Spanish American War, Until the Current Conflict

¶ … Spanish American War, until the current conflict in the Middle East, why does the United States move from relative isolation into an international role At the time of the Spanish American War the United States went from relative isolation to increased global involvement because of the need to develop new markets for its products (and, at the end of the Second World War, to protect its largest foreign consumer market, the European market), because of the need to protect U.S.

interests in the international arena, and to protect U.S. values, such as free market and fundamental human rights, in a global context. The consequences of this increased global involvement on American society were greater exposure to international things and, as a consequence, greater interest in what went on in the world. A second consequence of greater involvement was that the American society was forced to change or to adapt because of this exposure.

Perhaps at no moment was the need to protect markets more obvious than by the creation of the Marshall Plan, at the initiative of then U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall.

The Marshall Plan recognized the strong and intricate economic relations between the United States and the European countries and committed an important amount of funds in order to support the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War There are at least three arguments that can be brought forth in support of the Marshall Plan and the first one, of an economic and commercial nature, comes to defend the thesis that one of the causes of U.S. involvement in the world was to protect markets.

The European countries had been devastated by the war. The economies had been mostly destroyed, in many of the important economic powerhouses such as Germany or France, which resulted in high unemployment and decreasing purchasing powers for the citizens. The United States would thus lose the most important of its foreign markets, because the American products would see a decreasing demand on this market, due to the economic conditions.

The aid from the Marshall Plan comes to help rebuild these economies, to make them resume consumption and become viable target markets once again. The Marshall Plan also has an ideological motivation. The alternative to the American capitalism is the Soviet Communism. At the end of the Second World War, given the overall conditions in Europe, this appears as a plausible alternative. In countries such as Italy and France, Communist parties, with Soviet backing, win an important number of votes in national elections.

Unless support is given, many of these people, in a terrible economic situation, will tend to migrate towards the Soviet Union, something very dangerous from a geopolitical perspective. Finally, beyond protecting its markets, the Marshall Plan also has an ethical component. People in Europe suffered tremendously during the Second World War, while for the U.S., other than the human loss in battle, the Second World War was a profitable enterprise, with the economy restarting after a decade of slow economic growth following the Depression.

From an ethical perspective, helping the Europeans rebuild their countries became a requirement. An increased global involvement of the U.S. also came from the need to protect U.S. interests in the international arena. Before the end of the 19th century, one can note a particular regionalism in the world. The European countries were mostly involved in fighting wars on the continent. These had no immediate impact on the U.S. At that time, since the U.S. continued its policy of isolationism.

With the 19th century, European countries, as well as Japan, start to look outwards, for markets and resources. An accelerated period of colonialism and imperialism begins and the U.S. interests begin to be more and more affected, because there is a direct competition for markets and resources to which the U.S. needs to participate. The U.S.

society is a capitalist society and, as Lenin argued in his writing, the export of capital is both a characteristic of the latest stage of capitalism and a cause of imperialism and colonialism So, becoming a colonial power should not be interpreted as something that the U.S. had to do because other countries were doing it, but because increased global competition affected its interests.

This translated in a competition over markets and resources and this was clearly emphasized, for example, by President William McKinley as a justification for annexing the Philippines after the U.S.-Spanish war. President McKinley argues that the U.S. "could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable". This competition is understood by the U.S. In terms of economic and commercial opportunities that the U.S. needs to ensure before other countries do.

During the Second World War, the primary reason why the U.S. enters the war is because its interests are directly attacked. Beyond the actual attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. cannot see with good eyes Germany taking over much of Europe or the increased influence, to the point of occupation, that both Italy and Germany have in Northern Africa. The explicit danger is for Italy and Germany to dominate Europe and Africa and Japan to dominate Asia and the Pacific.

In order to counter these strategic threats, the U.S. has no choice than to become involved, even if obtaining the approval of Congress is not necessarily an easy undertaking. It takes more than two years following the beginning of the war in Europe before Roosevelt declares the United States to be a combatant. However, it is interesting to see how strategic interests again determine how the U.S.

involvement manifests itself: the Allies agree that victory in Europe will be sought first, before defeating Japan in the Far East, as it was more strategically important to do so. At the end of the Second World War, U.S. interests in the world are under threat from the Soviet Union, which is why its involvement in international affairs continues. There are several aspects to be discussed here. First of all, the U.S. has won the Second World War in an undisputable manner.

The war has left things change forever and the U.S., as one of the Superpowers, cannot simply pull back and leave everything in a vacuum-like environment. Second and perhaps more importantly, the Second World War has confirmed the Soviet Union's statute as one of the two Superpowers. Disengaging on the part of the U.S. would mean leaving the Soviet Union to take over spheres of interest and influence.

