privileged position, and, in this sense, has been much more than a simple agrarian-exporter periphery of England, as a mater of fact the United States has been a pioneering case of development by invitation. The ties that had been severed during the Civil War period, due to English sympathy for the Confederation s cause, were immediately resumed after the victory of the Union, and from 1870 on were kept and deepened. But, from now on, it would be another story, since this was the moment when the United States performed the also delayed revolution that created American national market, 6

and, therefore, the American State had also created by then a coherent economic space, unified, the activities of which started to develop together in one very same direction. (Braudel, 1987: 85). From the American point of view, the choice for this economic alliance with England was not only an imposition of its colonial productive structure, but also a strategic and political choice taken already by first constitutional government of the United States, under the presidency of George Washington. In April 1794, Washington sent to London John Jay, the first Chief Justice, to negotiate an agreement with England on several controversies between the two countries. Jay represented the Federalist position, in particular the pro-british position of Alexander Hamilton, appointed Secretary of the Treasure by George Washington, who at that moment was especially worried with the success of his politics monetary-financial, which depended on the financial support of England. The Jay's Treaty between England and United States, negotiated by John Jay, was signed in 1794, and it became the starting point for the economic partnership between United States and England. A partnership that worked in spite of some periodic disputes, giving to the United States all the advantages of the future British Dominions, but without the United States having to give away its autonomy and its neo-mercantilist protection policy. In 1815, Congress authorized the president to remove, from all American harbours, every kind of discrimination in relation to ships of countries that had abandoned the same practice in relation to the United States. The answer of the United Kingdom to this was a decision of Parliament opening for the Americans in 1822 several ports of her colonies, closing, therefore, a kind of progressive agreement of preferential commerce between the United States and herself. This did not prevent the Americans to sign, at this very time, many other bilateral commercial agreements: with Denmark, Sweden, Holland, France, and even with Spain, but they did not have the economic importance of the agreements with England. It was soon after the Boundary Treaty, signed on October 20, 1818, with England, and of the Transcontinental Treaty, signed on February 22, 1819, with the Spain, 7

that Secretary of State John Quincy Adams spoke for the first time in United States history of the existence of a manifest destiny, and immediately propose to Jefferson the annexation of Cuba and Florida. (Pratt, 1955: 165). The moment for the Monroe Doctrine was arriving, but this is a history that needs to be reread with greater care, so that the American expansionism from 1820s can be better understood. After 1815, the conservative forces were ruling Europe again under English hegemony, and the military control of the Holy Alliance, composed of the armies of Russia, Austria and Prussia, was mobilized to definitively restrain France. At the same time, they set among them the basic rules of how the new worldwide order, created by the imperialistic expansion of the Great European Powers, should function. It was at that moment that a long cycle of wars has come to an end, and revolutions within the European territory, at the same time the wars of independence multiplied inside the colonial possessions of the Iberian empires. Therefore, the question of the decolonisation occupied a larger place at the meetings of the Quadruple Alliance, and the Concert of the Europe, in Aix-la- Chapelle, (1818), Troppau, (1820), Laibach, (1821) and Verona (1822). In particular, after the restoration of Fernando VII in Spain, and Luis XVIII in France, events that restored the conservative dispositions and the intention to fight against the liberals in the Europe and Latin America. The first repressive troops were sent to contain the rebels in the two kingdoms of Naples and Piedmont, but this repression caused England to distance herself from the exceedingly conservative governments and to approach her former colony, the United States, aiming to prevent the intervention of the Holy Alliance in the American continent, supporting the Spanish Crown. The United States had already recognized the independences that preceded the Congress of Vienna, but after consulting the governments of England, France and Russia, stalled the recognition of other movements towards independence. It was in this context that the British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, proposed on August 1823 to Richard Rush, American ambassador in London, that the United Kingdom and the United States should take a common position disapproving any attempt from the European powers to restore the role of Spain in her former colonies (Pratt, 1955: 175). 8

