Brian Behnken

Whether it happened implicitly or explicitly, much of the United States’ foreign policy has revolved around an Americanization of outside cultures. Questions of “the other” never played a particularly important role in the affairs of state. The other was anyone outside our own borders (although often the other could be seen internally in blacks, Indians, and immigrants), as close as Mexico and as far away as China. They were anyone different, and difference synonymously meant inferior and therefore moldable. After the U.S. expanded to the full width of its North American border in the mid 1800s, people began to realize that foreign markets could generate massive wealth. These foreign markets often opposed U.S. involvement. Societies in South America or Asia were inherently different and did not have the same values and beliefs as Americans. How then does one convince them to accept our practices? It was done by Americanizing these outside countries.

When one thinks back over the extent of U.S. diplomatic history, going as far back as the 1880s, certain trends become apparent. Diplomatic action was summed up based on the needs of the U.S. Therefore, policies such as the Monroe Doctrine, Open Door Notes, Platt Amendment, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, or NSC-68 all had a pro-American focus. This focus allowed the U.S. to see other countries as basically mercantilist entities. While not necessarily colonizing these countries, the U.S. would use them as a source for raw materials and as a market for finished goods. Through this exchange the U.S. would not only benefit, but so too would the foreign nation as it adopted American cultural and economic ideals. This adoption was Americanization in its basest form.

Perhaps William Appleman Williams summed these ideas up best in the title of his 1959 book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Conclusively showing the U.S. need for foreign markets, Williams asserts that Woodrow Wilson was the prototypical Americanist president. This seems obvious. Wilson’s goals for the world, both shortly before and after World War I, mark him as a man with a consistent liberal and conservative viewpoint. The U.S. had become the world power and therefore had the right to decide how other countries should behave. He wanted to essentially Americanize the world after The Great War. But political intentions towards Americanization go back far before the time of Wilson. Walter LaFeber in The New Empire makes it clear that the U.S. desired what he called a pan-Americanism that expanded outside of the continental United States. “This consensus (of thought regarding expansion) resulted from the depression which struck the United States from 1893 to 1897. During these years concise and conscious economic analysis by the Cleveland administration, the business community, and leading congressional figures led these three groups to conclude that foreign markets were necessary for the prosperity and tranquility of the United States.”(p.150) This is the first step towards Americanization.

Lester Langley in The Banana Men (an inept book accept for what it tells us about Americanization) agrees with LaFeber and shows U.S. involvement in Central America. Langley makes it clear that little about Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala was sacred to American investors and businesses. These were countries to exploit for the benefit of America and its people, and they demanded American control. Thomas McCormick in China Market examines the effects of U.S. expansion in this time period as they relate to China and the Pacific islands. U.S. Policy in these areas was remarkably similar to the goals as seen in Latin America. McCormick explains the fundamental transforming effect U.S corporations had in these countries and shows how Americanization took place.

Tom O’Brien’s book, The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America, pays special attention to transformational effects in South and Central America. O’Brien examines the basics of Americanization in Latin America that began in the early twentieth century. He sees the U.S. efforts as aimed at transforming Latin America into a small scale United States. “Mining and agricultural enterprises sought to transform peasants into industrial wage workers and instill in them the values of competitiveness, individualism, and promptness essential in the modern workplace.”(p.vii) O’Brien remarks that U.S. efforts were systematic in their attempts to transform Latin America from a land of migrant peasants to a land of wage laborers. These laborers would work as American laborers would, earning a living by working in factories, mines, or on farms, and in return they would use their wages to buy products either produced by Americans or produced by Latin Americans for the profit of U.S. corporations. O’Brien’s work shows the truly pervasive nature of U.S. business activities in Latin America.

Where O’Brien shows corporate activity, John Hart's Revolutionary Mexico chronicles not only the Mexican Revolution but more importantly the willingness of the U.S. military to intervene in a foreign country’s affairs in order to protect corporate interests. Part of the most extraordinary work done by Hart was exploring the role U.S. politicians with economic ties to Mexico and how these politicians used their places of power within the U.S. government to influence the revolution. The Mexican Revolution definitely shows a trend of how the U.S. increasingly became involved in foreign country’s affairs if these countries did not follow the American path…in other words, if they deviated from the concepts of Americanization.

