From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776

Herring carefully examines this unfolding story from the imperial impulse marked by the Spanish-American War in 1898 to the articulation of Wilsonian principles during World War I (Woodrow Wilson believed deeply in America’s special mission) on through the great transformation brought about by World War II.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US would never again hesitate to become energetically involved in world politics.

If Franklin Roosevelt moved cautiously toward war before Dec. 7, 1941, his successor showed little reluctance to pursue an activist foreign policy that claimed virtually every corner of the earth as vital to the security of the US.

Whether confronting developments in Iran, Greece, Turkey, or Korea, Harry Truman expanded the notion of American interests dramatically and his foreign policy marked a fundamental break from what had come before.

Although even in its earliest days America was never isolated from the world, Herring points out that in the late 1940s, with the start of the cold war, the US assumed the mantle of global leadership.

Consumed by a pathological and, Herring believes, exaggerated fear of communism, America shed whatever tendency it once had for keeping the world at arm’s length.

The end of the cold war
In an incisive chapter on the conclusion of the cold war, Herring rejects the claim that Reagan was responsible for winning the conflict that had distorted world politics for nearly five decades. Reagan played an “important role” in ending the struggle, Herring notes, but Mikhail Gorbachev, the “remarkable” Soviet leader, took the “dramatic steps” necessary to conclude the global competition.

In 1862, amid a grave domestic crisis, a president from Illinois told the American people that it was necessary to “think anew, and act anew.”

As another man from Illinois prepares to become president and ponders how best to engage the world in the 21st century, he would do well to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln.

Jonathan Rosenberg teaches US history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

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