The former presidents Jefferson and Madison gave their utmost support to the English project and a strategic longer-term alliance with Great Britain. But president Monroe, backed the position of Adams, and choose to decline the English invitation and to announce his own initiative before the American Congress: his new doctrine for American continent in almost identical terms to those of the British proposal. The Monroe Doctrine, announced on December 1823, was a political statement intended to the Great Powers, and without any consideration regarding the political will of the newly created states in Spanish and Portuguese America. However, if the Europeans decided simply to ignore Monroe s speech, the British tried to mock it, publicizing the terms of their agreement with the French minister Polignac, which was signed on October 1823, therefore before Monroe s address to the Congress, and favour a noninterventionist policy in America. The United States was still a very minor power, and its position in the international context was of lesser significance. Therefore, the continental reaction to Monroe s statement can be summarized as being an irrelevant and impertinent declaration (Pratt, 1955: 179). Soon after Monroe s speech, the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico had requested the American intervention in favour of their positions and had received all the same negative reply, which immediately made them understand that the true anchor for their independences would be the protectorate of the British Navy, and the English markets and capitals. In that sense, one can say that the Monroe Doctrine was only to be wielded by American hands at the moment when the United States had accumulated the indispensable power to support its international position, and this only took place at the end of 19 th century. Until then, Latin America remained an economic territory of British financial capital, and the United States had aimed at restricting its direct and military action to the North American territory, only acting outside its immediate zone of influence when assured of British approval or neutrality. This was the case with the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the war with Mexico, in 1848, when the United States increased in 60% the size of its territory due to the conquest and annexation of New Mexico and California. A colossal territory, to which was added the Oregon, recently negotiated 9

with England, to open for the United States the gates of the Pacific. The 19 th Century was still in its first half and United States long distance commerce already had given at every possible opportunity, with the support of the American diplomacy, its first steps towards Asia. The treaty signed with Great Britain by the United States in 1794 gave already permission to the American ships to trade with the British colonies in the East, and soon after they would be arriving in Oman, Batavia, Manila and Canton. It was in Asia that the United States started to define its anti-colonialist policy of extra continental expansion. An option for the economic territory without administrative responsibility, but also a strategy to compete with the French and English influence, which was based on the use of force and colonial conquest. Therefore the American permanent apology of the open doors policy and preservation of the territorial integrity, especially in the case of China and Japan. But also in the case of Canada that would sign in 1854 the Marcy Elgin Treaty with the United States, which gave up definitively an annexation that had always tempted part of its government, and choose instead an option for the economic integration of the Canadian territory. As stated by J.W. Pratt, in his History of United States Foreign Policy, the American president John Tyler ordered in 1844 its envoy Caleb Cushing to China with the mission to obtain the same treatment given to England at the Treaty of Nanking, which was imposed upon China after her 1842 defeat in the Opium War. Cushing s mission was successful and the Treaty of Wanghia opened the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shangai to United States ships. The open doors principle was kept, later, by the Treaty of Tientsin signed simultaneously by England, France, Russia and the United States, after a war won by the two main European colonial powers. In the case of Japan, however, the American president Millard Fillmore had the initiative in 1853 to send Commodore Mathew G. Perry over there with the mission to obtain the opening of the Japanese ports. This objective was achieved through the signature in 1854 of a treaty between the two governments, the first treaty ever signed by Japan with a Western state, the United States, that was followed only afterwards by the governments of England, Russia and Holland. When American Civil War was due to take place, 10

