Smith - Americas mission: the United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy

PRINCETON STUDIES IN
INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

G. John Ikenberry,
Thomas J. Christensen,
and Marc Trachtenberg
Series Editors

R ECENT T ITLES

Americas Mission: The United States and the Worldwide
Struggle for Democracy by Tony Smith

Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the
American World Order by G. John Ikenberry

Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of a
Coercive Diplomacy in Asia by Thomas J. Christensen

Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American
Statecraft by Peter Trabowitz

The Clash of ldeas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States,
and Regime Change, 15102010 by John M. Owen IV

How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of
Stable Peace by Charles A. Kupchan

1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe
by Mary Elise Sarotte

The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict,
Dynastic Empires, and International Change by Daniel H. Nexon

Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict
in Chinas Territorial Disputes by M. Taylor Fravel

The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World
by Lorenz M. Luthi

Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the
Middle East by Etel Solingen

Social States: China in International Institutions,
19802000 by Alastair Iain Johnston

Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the
Road to War by Jonathan Kirshner

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance
of Power by Randall L. Schweller

The Century Foundation conducts timely research and analyses of national economic and social policy and international affairs. Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can best be sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power. With offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., The Century Foundation is nonprofit and nonpartisan and was founded in 1919 by Edward A. Filene.

B OARD OF T RUSTEES

Bradley Abelow

H. Brandt Ayers

Alan Brinkley, Chairman

Joseph A. Califano, Jr.

Alexander Morgan Capron

Hodding Carter III

Edward E. David, Jr.

Brewster C. Denny

Charles V. Hamilton

Melissa Harris-Perry

Matina S. Horner

Lewis B. Kaden

Alicia H. Munnell

Janice Nittoli

P. Michael Pitfield

John Podesta

Richard Ravitch

Alan Sagner

Harvey I. Sloane, M.D.

Kathleen M. Sullivan

Shirley Williams

William Julius Wilson

Janice Nittoli, President

Copyright 1994 by The Twentieth Century Fund, Inc.

Foreword to the 2012 edition, preface to the 2012 edition, chapters 12 and 13, and epilogue copyright 2012 by The Century Foundation, Inc.

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

Woodstock, Oxfordshire 0X20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

First printing, 1994

Second printing, and first paperback printing, 1995

Expanded edition, 2012

Library of Congress Control Number 2011939053

ISBN 978-0-691-15492-3

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Times Roman

Printed on acid-free paper,

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my students and colleagues at Tufts University

y para mi compaero Jose David Ovalle

O, for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

So great an object. Can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

Oh, pardon! Since a crooked figure may

Attest in little place a million,

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,

On your imaginary forces work.

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.

Pierce out our imperfections with your thoughts.

Into a thousand parts divide one man,

And make imaginary puissance.

Think when we talk of horse that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs i the receiving earth.

For tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

Carry them here and there, jumping oer times,

Turning the accomplishment of many years

Into an hourglass. For the which supply,

Admit me Chorus to this history,

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Shakespeare, Prologue, Henry V

C HAPTER O NE
The United States and the Global Struggle for Democracy

C HAPTER T WO
Democracy in the Philippines

C HAPTER T HREE
Wilson and Democracy in Latin America

C HAPTER F OUR
Wilson and a World Safe for Democracy

C HAPTER F IVE
FDR and World Order: Globalizing the Monroe Doctrine

C HAPTER S IX
Democratizing Japan and Germany

C HAPTER S EVEN
Eisenhower and His Legacy, 19531977

C HAPTER E IGHT
Kennedys Alliance for Progress, 19611965

C HAPTER N INE
Carters Human Rights Campaign

C HAPTER T EN
Reagans Democratic Revolution

C HAPTER E LEVEN
After the Cold War: Wilsonianism Resurgent?

C HAPTER T WELVE
From Fortunate Vagueness to Democratic Globalism, 19892008

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN
Liberal Internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama

E PILOGUE
The Irony of American Liberal Internationalism

A PPENDIX
Notes on the Study of the International Origins of Democracy

W HEN THE FIRST edition of this book was published, American foreign policy was experiencing one of its most triumphal moments: the recent collapse of the Soviet Union had apparently left the way clear for a new era of liberal internationalism. Not since the end of World War II nearly fifty years earlier had the nation had such an opportunity to pursue one of its major foreign policy priorities: to make the world safe for democracy, in Woodrow Wilsons words.

For nearly twenty years, the first edition of Americas Mission has been a go-to book for students who wanted to understand how the thread of democracy promotion had been woven into the fabric of American foreign policy over the past century, and how those efforts had fared. Much has changed since the publication of the first edition, however. The list of countries organizing their political lives democratically has grown substantially. The fall of the Soviet Union continues to have aftershocks, with color revolutions occurring in Serbia and Montenegro, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. At times, the United States has moved aggressively to help ensure democracys future, as in its forceful intervention in Haiti. And while the efforts to implant democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq have had markedly mixed results, we have seen the Arab Spring usher in a wave of popular uprisings that already point to at least somewhat more democratic futures for Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, with outcomes in greater doubt in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen.