Is the Soviet Collapse Dragging the United States Down?
The mix of old and new in the United States's role as world leader creates ambiguity and confusion. The United States is looking for ways to regain its lost economic punch and to consolidate its world hegemony. At present, however, with no true enemy on the horizon, it is being dragged down by the Soviet collapse. The twentieth century was a period of transition but not from capitalism to socialism. The nonmarket alternative or challenge represented by the Soviet Union gave capitalism the means to overcome many obstacles to its reproduction and raise profits to new levels. The United States occupied a privileged position in that process. However, the twenty-first century demands new solutions for capitalism's inherent contradictions, and as a result the United States is apparently still trying to invent a new Soviet Union.
The United States and imperialism
Introduction. 1. Imperialism and National Identity in the 1890s. 2. Failed Expectations: The Civilizing Mission in the Philippines. 3. America's Caribbean Empire. 4. The Modernization of China and the Diplomacy of Imperialism. 5. Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in America's World Policies. Conclusion: Beyond Imperialism: The Empire of Modernity. Index.
Cultural Relations and American China Policy, 1942-1945
IN THE COURSE OF studying America's involvement with China during the Second World War, historians have focused mainly on the complexity of political affairs, especially as they related to military strategy and the larger currents of global politics. But American involvement was not exclusively political, as demonstrated by the State Department's inauguration, in 1942, of a formal program of cultural relations with China.' From a superficial bureaucratic perspective, this decision simply added a cultural wing to an expanding politico-military edifice, and a modest one at that. The cultural program had little influence in shaping the major contours of wartime Sino-American relations. Its subordinate policymaking status was underscored in many ways, not least by the absence of permanent legislative authority for its activities and by a chronic lack of funding. Yet, in retrospect, the cultural program possessed a symbolic importance not recognized at the time. For all its seeming insignificance, its evolution during the war suggests that the highly