the United States had already completed the conquest of its continental territory and had taken extremely important diplomatic movements in the commercial and geo-economic Asian chessboard. But the U.S. basically remained a primaryexporter economy depending upon British financial capital, and remained bound to the British imperial strategy in all territories outside its immediate zone of influence in the North America, respecting the British dominion of Canada. The Civil War, the Economic Revolution and the Continental Hegemony The American Civil War changed the course of United States history in the second half of 19 th century. A period that covers the beginning of the military conflict in 1861 until the signature of the Commitment between democrats and republicans in 1877, which determined the end of the military occupation of the Confederates States, and considered closed the Reconstruction policy by the Union of the economy and society of the Southern states. This long period of war and economic disorder ended by having a paradoxical effect, which provoked an enormous redistribution and centralization of power that left the United States head and shoulders above, and up-to-date with the history and model of formation and development of the European states and national economies. In this sense, the Civil War, at the same time that it caused enormous material and human losses, also played a revolutionary role from the viewpoint of reorganizing the American national state and capitalism. As if in this case a second round would take place intensively, only focussing this time, on the centralization of power, so that just then, under pressure of wars, or revolutions, the state was compelled to create - for military or strategic reasons - a national economy from a monetary, financial, and creditworthy viewpoint developing as a whole one set direction. It was at this very moment that the memorable alliance, to employ Max Weber s expression, in the United States speaks, between the state and the national financial capital, in a similar way that has occurred in England during the 17th century. This is a different viewpoint, for instance, of the one sustained by Alfred Chandler, which was used until nowadays as the foundation for almost all the Marxist studies in relation to the exceptional enterprising qualities of American 11

capitalism. For Chandler, the growth of the modern American industrial enterprises, between 1880 and World War I was little affected by public policies, and the capital market because it was part of a more basic economic development. (Chandler, 1977: 376). From our point of view, the American Civil War had, on the contrary, qualities and consequences typical of the classic European wars between two bordering national states, in this case, the Union and the Confederation. And it was this Civil War that was the great responsible for the building of the American modern state and national economy, since it forced the nationalization of the army and the consolidation of the Union s public debt, which became the pillar of the banking and financial system that expanded and was nationalized during this period, at the same time that a new tax system was capable of guaranteeing the war debt, precisely as had happen with the European wars during the 17th and 18 th centuries. And, after the war, during the Reconstruction period, the public bonds of the debt incurred by the Union would play a basic role in financing the railroads that would cross the American territory, opening the ways for the expansion of businesses and great corporations that would integrated the American national market. It was at that moment that the American financial capital, which only had managed to gain autonomy from the British capital during the Civil War, once it had established solid and permanent ties with the victorious power, was really formed. The alliance between the power of the Union and the new financial capital, as portrayed by John Hobson in his classic work on American modern capitalism, was crucial for the success of the economic revolution that shook the United States in the last decades of 19 th century. During the Civil War, as stated by an American historian, the Union developed an income policy that would transform most of the financial community into clients of the state. The financiers had been attracted and coerced in becoming agents of the Union s tax policy and cooperated with the Treasure in selling the public debt bonds, and making circulation of the currency of the Union. This happened in such way that when the Civil War ended, the financial capital and American state 12

interests had never been so close in any other moment of the 19th century as then (...) the drop of British investment during the war encouraged the accumulation of internal capital and the appearance of an American class of financiers. Between 1864 and 1879, for example, the number of bankers in New York increased from 167 to 1800. (Bensel, 1990: 238-249). It was precisely the time in which the American production of coal increased 800%, the production of steel rails, 523%, the mileage of railroads grew 567%, and the wheat production, 256%, while immigration doubled the size of the American population. In many aspects, it was a similar and parallel economic revolution to the one that occurred from 1870s on after the German unification. Also in this case the wars of Prussia against Denmark, Austria and France had helped to build or to deepen the ties between the political power and the financial capital that would act as a propeller force in the German economical leap in the last decades of the 19 th century, which was described in Rudolph Hilferding s classic work about the financial capital. Putting aside some important differences, a strong parallelism also exists between the trajectories of the United States and Germany with what occurred in Japan, after the 1860s Civil War, the Meiji Restoration, which knocked down the feudal regimen of the shogunate and initiated a much accelerated process of modernization of the society and industrialization of the Japanese economy. It is interesting to note that these three late national states would end up by taking, almost at the same time, their first imperialistic steps outside their territories, or continents, in the end of the 19 th century. After a fast process of modernization and industrialization, Japan invaded and defeated China in 1894-1895, and Russia, in 1904-1905, increasing its territory, and imposing its power in Korea and the Manchuria. It was the very time that Germany abandoned Bismarck diplomacy and started her imperial expansion in Africa, considering at the same time to equal her naval power to Britain s. An expansionist movement that would approach France and Russia, and cause a radical change of British foreign policy between the years of 1890 and 1914. Finally in 1898, the United States had also left the den by declaring and wining the Spanish-American War, and conquering 13