To better understand this threat, it is important to better understand Soviet ideology, as it is explained in George Kennan's long telegram, one of the fundamental documents that created U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union. According to Kennan, one of the basic features of Soviet outlook at the end of the Second World War is that the Soviet authorities believed that "USSR still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence".

The Soviet Union believes in the existence of two worlds, capitalist and socialist, which will eventually come into conflict. Kennan makes five recommendations and the fourth one is useful in understanding how he proposes the U.S. involvement to be in the relationship with the Soviet Union. In his opinion, U.S. involvement should offer security in Europe and "guidance rather than responsibilities". So, these should be, in his opinion, the general coordinates of U.S. involvement abroad in a post-war context.

Kennan builds on many of these ideas in his work "The Sources of Soviet Conduct". Through a thorough analysis of the Soviet society, Kennan concludes that the U.S. And Soviet societies are entirely different and that the Soviets believe themselves to be in a state of perpetual conflict with capitalist states, thus leading to conflicting interests between the U.S. And the Soviet Union.

Kennan's initial telegram and his subsequent writings on the topic are also useful to see one of the impacts on the American society during that time. He specifies that success "depends on health and vigor of our own society" , showing that one of his proposals is that the U.S. society consistently and continuously develops and improves in order to rival the Soviet alternative. This proposal shows that one of the consequences of increased involvement was that the U.S. society competed with other societies.

In order to remain competitive, it had to present a viable model, one that could rival alternative options. It would oppose the socialist society in the Soviet Union with its own values and its own qualities. For example, hospital care may not have been free in the U.S., but the people were, as compared to how things were in the Soviet Union. The continuous struggle with the Soviet Union dominates the American foreign policy over the second half of the 20th century. In many situations, the U.S.

becomes involved in conflicts throughout the world only out of a strategic objective to keep the Soviet Union contained, namely to defend other states from falling in the Soviet sphere of influence. The policy of containment was defined through the Truman Doctrine, in which he argues, before Congress, of the necessity to support Greece and Turkey, countries that would otherwise fall under Soviet influence. During Truman's presidency, this doctrine involved supporting neighboring countries around the Soviet Union, so that Communism would not spread beyond.

Other than Turkey and Greece, Iran was, at one point, a part of this strategy. Even if the policy of containment was no longer as active during that time, having been replaced with the policy of mutually assured destruction, the Vietnam War is another example of U.S. intervention so that its interests are protected abroad. The obvious risk of the Vietnam War would have been that North and South Vietnam would unite into one Communist state, something that the U.S.

had been able to prevent in Korea, but which would eventually happen in Vietnam. One of the immediate consequences reflected in the American society's need to change and adapt because of the Vietnam War. The result of the Vietnam War was that young people were drafted into the army and, as a consequence, protests and demonstrations took place against the war, giving birth to a generation of anti-war activists.

The words used were often strong and impetuous, such as naming the war "unconstitutional and illegal" and outraging "the deepest moral and religious sense." People asked for the government to be criminally prosecuted and a petition was edited to that effect, which showed how strongly the population opposed the war. The movement was much more complex and it was a transformational period of the American society, a direct consequence of the war in Vietnam.

The movement was not only an anti-war movement, but a movement against establishment, against the conservative society that the people who had fought in the Second World War had created. It was a movement of the young generation against the old generation, particularly since so many societal aspects were tied to the Vietnam War, including music, literature, art etc. all these cultural elements became part of an antiwar and anti-establishment movement.

Another reason why the United States became more and more involved in international affairs was to protect the values it believed in. In the beginning of the 20th century, for example, one of these values included conflict mitigation and solving disputes between countries, working for "the ideals of peace" , a general and generous concept. The U.S.

is particularly active during this period of time in Latin America, as President Taft shows in his work "Dollar Diplomacy." This focus on defending human rights and democracy values became more and more obvious in the last decades, as a motivation for U.S. interventions abroad. As recent as the war in Iraq, human rights were used as the reason why American troops attacked.

Certainly, there were other reasons in the consolidated case, including the existence of chemical weapons, but the propaganda also included a significant amount of discussion about why intervention is necessary to protect the Iraqi people from its ruler. The forms of U.S. intervention and involvement based on the need to promote democracy and defend human rights have become more subtle and refined in the last years.

American NGOs, financed with governmental funds, have often taken over the role of defending the American values abroad, as well as of promoting American interests. While some powers accuse that the role of these NGOs is to overthrow governments and create structures that are friendly to U.S. authorities, the truth that can be argued with facts is that these organizations want to promote and defend models that are similar to the American one, based on the defense of democratic value and of market economies.

In attempting to resume the discussion on the primary reasons why the U.S. moved from a policy of isolationism to one of active involvement in global affairs, a very general answer would be that this was done in order to protect its interests. However, through a more minute analysis, this paper identified three categories of interests. Some of these were.