America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After

This is a well-research, well-argued and still-relevant book. As other reviewers have noted, the author adopts an explicit neo-Marxist (or World-systems) perspective. Based on this, two reviewers have summarily dismissed the author's argument as "clap trap" or "mumbo-jumbo." Yet, not surprisingly, they offer nothing of substance to support their views. They do not show exactly how and why the author's position is wrong. It's an ad hominem attack par exellence. The author, by contrast, provides plenty of support, backed by a coherent framework of analysis. Not everyone will agree, of course, but that is the nature of the academic enterprise. Still, it is undeniable that economic interests--and specifically, the interests of the most powerful economic actors--underlie much of what the United States has done in the world. The "domino theory" provides a perfect example. Consider what President Eisenhower had to say on this subject (in 1954): "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. Now, with respect to the first one, two of the items from this particular area that the world uses are tin and tungsten. They are very important. There are others, of course, the rubber plantations and so on. Then with respect to more people passing under this domination, Asia, after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the Communist dictatorship, and we simply can't afford greater losses. But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people. Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand. It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go-that is, toward the Communist areas in order to live. So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world." Needless to say, the domino theory informed American foreign policy in a profound way during the entire cold war. And it is clear from the quote above that American political leaders framed the domino principle in primarily economic terms. In the most simple sense, this is one of the key points that McCormick makes in his book. Any reader with an open mind, any reader who wants to achieve a better, more comprehensive understanding of US foreign policy, therefore, will have somethi

As noted by other reviewers, this book is framed around a Wallersteinian model of core and periphery. However, that is no reason to deride its excellent content. I have read numereous other great volumes on American Foreign Policy (it was my undergraduate specialization); however, this book does a nice job of putting together the intricacies of America's forey into a bigger world. The only criticsm I can offer is that it is a sweeping look at 50 years of colorful history, and thus leaves ot some details important to serious scholars of USFP. However, if you are unknowledgeable about the subject and want to know how the current war in Iraq fits into the US overarching scheme for a liberal capitalist world give this book a spin. I couldn't put it down.

Readers not fully abreast of contemporary debates in the study of U.S. history may be somewhat shocked by the central theme of Thomas J. McCormick's America's Half-Century. According to McCormick the Cold War was not something foisted on a reluctant American leadership by Soviet belligerence and intransigence. Rather, the Cold War was itself part of a larger "hegemonic project" -- a projection of U.S. power whose goals were nothing short of world domination. Most of the great and terrible milestones of Cold War history find their origin, McCormick tells us, in the logic of this U.S. pursuit of world hegemony or in the reactions of other peoples to that hegemonic quest. To be sure, America's foreign policy elite did not so baldly think or speak in terms of world domination. Their self-described goals were peace and prosperity, but peace and prosperity achieved through the economic integration of the greater part of the world on the terms and in the manner that U.S. policy-makers prescribed. Third World nations, in particular, resisted this economic integration. Their role, as McCormick outlines it, was to be the same as the role they had played in the old colonial division of labor -- suppliers of food, fuel and raw materials for the capitalist core nations. "Hewers of wood, carriers of water," this role assigned Third World nations was an indispensable underpinning to the U.S.- designed system as a whole. Especially in the early post-war years, Europe's and Japan's ability to sustain trade relations with the U.S. was dependent upon their ability to access the resources and markets of Third World nations. Shut off access to those resources and markets and Europe and Japan -- the US's main trading partners -- would fall; if Europe and Japan fell, capitalism could not be sustained in the U.S. This, McCormick tells us, was how U.S. policy makers understood the three-way relation between the U.S., Europe and Japan, and the Third World. An original draft to the Truman Doctrine speech put it boldly: "If, by default, we permit free enterprise to disappear in other countries of the world, the very existence of democracy will be gravely threatened." Hence, as McCormick describes it, the critical role of Third World nations in sustaining the European and Japanese economies. Consequently, what drove U.S. policy in relation to Vietnam, for example, was not fear of communism, but fear of nationalist revolution in South East Asia. South East Asia -- Indochina, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, all in varying degrees of upheaval following the Second World War -- were to be Japan's principal market and source of raw materials in the U.S. designed world order. Both Secretaries of State Acheson and Dulles, McCormick tells us, rejected as irrelevant discussions of whether Ho Chi Minh was an "Asian Tito," or a Russian or Chinese dupe. The whole thrust of Ho's program "was to withdraw his nation ... from the [U.S.-designed] world-s

This is one of the best books available tracing the political and economic history of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II. I use it on a regular basis in my American Foreign Policy course and students enjoy McCormick's clarity and provocative insights,as he does a masterful job in linking economic and political power in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy.