-shibusawa, ideology and culture proofs

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M H. Hunt begins Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy(1) by writing: Tis is alittle book about a big and slippery subject: the place o ideology in U.S. oreign policy. Itventures into a complicated realm where conceptual conusion ofen reigns.Te samecan be said o this little essay about ideology and culture during the cold war. Conusionofen reigns not only because the terms are amorphous concepts, but also becausescholars, including those within the same discipline, have dened ideology and cul-ture differently. Let us then clariy what we mean by culture; we must understand thisterm beore we dene ideology.

As James Cook and Lawrence Glickman note in their introduction to Te Culturalurn in U.S. History, even sel-identied historians o US culture do not adhere to thesame denition o culture.Among historians o American oreign relations, many usethe word culture primarily in the anthropological sense, as a peoples common set obelies, customs, values, and rituals.From this denition comes the general notion thatdifferent peoples have their own distinct culture and the more specic idea o nationalcultures whose members share a consciousness or mentalits about geography,belonging, history, and practices.Akira Iriyea pioneer in emphasizing culture instudying oreign relationsargues that i all nations can be seen as embodiments o sep-arate cultures, it is reasonable and proper to think o international relations [as] inter-

cultural relations. He points out that nations and peoples deal with each other not onlyin terms o political, strategic, or material interests, but also through their respectivecultures.

While recognizing the merits o this anthropologically inspired denition o culture,I ollow the denition o culture as a discursive system. Discourse here reers not simplyto speech or written communication, but broadly to the sets o signiying practicesthrough which people know and understand the world. Trough the circulation o ideas,people determine what they accept to be true and valid, or reject as alse and illegitimate.Considering culture as discourse allows us to better comprehend how power, culture,

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operated with an ideology. o them, ideology was a pejorative, synonymous withMarxism, a system o wrong, alse, distorted or otherwise misguided belies. Whatthey themselves believed, Americans labeled simply as common sense or the ruth.

Especially since the cold wars end, American students o US oreign relations havebegun to recognize that Americans are not immune to ideological thinking, that ideol-ogy shapes what passes or common sense. Scholars have come to understand ideologi-cal thinking as a characteristic o all peoples rather than an unortunate aw o enemies.With this insight, scholars such as Michael Latham have been able to dene moderni-zation as an ideology, ollowing Hunts denition o ideology as an interrelated set oconvictions or assumptions that reduces the complexity o a particular slice o reality toeasily comprehensible terms and suggests an appropriate way o dealing with thatreality.

Ideologies in this context are the varying and dynamic belies that enable the elite to

exercise control with the consent o the ruled through what Antonio Gramsci called cul-tural hegemony. By cultural hegemony Gramsci meant the everyday narratives and ideasthat make sociopolitical hierarchies and economic inequities appear natural and com-monsensical. Tese naturalized narratives are not static, and they do not represent aconspiracy by ruling elites to hoodwink the poor and disempowered. Instead, they aredeeply held belies shared by many within a society, regardless o socio-economic status.Tey ultimately benet the ruling elites, but the leaders themselves nd the ideologiescompelling because they cannot be beyond ideologies any more than they can bebeyond their own cultures.Dominant ideologies, then, are a subset o culture, or a dis-cursive system. Tis culture or discursive system shifs as a small number o counter-hegemonic narratives succeed in challenging the veracity and common sense odominant ideologies.

Space does not permit a wider discussion o this dynamism, and we will thereoreocus on hegemonic ideologies dened by cultural historian Susan Smulyan as the ideasthat serve the powerul and help them retain their power.I argue that we can under-stand the unction o hegemonic ideologies during the cold war most clearly by urtheranalyzing how the ideology o modernization determined who was ready or sel-rule.Rather than showing how modernization was applied to a variety o locales, I exploremodernizations intellectual antecedents and offer some concluding remarks about itscontinuities.Both David Ekbladh and Nils Gilman have suggested that modernizationwas a cold war variant o notions about development that predated and outlasted the

conict.What they point out has been echoed by both Akira Iriye and Prasenjit Duara,who suggest in this volume that the salient eatures o the cold war that are compelling tostudy today cannot be limited, indeed properly studied or understood, solely within theyears 145.

