Michael Mandelbaum - The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mandelbaum, Michael, author.

Title: The four ages of American foreign policy : weak power, great power,

superpower, hyperpower / [Michael Mandelbaum].

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022003360 (print) | LCCN 2022003361 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197621790 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197621813 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197621820

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesForeign relations.

Classification: LCC E183.7 .M287 2022 (print) | LCC E183.7 (ebook) |

DDC 327.73dc23/eng/20220217

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003360

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003361

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197621790.001.0001

To My Esteemed Classmates

Daniel B. Badger Jr.

Michael G. Berger

H. Neil Berkson

Merrill T. Boyce

James N. Gardner (19462021)

Andrew T. Hingson

Peter C. Kostant

James L. Kugel

Richard B. Stoner Jr.

Robert A. Stults

James R. Vivian

Steven R. Weisman

Jack M. Weiss III

Mark L. Wolf

Yale College, 1968;

and to my esteemed wife, Anne Mandelbaum, Yale MA, 1968

There are three reasons for the existence of The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy. First, it offers a fresh perspective on the history it covers. The discipline of history is, as the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl aptly put it, an argument without end. The book that follows is intended to contribute to that ongoing argument. Second, this book takes the story further than other volumesbecause of when they were writtenwere able to do: up to the year 2015.

Third, and most important, The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy offers readers a new framework for understanding the history of the foreign policy of the United States. It divides that history into four distinct periodsfour agesdefined by the consistent increase in the power the country has had at its disposal in its relations with others. In addition, it records three striking continuities in the 250 years it covers, in the goals and the instruments of American foreign policy, and in the way that policy was adopted and implemented.

Although every work of history identifies both continuities and changes in the period with which it deals, it is in the selection of continuities and changes in the history of American foreign policy that it specifies as the most significant ones that The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy differs from previous accounts.

The present work portrays the United States, in its ascent, first as a weak power, then as a great power, next as a superpower, and, ultimately, as the worlds sole hyperpower. The three distinctly American features of that foreign policy are its ideological goals, the use of economic instruments in pursuit of them, and a democratic process for formulating and implementing decisions about it. These are the distinguishing features of the foreign policy in the quarter millennium between 1765 and 2015.

i am grateful to Nicholas X. Rizopoulos and Paul M. Kennedy for helpful conversations about World War I and World War II, respectively.

I owe thanks to Starr Lee and to the staff of the Mason Library of The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies for research assistance and to Michael Frimpong for technical assistance.

I am indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press, who provided useful comments on the manuscript.

I profited greatly from reading the volumes in the Oxford History of the United States series, originally edited by C. Vann Woodward and now by David M. Kennedy. They are, collectively, a splendid monument to historical scholarship.

It has been a pleasure to work again with David McBride of Oxford University Press.

My greatest debt, as always, is to my wife, Anne Mandelbaum, for her peerless editing, her keen wit, her wise counsel, the joy of her companionship, and the constancy of her love.

the theme that unites the foreign policy of the United States of America during the 250 years between 1765 and 2015 may be simply stated: expansion and ascent. Over the course of those two and one-half centuries the American republic rose in the ranks of independent countries from an obscure, unimportant collection of small European settlements scattered along the eastern seaboard of North America to a continent-spanning colossus with a global presence that towered over all other sovereign states. It achieved this status through the expansion of its power; of its wealth, which is the foundation of power; and of its influence, which is the shadow that power casts.