American Decline and the Great Debate: A Historical Perspective

AMERICAN DECLINE. AND THE GREAT DEBATE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE1 Michael H. Hunt T,hat U.S. foreign policy is now very much in transition is a point widely accepted today. The era of Cold War rivalry is sinking like a fading sunset on one horizon, while a more benign international order is eagerly expected to dawn on the other. Harbingers of change abound. Long rigid political, economic, and ideological structures creak and crack, while new centers of power pose ever bolder challenges to the predominance of the Cold War giants. This transition naturally generates its own excitement and fascination but also a fair degree of perplexity about the role the United States should play and the national security objectives the United States should follow in this rapidly changing world. Questions about the future are as urgent as they are difficult to answer. On them depend not only today's hard budget decisions but the basic calculus for future policy makers. In this transitional period opinions about the future are diverse. Some observers worry over the decline of the country's international economic 1. I owe thanks to Richard Ulin at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill and to Jim Lobe at the University of Washington for the opportunity to try out before a general audience the ideas on which this paper is based. Paula Hunt, Mark S. Mahaney, and O. Arne Westad gave me the benefit of their criticisms. Michael H. Hunt is professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author ofIdeology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), and has written extensively on the history of Sino-American relations. 27 28 SAISREVIEW competitiveness, with all its ramifications for national security. Others question the wisdom of inherited commitments abroad or argue for a radically revised notion of international security. And still others warn against an excessive optimism about the future and an exaggerated notion of global change. At a time when Americans need to make choices for the future from a more than usually full range ofpossibilities, the historical record would seem an obvious and important point of reference—a helpmate to which policy makers and the informed public might well turn. Unfortunately, an examination ofthose engaged in the debate over American decline and future policy reveals the names of few historians of American foreign policy. Accordingly, the picture of the past invoked by the participants is all too often simplistic or dated. The uses made of George Washington's Farewell Address, nineteenth-century "isolationism," and the waywardness ofpublic opinion in this century (to take but three commonly invoked subjects) are generally off-handed and betray a lack of familiarity with a new generation of historical scholarship.2 The fault for this historically impoverished discourse over current policy lies in part with those historians who are reluctant to step outside their lecture halls and specialized monographs and offer some perspective on current policy options. The fault also lies with those officials absorbed in day-to-day policy and with academics and journalists preoccupied with commenting on that policy. While all three groups have much to gain by adding a historical perspective to their armory ofanalytic tools, they seem disinclined to give historical studies the systematic and thoughtful attention they deserve. Perhaps they have simply had difficulty deciding which aspects ofthe literature are germane and whether time invested in historical study will be repaid in fresh insights. Admittedly, the search for such insights can be frustrating. Historians cannot always provide decisive answers to important questions and do not always agree because the evidence on which they rely is often insufficient or ambiguous. But in what discipline is the search for truth easy and the results beyond challenge? From my perspective as a historian of American foreign relations, I see two important points that should be injected into the current discussion over the future of this country in world affairs. First, the 2. Paul Kennedy leaps to mind as a notable exception. But it should be kept in mind that he is a specialist in European international relations and was, in any case, constrained in his treatment of...