Tereore, this essay on culture and ideology during the cold war is inormed by apostcolonial perspective and examines the ongoing process o reproducing hegemonicknowledge. Te narratives that have shaped and buttress US policy derive rom a longergenealogy o western imperialism that continues today. My objective is to show hownotions o modernityespecially in rationalizing capability o sel-ruletook shape


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during the Enlightenment, inected cold war policies, and continue to do so in our con-temporary moment. I will emphasize continuities over time, but do so without the inten-tion o ignoring or denying historic specicity. Ideologies are neither monolithic norunchanging.At stake in highlighting the continuities is a better understanding o theintellectual scaffolding on which state powers built their comprehension o geopoliticsand strategies to achieve or maintain cultural, economic, and political, hegemonythatis, their ability to set the standards or rules which others must adhere to or resist. A vari-ety o ideologies regarding race, gender, and maturity were involved in this process, aswell as other narratives about revolution, political economy, and religion. I argue thatthe staying power o ideologies derives rom their personication into binary, anthropo-morphic gures. Tis is how an entire country could be depicted and acted upon as i itwere a singular, developing human being.

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I competing notions o modernity provided the ideological ramework or the cold war,we must discuss briey the origins o modernity. Since Christians in Europe duringthe fh century began using the term modern to distinguish their era rom those othe pagan, pre-Christian era, the concept has been used to differentiate the present timesrom the past. Te term modernity, however, dates to the late 1th and early 1th centu-ries and signies both a rupture with the past and expectations or the uture. Accordingto Jrgen Habermas, the project o modernity emerged with Enlightenment thinkersand their efforts to develop objective scientic methods o inquiry; to discern universaloundations in law and morality; and to oster autonomous art. Enlightenment think-ers believed that the accumulation o this knowledge, along with the rational organiza-tion o social relations and rational modes o thought, would liberate humans romarbitrary abuses o power, superstitions, and myths. Te project o modernity prom-ised that the arts and sciences would not merely promote the control o the orces onature, but also urther the understanding o sel and nature, the progress o morality,justice in social institutions, and even human happiness.In short, modernity unc-tioned as ideology since it provided prescription, as well as description.

Although the concept o modernity emerged during the late 1th and early 1th

centuries, the origins o what we recognize as the modern era came centuries earlier.Habermas, reerring to Hegel, posits that the modern era began with three monumen-tal events around the year 1500: (1) European contact with the western hemisphere, (2)the Renaissance, and (3) the Reormation.Tese three monumental events, moreo-ver, were not discrete but interrelated phenomena, as scholars today are increasinglybeginning to realize. For instance, Europeans developed the scientic method as theysought to understand, control, and extract resources rom their overseas colonies.Historian Antonio Barrera-Osorio has demonstrated that the absence o ora, auna,and other eatures o the New World in classical scientic texts encouraged Spanish


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colonials to innovate empiricist methods that became the basis o the scientic revolu-tion.Scholars o Spanish America, moreover, also predate the origins o a universalistproject to the long sixteenth century when the Spaniards attempted to Christianizethe indios in the new world.Tus modernity has been coterminous with westernimperialism. Empiricism, scientic systems o knowledge, and projects o civilizingthe natives developed in tandem with and in the service o imperialism.

Also with the advent o the modern era came the new notion that some people wereprimitive or underdeveloped. As Walter D. Mignolo points out, differentiating peoplesaccording to chronology was unknown in medieval Europe. During the medieval era,moreover, Europe was not considered a coherent geopolitical and cultural entity, andthe peoples living there saw themselves as inhabiting Christendom. Differences amongpeopleChristians, non-Christianswere dened spatially or geographically. Non-Christianswhether Jews in their midst or the Muslim indels living beyond the bor-

ders o Christendomwere seen as residing in different spheres o belie.Afer comingto the western hemisphere, Christians/Europeans noted differences with Amerindians,but had not yet conceptualized a theory that categorized the indigenous as underdevel-oped. Tese notions o chronological lag became more ully ormed with secularizingimpulses o the Enlightenment, afer which religious difference no longer remained thecentral actor differentiating peoples.Te thinkers o Enlightenment innovated theidea o universal and linear development rom a supposed state o brute primitivism toone characterized by renement, socio-economic structures, and wealth createdthrough private property.At this moment o European colonization and Enlightenmenttheorization, the colonized became seen as less developed or behind in time in compari-son with those o European descent. Just prior to and during the Enlightenment (1th1th centuries), colonized peoples and imported slave labor rom Arica were beingracialized in increasingly rigid and totalizing ways.

