{"id":95130,"date":"2017-07-10T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=95130"},"modified":"2017-07-06T12:58:38","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T11:58:38","slug":"americas-violent-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/americas-violent-century\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Violent Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last near-century of American dominance was extraordinarily violent. Is it coming to an end?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Dower (C-Span)<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Jun 2017 – <\/em>John Dower is one the most preeminent historians of World War II\u2019s Pacific theater and the aftermath of the conflict in Asia. His book War Without Mercy<\/em> (1986) described the racial component of the U.S. campaign against Japan. In Embracing Defeat <\/em>(1999),<\/em> he examined the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan. He has long taken a critical look at U.S. foreign policy, subjecting the vaunted ideals of America\u2019s global pretensions to skeptical scrutiny. He\u2019s not interested in \u201cgood wars\u201d or \u201cgood occupations.\u201d He describes the exercise of power, and it\u2019s almost never a pretty picture.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Dower has been extending his critical analysis both chronologically and geographically. Cultures of War<\/em> (2010) was an initial effort to link the violence of World War II to 9\/11 and the Iraq War. Now, with The Violent American Century<\/em>, Dower deepens his analysis by addressing the emergence and expansion of American global power all the way up to the Obama era. Dower is particularly interested in connecting the dots between the United States that emerged victorious from World War II and the America of the 21st<\/sup> century that appears willing to do almost anything to maintain its status as the world\u2019s only superpower.<\/p>\n

Dower begins his story just at the moment when the United States is poised to become a global titan. It\u2019s 1941, the year the United States officially entered World War II. It\u2019s also when Time<\/em>\u2019s Henry Luce proclaimed the beginning of \u201cthe American century.\u201d For all his talk of democratic principles and the American spirit, Luce was not na\u00efve. He knew that America would have to use force \u2013 in some cases, overwhelming force \u2013 to establish its global position. The saturation bombing of Dresden and Tokyo followed by the nuclear attacks against Nagasaki and Hiroshima became the pivotal moments of \u201cwar and terror\u201d on which the United States would secure its authority.<\/p>\n

Dower traces the impact of America\u2019s nuclear policy from Hiroshima to the present, explaining how the \u201cbalance of terror\u201d served a key role in cementing U.S. status. He discerns in U.S. indifference to human rights considerations during the Cold War \u2013 with the exception of the first two years of the Carter administration \u2013 the origins of later torture policy in the post-9\/11 era. Certainly successive administrations in Washington introduced innovations in the maintenance and control of U.S. global influence, such as extraordinary rendition, drones, and enhanced surveillance capabilities, but many of the features of the \u201cviolent American century\u201d were present at the creation.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s Dower\u2019s point. He is writing against a<\/p>\n

chorus of detached observers who argue that violence has been contained compared to the horrors of World War Two and earlier times \u2013 and that even the death, pain, and agony we have seen since September 11 actually reflects, on the part of the United States, a praiseworthy technological and psychological turn in the direction of precision, restraint, and concern with avoiding civilian casualties.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite the contrary: the United States, Dower argues, may have refined its techniques, but it has done nothing to minimize the brutality. The casualties of the Iraq War alone \u2013 which number in the hundreds of thousands \u2013 undermine any notion that the United States had become a kinder, gentler superpower.<\/p>\n

By 2016, the \u201cAmerican century\u201d was only three-quarters complete. Dower brilliantly describes the infancy, adolescence, and working years of U.S. global dominance. He spends less time exploring the slowing down of the U.S. war machine during the period of international instability the Obama administration experienced. And he doesn\u2019t speculate much on what will happen with America\u2019s global power during what might very well be its dotage.<\/p>\n

True, the United States seems unlikely to retire from the international stage as the American century passes the 75-year mark. But the election of Donald Trump does appear to herald a kind of second infancy, as the new president toddles about the world stage, promises to use force without restraint, and makes the most elemental of errors.<\/p>\n

Even without Trump, whose election came after the completion of Dower\u2019s book in September 2016, the United States was showing the strain of its \u201clong war\u201d against terrorism, its military bases and operations in more than 100 countries around the world, and the opportunity costs for American infrastructure and American lives at home. The obvious question, which Dower doesn\u2019t ask or answer, is: what comes next?<\/p>\n

China has proposed its own dream of power and prosperity. Many Russians would like to put together a Eurasian century. The European Union vacillates between disintegration and a larger global role for itself. The global South \u2013 India, South Africa, Brazil \u2013 is tired of the arrogance of the global North.<\/p>\n

Will these aspirants to global power necessarily adopt comparable policies of war and terror to displace the United States and maintain their new status? That\u2019s not part of Dower\u2019s remit. But however brutal the century that follows the \u201cAmerican century,\u201d you can be sure that the new hegemons will use the same language of virtue and restraint as the United States has done, even as they engage in abuses both large and small.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

John Feffer is the director of <\/em>Foreign Policy In Focus\u00a0and the author of the dystopian novel\u00a0<\/em>Splinterlands<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fpif.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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