through the 1898 Treaty of Paris - Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, starting a colonial escalade that would continue with the 1902 interventions in Haiti, Panama in 1903, the Dominican Republic in 1905, and again in 1906 and 1912 in Cuba and Haiti respectively. The very time that the United States would fully assume the military responsibility for the Monroe Doctrine when succeed in prevent an 1895 invasion of Venezuela, planned by England and Germany, and aimed to collect the Venezuelan government s debts with European banks. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan would published his classic work, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, a book that exerted enormous influence on his friend Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, two central figures in American foreign policy decisive process, precisely in the year of 1890, at the moment when the United States had started effectively its imperial expansion outside of North America. His central thesis backed the perception of some Civil War militaries on the necessity of the United States to have naval bases in the Caribbean, and the Pacific, capable to support its advance towards Asia, where part of the colonial competition was concentrated after 1870. Those ideas would provoke an immediate expansion of the United States navy to the point of becoming one of world s three largest navies on the brink of World War I in 1914. But above all, those were the same ideas that guided the decision to annex in 1897 Hawaii to the United States, and to initiate the 1989 Spanish-American War, and consequently the conquest of Cuba and the Philippines. Between 1900 and 1914, the American government had to define its politics in relation to these new conquered overseas territories and would opt for a new kind of political control: they became United States military and financial protectorates, as it was the case in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama and Cuba. These countries kept their internal sovereignty, but they did not have any right to a foreign policy, nor to implement an economic policy that was not in accordance with the payment requirements by their debts in American banks. Moreover, the United States kept a right to intervene at any time internal disturbances or threats to jeopardise its protectorate occurred. It was at that moment that the United States assumed, for the first time, the role of international police, transforming the 14

Caribbean into a kind of colonial zone, without the responsibility for the direct administration, as in the case of the Philippines who had been, in fact, the first United States colony, and its first step in the struggle for hegemony in the Asian chessboard. After the Philippines, the United States would intervene more and more in Asian affairs, as it was the case with the 1900 Boxer Uprising in China, where the United States had mobilized the other Great Powers in favour of keeping Chinese territorial integrity. And also during the Russo-Japanese War, when the United States had adopted a neutral position, but would be openly in favour of Japan, accepting as well the Japanese request to become the host nation for the 1905 Peace Conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Finally, on December 6th, 1904, in his annual message to the American Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt reformulated the Monroe Doctrine, and adjusted it to the new times. The new strategic doctrine that was behind his offensive in the Caribbean, and Asia, was to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. This was the first time that an American administration defended the right of the United States to a preventive attack against states in case they showed inefficiency regarding their internal order, or if they were defaulters regarding their external debts. The new formula was foresee on May 1904 in a letter from Roosevelt to Elihu Root, his Secretary of State, and later it was repeated in the speech of December 6th in the same year: Any well behaved country or people can count upon our cordial friendship. If the nation demonstrates that she knows how to act within reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if she knows how to keep order and paid her debts, she doesn t need to fear the intervention of the United States. An inveterate disapproving behaviour, or an impotence that results to set loose the ties of social civility, can require, in America, or in any another place of the world, the intervention of a civilized nation, and in the case of the Western Hemisphere, the adhesion of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine, can force the United States to exert an international police power, even though reluctantly (Pratt, 1955: 417). When entering World War I, in 1917, the United States was the only hegemonic power in its own continent, and already had a prominent position in the Asian chessboard. It 15