War often leads to change and N. Gordon Levin’s Woodrow Wilson and World Politics demonstrates just how not only the U.S. was changed by WWI but also how other countries were altered. Levin asserts, like William Appleman Williams, that Wilson sought to mold the post-war world in his own image. This image would conform to a strictly American viewpoint and only those nations, this time mainly in Europe, willing to adopt American ideals would benefit from U.S. aid after the war. Levin makes it clear that the U.S. transformation into the world's largest creditor nation benefited this country and altered others. With money came special considerations that ensured the debtor nations would remain friendly to a U.S. brand of capitalism. Gabriel Kolko in Century of War looks at this same relation from a different standpoint. Kolko sees a rise in communist and socialist organizations after the war. He concludes that U.S. aid was not only aimed at making countries similar to the U.S. but also to destroy radical factions in many European countries. These socialist factions posed a direct threat to, and in essence they were the exact opposite of, American capitalism. Special circumstances were needed when handing out aid not only to ensure American ideals but to thwart anti-American socialist activity.

Kolko remarks that the same thing happens after World War II. William Roger Lewis in Imperialism at Bay goes beyond Kolko and asserts that the U.S. and England conspired during the war to decide exactly how colonies and European territories should be disposed of. This, of course, would require that they were disposed of in such a way that they followed the U.S. model. The British were opposed to breaking up their empire, but the U.S. saw this as an opportunity to expand its own markets and thus further Americanize the world. The U.S. largely got what they wanted.

The Cold War saw perhaps the greatest involvement of U.S. forces in foreign countries for the promotion of Americanist agendas. Audrey and George Kahin in Subversion as Foreign Policy examine one of the first episodes of U.S. use of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Indonesia. Piero Gleijeses’ Shattered Hope demonstrated the willingness of the CIA to become involved in Guatemala. John Stockwell’s In Search of Enemies examines CIA involvement in Angola. All of these books chronicle the events and effects of the use of the CIA as a tool of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy. During the late 1940s to almost the present day covert operations in large part replaced normal diplomatic channels. Besides the CIA, the U.S. had also involved itself at this time in Korea. Why? The rhetoric of this time period describes a fear of spreading communism. The U.S. felt that if one nation fell to communist forces then a domino effect would be put into motion and numerous nations would fall. Not only did the U.S. seek to contain communism, they also needed to preserve markets. This was less the case with Korea and Vietnam, but most surely the case with Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Angola, the Congo, and other areas. The U.S. had largely succeeded in Americanizing many of these areas and they sought to maintain this grasp.

It is remarkable to realize that the U.S. government in many ways during the 1940s to the 1960s sought to reeducate its own people. In essence, Americans needed Americanization. The Cold War at Home by Philip Jenkins marks this trend out nicely. Labor struggles in Pennsylvania led the U.S. government to harass, investigate, and attempt to defraud many who led strikes and unions in order to advance the cause of workers. Gerald Horne in Black and Red shows how this repression affected African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and other black radical leaders were continually harassed and detained in order to curtail their supposedly detrimental activities. Whites and blacks alike were easily labeled as reds and in many ways neutralized. These individuals represented a threat to the established order and threatened the very fabric of America’s existence. This was the argument from not only Washington but from the business sector as well. Labor strife was a direct affront to Americanist ideas and needed to be stopped. The U.S. government and businesses simply wanted good patriots and consumers. Americans needed to set the example for Guatemalans or Nicaraguans by continuing to embrace consumerism and capitalism. If they did not then punishment could descend from local police, Congress, HUAC, and the like.

Part of the job of any student is to reevaluate their own beliefs and ideals, and alter them when the truth is before them. Some simply choose to look the other way. Others may embrace completely leftist ideals in order to challenge their own beliefs and the views of those around them. Some fall somewhere in the middle. What seems most apparent is that those that choose to ignore what they learn keep a closed mind and do themselves harm. By far, the New Left has guided future scholars toward a more open truth. We must question. We must be willing to change. Through a detailed reading of texts on U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy it becomes clear that there were few times when the U.S. actually needed to become involved in the affairs of foreign countries. The U.S. was not needed in Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Indonesia, or almost any of the other locations mentioned in this paper. Why then get involved? Was this country that distrustful of the ability of other countries to decide their own future? Was there too much at stake? Surely these questions can be answered in the negative. But in the minds of many Americans, unfortunately, these questions must be answered with a “yes.” The U.S. had spent the last one hundred years building influence and Americanizing foreign countries. Too many an Arbenz, Castro, Ho, or a Mossadegh were simply too much of a threat to the U.S. status quo. The loss of foreign markets was seen to be a catastrophic eventuality should it occur. Threats needed neutralizing for commerce and capitalism to continue. And the effects of Americanization are prominent and pervasive even today.