The Messianic Role of the United States Post-Cold War

Given the great variety of interconnected power networks, it becomes difficult to understand the “post-Cold War” foreign policy of the United States. The interdependence produced by the centers of capitalism, especially the United States, has opened national borders. International limits become vague and porous faced with the flow of computers and technological capital: a new reality with the emergence of new non-state actors, sometimes of a transnational character, questioning U.S. hegemony from their anti-establishment movements.

From the perspective of the White House, faced with the reality of globalization, the alternatives for facing the challenges inherent to it are diverse. One cannot forget that there is an intimate relationship between the arrangements that the political elite have created, which unlawfully restrain the government from functioning as it should, and their public image. For a government that watches over the world like an area of a complex interdependence, the ideal thing would be to cooperate with the international actors in the majority of areas as possible and act independently only in exceptional circumstances.

But the current administration in Washington moves in another direction, preferring to act alone whenever it can and to cooperate only when compelled to do so. The turning point that created this policy was 9/11. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to examine the period before and after, starting from a comparative perspective. Since its emergence as a nation, its mindset has been rooted in the idea that the defense and promotion of American interests are a condition that is in the interest of humanity.

That messianic nationalism inherent to their culture explains the fact that when Americans sought to legitimize their actions abroad, they did not make an appeal to the supranational institutions but instead to their own principles. Days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Republican magnate Henry Luce published an article in Life magazine titled “The American Century.” In that article, Luce urged American politicians to accept their duty and take the opportunity to convert the United States into the most powerful nation “from which the ideas may spread throughout the world.” It set up the guiding principle of American foreign policy after World War II.

The U.S. government has done all that it can to make this dream a reality. To that end, the essential idea has been for the United States to limit individual power emanating from the nation-states and to re-organize international relations as it fancies. As William Polk points out, the idea of the “savior mission” of the United States is shared by many ultraconservatives all over the world and is very popular among some American fundamentalist minorities. Because of this, they have supported the creation of interstate frameworks with the aspect of supra-nationality in their decisions, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations (subjected to terms of security and linked economically since Bretton Woods), etc.

But such frameworks only make sense as long as they subordinate themselves to U.S. domination and as legitimate institutions of United States foreign policy. For some U.S. politicians, their only function is to ratify decisions made in Washington. When the interests of the allies do not coincide with those of the White House, then the only motive for trying to maintain the consensus disappears through the need to legitimize their policies before the others. According to the creators of the Project for a New American Century, the support of a system that consecrates the hegemony of the United States in the 21st century proceeds “to establish and maintain a strong military presence in the Middle East.” The front-line control of a region of those characteristics — rich in petroleum, one step away from the crude oil and natural gas reserves of Central Asia, and which would permit keeping a closer watch on China with the ranking of an expanding world power — would form the part of a geostrategic plan much more vast in order to remake itself as “number-one” of the international system.