was the time when American fight for hegemony in Europe would start, the true secret for conquering global power. The Conquest Global Power by the United States Between 1914 and 1945, the worldwide political system faced a new Thirty Years War, such as the one that took place mainly in Germany, between 1618 and 1648, before the Peace of Westphalia, with the difference that in the 20 th century it was a worldwide war, involving countries of all the continents and reaching the territories of Europe, North Africa and Asia. It was during this period that the worldwide system digested the revolutionary entrance of three new political powers and three new expansive national economies - two of them situated outside Europe - in its central core of command, in addition to two worldwide wars, and a worldwide economical crisis that had its epicentre in the United States. However, besides war and the great economic crisis, it was in this precise period that a successful Communist revolution took place in Russia, together with several others that, if not succeeding in the same way, nevertheless agitated the European social and political scenery, in particular regarding the territories of Central Europe, contributing for the large fascist reaction which installed, in the 1930s, authoritarian and conservative governments in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany. After World War II, during the Cold War with Soviet Union, and under United States hegemony amongst the other Great Powers, the capitalist economy lived its golden age and the world experienced a global management based on supranational institutions and regimes, even if tutored by the United States. But this period of worldwide hegemony lasted only until the 1970s, when the United States changed its international strategy. It was the moment when America lost the Vietnam War and would approach China, also abandoned the international monetary regimen created in Bretton Woods and gradually adopted a dollar-flexible system, and finally had dismantled the controls on the international circulation of private capitals, opting for the complete deregulation of the financial markets, which the 16

United States had already supported, and promoted, since the 1960s everywhere possible. This was a new international strategy to escalate towards single imperial global power, achieved after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf War in 1991. There is a widespread theory, in the field of international political economy, about the origins of the age of disaster and the 1970s changes. After Charles Kindelberger and Robert Gilpin, several authors had spoken of a crisis of the American hegemony in the 1970s, and had attributed it to the same basic cause of the 1930s crisis: the absence of a clearly hegemonic power, capable of imposing order and to lead the international economy. This would have occurred after 1918, when the United States did not want to assume the worldwide leadership in the place of England, and the same would had happen again in the 1970s, when the American hegemony would have been challenged by the economic rise of Germany and Japan, the technological-military advance of the Soviet Union, and the American defeat in the Vietnam War. From our point of view, however, the United States did not abdicate voluntarily its worldwide leadership after World War I. What was at issue in 1918 was a fight for hegemony within Europe, where objective contradictions, and resistances, still existed that had blocked the American upgrade and had hindered the United States to assume the economical and political leadership of the region. Germany had been defeated, and Japan already had been realigned with England since the beginning of the 20 th century, but there was no agreement between England and France about the pillars of the new worldwide order, and much less upon the place and the role that were to be grant to the United States inside the Great Powers club. This may be the reason why 1918 Paris Agreements, considered by many as being a big strategic and geopolitical calculation mistake, was as a matter of fact the only possible result of a negotiation marked by divisions and conflicts amongst the victorious powers, and by the existence of a French and English final veto to any kind of American hegemony in Europe. On the other hand, the the 1970s crisis was not from our point of view only the result of a loss of strength of United States worldwide hegemony caused by its 17