Tereore, differences since this imperial/modern age were measured not only geo-graphically across space, but also chronologically across time or development.Western imperialists began to see existing and potential colonies as pre-modern placesin their contemporary world that needed to be brought orcibly into the modern worldwith their intervention and guidance. Tis concept rested on the notion that some peo-ple (whites) were considered more developed, advanced, or capable than others (non-whites). But conveniently, the less advanced were deemed capable o the sort o meniallabor required or colonial enterprises; in act, they were seen as t only or such type o

work. Tis sort o logic allowed John Locke to expound on the natural rights o manand yet invest in the slave-trading Royal Arica Company. Slavery existed prior to thistime, o course. Aricans enslaved Aricans, and Europeans enslaved Europeans. But themodern era o European overseas imperialism created the permanent, hereditary sys-tem o slavery by using a random (but useul) physical marker to separate ree romunree labor. Tus the modern/colonial world was ounded and sustained through ageopolitical [and economic] organization o the world that, in the last analysis, consistedo an ethnoracial oundation.A central eature o racialization was to coner or denypower, wealth, land, and/or opportunities.


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Postcolonial critics have not ignored the liberating promises o modernity, among themsel-determination and reedom rom arbitrary and oppressive rule. In act, their criti-cism comes rom how most in the Global South have been largely denied these prom-ises. Tis denial o political reedom and economic justice has been possible with a serieso rationalizations that have been sustained in one orm or another since the age oEnlightenment. Espousal o the natural rights o man did not hamper racial coloniali-zation because westerners simply invented a range o rationalizations as to why somedid not meet the qualications o manhood. Or, to put it another way, they came up withreasons as to why some humans werent really adults capable o sel-rule or ready toappreciate the social and political reedoms promised by modernity.

Apart rom race, two other criteria to rate readiness or sel-rule were also biologicallybased: gender and maturity. By virtue o their gender, o course, women did not t intothe category o all men. But why gender was and continues to be the basis or exclusionand disempowerment is less apparent. o talk about gender does not mean a ocus onwomen as subjects per se, but the perceived differences between the males and emalesbeyond biological differences. Tis perception o difference has been common through-out many societies and erasso common that the differences appear innate rather thanas a consequence o socialization. Magniying the supposed differences in temperamentand thus ability between the genders signied relationships o power, as Joan Scottpointed out.Tus power differences among nations have ofen been expressed through

gendered reerences implying weakness, dependence, emotionality, and irrationality onone side and strength, rationality, discipline on the other.Gender is a malleable ideologyindeed this versatility is what gives any ideology its

resilience and utility. Pundits and policymakers have requently resorted to gendered met-aphors to explain differentials in power and to argue or the subjugation o or guidance toanother people. For example, the eminized rendering o occupied Germany by Americansafer World War II was relatively brie in comparison to American notions o a eminizedJapan or an effeminate India that predated the war and continued throughout the 20thcentury.By virtue o being non-western, the latter two nations were and are ofen orien-talized as being eminine in cultureand, by extension, as a people. Scholars who haveexpanded Saids original thesis with a gendered analysis have demonstrated that gendered

visions underlay notions about the exoticism (and eroticism) o the Other.Just as importantly, a gendered perspective rames what pundits and policymakers

have thought not only o other peoples, but also o themselves. Tus those who advo-cated war with Spain in 1 derided William McKinley as an old woman when he hesi-tated about entering the conict, while sixty years later, the Kennedy and Johnsonadministrations avored toughness with disastrous consequences in Vietnam.At thesame time, the gendered sel-image included a conviction that ones own society treatedwomen better than other less advanced peoples. Tis notion can be seen in theAmericas as early as Cabeza de Vacas observation in the 16th century that the indios


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worked their women too hard, but was ofen repeated during the cold war and beyondregarding Asian mens treatment o Asian women.Since the end o the cold war thetrend is visible in American popular discourse about Muslim societies.Tis genderedrationale helped justiy wars on Iraq and Aghanistan, and has tragically brought moresuffering, particularly upon Aghani women.

