HOW AMERICA GOES TO WAR
By Frank E. Vandiver,
Praeger, £ 22.99

The Cold War ended with America becoming the global policeman. The liberal view in academic circles asserts that the loss of the balance of power towards the end of the 20th century pushed a reluctant United States of America, the world’s sole remaining superpower, into the centre stage of global power-politics. Frank E. Vandiver, an American strategic historian, offers a different interpretation. He argues that from the early 19th century, the US has been on an expansionist course.

The history of American imperialism could roughly be divided into four stages. Between the American War of Independence and the Civil War, the US established its sway over North America by a relentless genocide against the Indian tribes. The second stage lasted from the 1860s till World War I. In this period, the US tightened its grip over South America by implementing the infamous Monroe Doctrine. The third stage spanned the two World Wars — a time when America engineered hemispheric expansion. This period witnessed the decline of Europe and the rise of Pax Americana.

American expansionism was held in check by the Soviets between the Fifties and the Seventies. The advent of Ronald Reagan in 1981 marked the beginning of the fourth stage. Reagan deliberately escalated the arms race in order to cause the economic disintegration of the Soviet Union. His Star Wars programme forced Moscow to go for missile defence which virtually bankrupted the communist state. The only alternative then left for the Soviet high command was to support Gorbachev’s Glastnost and Perestroika. The chain reaction that started from Gorbachev’s programme of ‘opening up’ ultimately caused the break-up of the Soviet super-state.

Vandiver asserts that the fourth stage of American expansionism is still continuing in the post-Cold War setting. However, unlike the ‘Doomsday theorists’, Vandiver does not expect that, in the near future, increasing military expenditure will ruin the American economy. After the second Iraq War, George W. Bush is behaving like Caligula. Since no state in the world hopes to stop the American president, the only check can come from the US Congress itself.

The Congress, claims Vandiver, has abdicated the role of war and peace-maker. Stringent laws, in the aftermath of 9/11, have further increased the power of the president. Since the only mechanism for checking the autocratic president remains the Congress, this body should assert its power and circumscribe the arbitrary aggression of present and future American presidents. Only then can the world be saved.

Marxists have long argued about American imperialism. But, in contrast to Marxist assumptions, Vandiver sees no connection between political expansion and economic imperialism. Rather than American big business, it has been the political and military elite, which has been calling the shots. Also, Vandiver, unlike Marxists, does not believe military expenditure to be economically unproductive.

Vandiver’s argument, on the whole, is pessimistic and US-centric. The principal determinant of both global ruin and global survival remains America, since the only hope for change also rests with the American political elite. Surely it is a thin hope that banks on the US Congress for the survival of the ‘free world’?