military and diplomatic defeats, and by the economic challenge of the other capitalist economic powers. From the viewpoint of the worldwide system long-term dynamics, the the 1970s crisis was the product of the expansive compulsion and the destructive trend of the hegemonic powers in their quest for global power. World War I and the American Struggle for European Hegemony World War I is one of the most enigmatic episodes in modern history. There is an accumulation of theories, but none succeed to explain the sudden and sequential way in which 32 nations - including the British Dominions and India - had become involved in a war against Germany due to an absolutely prosaic episode that took place in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914. This included Japan that declared war to Germany in August of the same year with her eyes set on the German controlled territory in the Chinese peninsula of Shantung, and the German islands of the North Pacific. The Americans had just finished to confirm its hegemonic power in the American continent, and had already substantial positions in Asian, when World War I begun, and the United States had proclaimed, once more, its position of neutrality regarding the struggle for European hegemony. A position that was sustained during two and half years by president Woodrow Wilson, despite French and British pressure. The United States will declare the state of war with the government of the German Empire, on April 6, 1917, but until then its position was favourable to negotiation and the establishment of a peace without victory, as it was the purposed suggested many times by president Woodrow Wilson who looked forward to establish a new balance of power in Europe, capable to assure a lasting peace and an American position similar to the one that belong to England during the 19 th century. Even when entering war against Germany, the United States did not declare war to German allies, neither established any kind of treaty or alliance with France and England, adopting a position of associated power in the same war. Moreover, the Americans had entered the war shielded by president Wilson s Fourteen Points, and immediately considered a fair peace for all those involved in the conflict, including Germany. 18

The 1919 s negotiations of peace in Paris, however, had excluded German presence and had given little space to the Italian and Japanese delegations, becoming, in fact, a triumvirate formed by Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, and their respective delegations and teams of advisers. The peace program thought by Wilson had four very clear objectives: to re-establish the European balance of power, to dismantle the colonial empires of France and England, to reactivate the commerce, and the international economy, and to a covenant of a League of Nations. Under no circumstance this project can be considered as a deed of United States disinterested idealism, nevertheless its main proposals had been blocked, or distorted, by previous agreements between the victorious, and by the joint or divided veto of the other allies, in particular France and England. Wilson s great victory in the negotiations in Paris was the covenant of League of Nations it became, however, a Pyrrhic victory the moment the American Senate vetoed the participation of the United States in the League. On the one hand, Wilson granted the point of the economic reparation imposed by France on Germany, and he did not succeed in open the commercial doors of European colonial empires. On the other hand, England and United States united to veto the French proposal of dividing German territory, since both worried about the French expansionism. Still, France and England joined to compel Wilson to restrict his apology of the self-determination of the peoples to Central European nations, and to accept that the old Ottoman Empire s territories were to be transformed into British and French mandates or protectorates. Even in Central Europe, the creation of the new states was only accepted by all in the measure that it weakened Germany, and created buffer states to contain Soviet Union. Finally, United States, France and England came together when denying some claims of Italy and Japan, deepening the division between victorious countries at end of World War I. At last, on June 23, 1919, Germany would accept the extremely unfair treaty that was imposed upon her by the allies. Before that, however, the German and Russian destruction unbalanced the core of the Great Powers. The balance of power would no longer be possible, and a kind of draw was established amongst the victorious, where the power of mutual veto predominated above the 19

capacity of any of the victorious nations to impose its hegemony to the others, in particular within the European geopolitical chessboard. It was this draw that led the American Senate s rejection of the covenant of League of Nations to prevail. This was not though the forces that opposed the United States worldwide presence were victorious; it was simply a rejection of the covenant s terms proposed by the Europeans, who had not accepted the changes suggested by the American Senate: i) the recognition of the right of the countries to abandon the League; ii) the elimination of domestic issues, concerning the jurisdiction of League; and iii) the acceptance, by all the members of League of the Monroe Doctrine. Finally, It was this draw in the fight for European hegemony that paralysed, in the 1930s, World War I allies and the League of Nations, when the defeated or penalized states by the Peace Treaty of Versailles had retaken their expansive impetus, and started to reconquest its war lost territories. This is what happened before the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia; the Italo-German fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War; the 1936 German retaken of the Ruhr; the 1938 German annexation of Austria, and the 1939 invasion of Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Pact, and the nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, in 1939, they remained paralysed before the Russian invasion of Poland, Finland, Romania, and the Baltic states. But, even then, only England and France would react to the German invasion of Poland, starting World War II, while the United States would keep at distance up to 1941. In the economic field, the conflict and division between the three main victorious powers in the 1914 War reappeared in all the post-war arguments: on the issue of the new international monetary system and the problem of the reparations, in Germany s case in particular. During the war, the United States had stop being a country in debt, becoming instead the main creditor of all European countries involved in the conflict, including its own allies which had radicalised their demands in relation to Germany in order to quit their debts with American banks. In relation to the new monetary-financial order, they all have been in agreement, at first, with the return to the gold standard and the rules in effect before the 1914 war. 20

