Bevin Alexander - How America Got It Right: The U. S. March to Military and Political Supremacy

OTHER BOOKS BY B EVIN A LEXANDER

How Wars Are Won:
The 13 Rules of WarFrom Ancient Greece to the War on Terror

How Hitler Could Have Won World War II:
The Fatal Errors That Led to Nazi Defeat

Korea:
The First War We Lost

The Strange Connection:
U.S. Intervention in China, 19441972

Lost Victories:
The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson

How Great Generals Win

The Future of Warfare

Robert E. Lees Civil War

Copyright 2005 by Bevin Alexander

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Forum and the Crown Forum colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alexander, Bevin.
How America got it right : the U.S. march to military and political supremacy / Bevin Alexander.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. United StatesForeign relations. 2. United StatesMilitary policy. 3. United StatesTerritorial expansion. 4. National characteristics, American. I. Title.
E183.7.A44 2005 327.73009dc22 2005003662
eISBN: 978-0-307-23838-2

v3.1

In loving memory of Peggy Bailey Alexander (19282004),
who shared a boundless love for our three sons,
and who never ceased from mental fight
to build a better world

T he easiest way to get a handle on the worldview of Americans is to realize that we think of ourselves as inhabiting an island. We saw in our earliest days that the Western Hemisphere sat isolated in the midst of two vast oceans, and that these oceans both separated us from the rest of the world and protected us from the rest of the world.

We have consistently sought not to share this island with competing world powers. Americans have been resolute to prevent in the Western Hemisphere a replication of the eternally warring and competing great powers of Europe.

The concept of America as an island explains virtually all of American history. It explains why we turned our back on Europe for the first century and a quarter of our independence in order to conquer and populate the most important and favored part of this island, and to eliminate any threat to it from the north or the south. It explains whyalthough weak, newly independent, and lightly populatedwe laid out the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to close off colonization or interference in the Western Hemisphere, thereby preventing any world power from challenging us on our island. It explains why, at times when we were disillusioned with or distrustful of Europe, we isolated ourselves behind our oceanic moatas we did after World War I when, in despair at Europes greed and bickering, we refused to join the League of Nations, and as we did briefly in 1940 when France fell and we feared Britain was going to fall to Nazi Germany. It explains why, after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, we developed overwhelming military power and, over the following years, went across our oceans and methodically destroyed the enemies threatening our island. It explains why we were willing to risk nuclear war in 1962 when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba and jeopardized not only the United States but also the safety of the hemisphere. It also explains why, after suffering a direct attack on our island on September 11, 2001, we are today repeating the process of World War II, going wherever we have to in the world to destroy those who threaten our island.

The steadfast resolve to protect our island lies at the heart of all our dreams and aspirations as a people and defines everything the United States has been, is, and hopes to be.

We saw early in our colonial history thatbecause of our isolation from Europe, and because of the immense wealth and bounty of our landwe had the opportunity to build the greatest, freest, and most prosperous nation ever to arise on earth. We spent the first century and a quarter of our independent existence in creating this great nation. But to protect this treasure, we found that we needed to establish the worlds paramount military structure and become the worlds preeminent political power. This book is the story of Americas march to economic, military, and political supremacy, and the ideals that have guided us along the way.

As will be seen, we have made the right decisions in the vast majority of cases throughout our history, choosing democracy over plutocracy, equality over privilege, liberty over oppression, and the prosperity of the many over the greed of the few.

We have not always been consistent. For a while early in our history we listened to Alexander Hamilton, who tried to sacrifice the interests of ordinary people to the avarice of the wealthy.We have made other mistakes. But our lapses have been infrequent, and our intentions have almost always been good.

This inclination to do right has been virtually unique among the nations of the world, and for this reason we have been often misunderstood. How could a country so rich and successful be so unselfish and caring? We must have darker motives, critics say. We must be seeking to create an empire, to dominate everyone else, to grab the oil or the trade or whatever else for our own selfish purposes. People from more grasping, less-idealistic societies find it impossible to accept that we honestly believe that giving everyone opportunity is the recipe for abundance and happiness everywhere, not merely in the favored reaches of the United States of America. We honestly believe that securing other peoples freedom is the best guarantee that we can keep our own. We do not want to dominate the world. We want to live our lives in peace, and we hope other peoples will do the same. We go out into the world to redress errors, to stop unacceptable behavior, to challenge threats to our island and our liberty. When we have settled the problem, we want to go home, not stay and build an empire.

From the outset of our history, Americans have focused on creating a great nation in North America, not on conquering other peoples. For more than a century after the Revolution, Americans were preoccupied with establishing the economic and political foundations of this nation. During the entire period we took advantage of the fact that we were largely insulated by a great ocean from the quarreling, avaricious societies of Europe. The British Royal Navy, more to protect Canada and its trade with Latin America than to guard the United States, largely kept other navies at a distance. We saw no need to interfere with European empires, so long as they stayed away from our hemisphere. Therefore, the United States played only a minor role on the world stage, anddespite establishing splendid records in wars on land and seacreated no world-class navy and allowed its army to atrophy after every conflict.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Americans realized that the protection we enjoyed behind the Atlantic and the Pacific could not endure. An American strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, proved in his 1890 work, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, that there can be no partial control of the sea because the sea is indivisible. A superior fleet can move over the whole sea, sweeping all lesser navies from it. This was the means by which the Royal Navy had dominated the oceans for the previous two and a half centuries, and the reason why Britain had been able to accumulate the largest empire in the history of the world.