Likewise, the ideology o maturity has helped to deny sel-determination, usually tonon-whites. Analogies corresponding to the natural lie cycle have long been used asconceptual devices to justiy political privilege and dominance. Maturity signiedability, wisdom, and sel-control and entitlement to status and power. Colonial powershave used the rhetoric o maturity to justiy their rule over non-white peoples. Images othe Filipinos, Cubans, Hawaiians, or Puerto Ricans as babiesofen squallingor asstudents in a classroom led by Uncle Sam were abundant in American media at theturn o the 20th century.In the words o William Howard af, the rst governor-gen-

eral o the Philippines, our little brown brothers, would require fy or one hundredyears o US supervision to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political princi-ples and skills.Tis practice o depicting colonized or otherwise disempowered peo-ples as immature or even helpless dependents needing the rm hand o Americanguidance continued into the 20th century and beyond (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

Unlike race or gender, however, immaturity could be a transitional stage, not a per-manent ate. Afer World War II, when the United States ocused on exerting hegemonicpower without ormal colonial structures, it took more seriously its and other imperial-

3.1 Not Yet Ready to Walk AloneSource: Jacksonville (Florida) imes, February 14.


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ist powers previously alse promises to bestow reedom when the natives grew up.American policymakers and media justied its occupation o Japan as necessary becausethe Japanese were not yet ready to walk alone. Still, they were not expected to be underdirect American tutelage orever, and indeed, afer seven years o occupation, theJapanese regained their national sovereignty. Contrasting sharply with permanent colo-nial paternalism, this liberal paternalism was selectively applied during the postwarperiodagain, according to a perceived sliding scale o readiness or sel-rule.

Te ideologies o race, gender, and maturity were and are mutually reinorcing.Stereotypes or notions about women, non-whites, and children not only overlapped, butalso provided rationales or the others. Women were considered weak, weepy, and emo-tional like children. Children enjoyed rivolities and were ey like women. Non-whites weredeemed undisciplined, unschooled, and ignorant like children. Children were portrayed aslittle savages (and literally believed to be so, according to turn-o-the-century recapitula-tion theory).On the other side o the binary, then, were notions o white adult men beingcool, levelheaded, responsible decision-makers. Te interlocking characteristic o the ide-ologies explains their strength and, indeed, can add up to a simplied worldview that biur-cates people into those who should be in control and those who should be controlled.

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Also constituting this simplied, binary worldview have been other ideologies in addi-tion to those based on biological differences discussed thus ar. Tese include national-ism and ear o revolutions, as Hunt discusses in Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, as well

3.2 Iraqs Baby StepsSource: Ventura County Star, February 2005. Courtesy o Ventura County Star.


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as ree trade, Christianity, and western civilization or modernity.Tat ree trade andChristianity can be seen as an interrelated set o convictions about how to understandand act in the world is sel-evident and need not be explained urther here. Westerncivilization or modernity unctions as an ideology because it assumes that western civi-lization is the historical apex o human achievement in the arts, the academy, jurispru-dence, governance, economic productivity, civic institutions, and society. It is theuniversal standard to which all other peoples should aspireand, indeed, be helped todo so under the direction and mentorship o westerners. Tis ideology, rom whichmodernization theory sprang, has deep historical roots that date, as discussed, to the periodo European overseas imperialism.Notions about development intrinsic to the ideologyo civilization, moreover, have underlain the nationalist narrative o the United States:American exceptionalism. It is through the prism o this teleological narrative o destinyand progress that Americansboth leaders and the broad publichave understood

their nations ascendancy to power and global role.Te ideology o American exceptionalism explained to Americans why they were

particularly suited, even destined, to be world leaders, but that they must be ever vigi-lant in maintaining their tness. American exceptionalism held that America wasounded by healthy, young, vital, and hardworking people who reed themselves romthe shackles o European/British imperialism and acquired control o a largely emptycontinent that was abundant in natural resources. Tis settler-colonial narrative datesto the 10s and 10s when it offered an attractive national identity to counteract thecentripetal orces pulling apart the new nation afer the successul revolution. TeAmerican Revolution became not simply the action o aggrieved provincials, but ashot heard around the worldthe rst sound in a noble ght or human liberty. Overtime, Americanswhite Americans especiallycame to see the ounding o ree andequal people as their calling in the world. But Americans also believed that thisexemplary status had to be maintainedthrough constant movement, said FrederickJackson urner in 13lest they lapse into senescence and enervation. Tus, JohnFoster Dulles stated in 150: Tere may come a time in the lie o a people when theirwork o creation ends. Tat hour has not struck or us. We are still vital and capable ogreat endeavor. Our youth are spirited, not sof or earul.Dulles statements demon-strate that notions about the developmental liespan o civilizations were also genderedand raced.Te spirited and not sof, youth Dulles invoked were o a specic gen-der and race, not to mention age. Such notions help explain why, a decade later, Sargent