However, the national interests were not convergent, nor was there any possibility that one of the victorious countries would impose itself to the others. Therefore, the Brussels Conference, convoked by the League of Nations and taking place on September 1920 - assembling representatives of 34 countries, and only one American observer - was a complete failure, and none of its recommendations to League of Nations was enforced. The same would happen again at the Conference of Genoa in 1922, convoked by France and England, but also without the adhesion of the United States. An impasse that would repeat once more at World Economic Conference that took place on June 1933 in London. Its proposals had been rejected by Roosevelt, and each one of the main actors, who end up withdrawing back his own resolution: the British Empire created the sterling pound zone, while the French formed the gold group with Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Italy. The same conflict of interest between France, Great Britain and America was present in the negotiations concerning the payment of German reparations. Fifteen months after the peace settlement, Germany became already default with her creditors, and despite the objection of England, the Reparations Commission authorized in 1923 the occupation by French and Belgian troops of the German industrial area of the Ruhr. As a result of this, German economy entered into a deep inflationary crisis, interrupting completely the payment of her debt. Therefore France agreed to the creation of a special commission, under the leadership of American banker Charles G. Dawes, to study a plan to reschedule German debt. Despite profound disagreement between the British and the French, it was possible to reach in 1924 a final proposal and an agreement, called Dawes Plan, which worked satisfactorily during the years of prosperity, between 1924 and 1928. After the 1929 crisis, however, a new reschedule of the payments was necessary, the Young Plan, sanctioned in April 1930, six months after the New York Stock market crash. Soon after, the worldwide economic crisis hastened the liquidation of the German debt; settle in Lausanne, July 1932, the precise moment when the nazi ascension started and Germany was back on the struggle for European hegemony. But in all these negotiations and agreements, what stands out was the profound 21

disagreement between the allies - they came close to break off diplomatic relations - and the impossibility of establishing any kind of clear hegemony amongst them. In this fight with its European allies, the United States, due to its geopolitical and military nature, faced another extremely difficult problem: its territorial insularity, which had been, until then, a safeguard against external attacks. They would learn soon that the terrestrial power is the decisive form of the military power, and that the great water masses deeply limit the capacity of projecting of the power ashore. Therefore, when the opposing armies have to cross great extensions of water, as in the case of the Atlantic Ocean, for example, to attack one another, both will lose offensive capacities, independently of the size and the quality of the opposing forces. (Mearsheimer, 2001: 83). This limitation of the United States explains, in part, the Woodrow Wilson s idealism and his apology of a system of collective security, in which the Americans could exert their power inside Europe, as an offshore balance, as it had been the case of the British, during the 19 th century. It was not the case of abandoning Theodore Roosevelt s project of international power, nor to abdicate of its expansionist program, the matter was to adjust it the United States reality and possibilities at the stage of the development of military technology of that time. Moreover, after World War I, already there was nothing left to conquer in the world besides the two great European powers, the allies of the United States, own colonies, the colonial empires of Great Britain and France. The United States would be inclined, and would it have the conditions, at that moment, to initiate a military competition with France and England? Everything suggests that they did not have the national resolution, nor the military resources to start this race to the extremes, which would have meant the definitive implosion of the ally block and its enfeeblement before Germany and the Soviet Union. From this point of view, the apology of the self-determination of the peoples coincided with the national interest of the United States in disassembling the colonial empires of its allies. A position that was announced in 1917, but that only became effective after the end of World War II, when England and France already had no longer the conditions to compete with the United States, nor to keep the control of their old 22