Shriver and the Kennedy administration retted about American youth and believedthat the Peace Corps would help young Americans experience the rontier lie-styleand retain what Teodore Roosevelt had called the barbarian virtues at the turn othe century.Stemming rom Jeffersonian republican ears o overdevelopment andeffeminization o American society, preserving vitality and vigor (usually at theexpense o the indigenous) remained a concern among policymakers since the closingo the rontier.

Tus the existential stakes in spreading the blessings o our libertyi.e., spreadingUS liberal economic systems and/or democratic institutions, especially to Tird


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World nativesmade the struggle with the Soviet Union especially charged ideologi-cally. Te struggle symbolized not only the opposition o capitalism and communismbut also competing exceptionalist claims.Marxism and liberalism, both economicand political, came rom the same Enlightenment lineage. As such, adherents saw theirchosen way as universal and ollowing a single trajectory o development over time.Although W. W. Rostow meant his Non-Communist Maniesto to be the antithesis oMarxs, they both believed that there existed a singular model o economic growthtowards modernity.Te Soviets and the Americans disagreed, o course, over whethercapitalism or socialism was the nal epoch o history or the best way to attain moder-nity. Yet both modernization theory and Marxist theory were universalist, secular,devoted to science, and materialist. Both held that men could shape the world, andboth believed that democracy was best protected and run by eliteswhether they beJohn F. Kennedy and the best and the brightest or Nikita Khrushchev and the

Communist Party. Moreover, they purported to champion anti-colonial struggles andracial equality, a claim the United States became better at arguing as the civil rightsmovement gained victories. Likewise, both the Americans and the Soviets viewednational governments that either disagreed or resisted their particular avored path tomodernitycommunist or liberal capitalistas problems to be solved either throughappeasement or elimination.

Te tragedy o American diplomacy according to William Appleman Williams wasthat the exceptionalist narrative undermined US commitment to democracy and sel-determination or the Others. He recognized that Americans had a deep-elt commit-ment to democracy and wished to share this system with the world, but that by alsoinsisting that other people attain and practice democracy in ways sanctioned by theUnited States, Americans undermined the very principle o sel-determination theysought to promote. Tis has meant either overthrowing or trying to overthrow unco-operative national leadersincluding those that were popularly electedand ofeninstalling undemocratic leaders whose policies aligned with the interests o the UnitedStates. American leaders were not always comortable with the choices they had made,but not uncomortable enough to undo their decisions. JFK stated that while a best casescenario or a Tird World country was a decent democracy, he believed that i theUnited States were not given that choice, a rujillo regime had to be supported in orderto prevent a Castro regime. And although the US State Department blanched at thebloodshed and sheer violence o their brutal clients in Guatemala, they still did not rec-

ommend a policy change.Modernization theory ailed to acknowledge what the peoples o Guatemala and else-

where knew rom experience: exploitation rom imperialism and capitalism. Te wordjustice does not appear in Rostows Te Stages o Economic Growth.Te theorydenied the historical relationship between poorer and richer countries, and insteadlooked at each state as i it were hermeneutically sealed in order to determine when itwas ready or take-off. Modernization theory was thus compatible with authoritariangovernance by drawing on a paternalist and racist rhetoric that categorized non-whitesas children, needing a rm strongman to maintain order.And the grinding poverty


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and cycles o violent political unrest undergirded American perceptions that nations othe Tird World/Global South needed guidance by the advanced nations.

Te continued poverty and instability persist as a legacy o colonialism, but in waysthat appeared to reaffi rm the notions o the western and/or wealthy, industrial powersthat the decolonized are not yet ready or sel-rule. In Te Wretched of the Earth, FrantzFanon explained that intractable problems ensue afer the achievement o state inde-pendence because the native leadership ended up reinorcing existing hierarchies, sansthe top colonialist layer. Natives (ofen interracial mestizos), who were given a slightlyprivileged place in the colonial order, were the technicians, the teachers, the clerks, andthe other low to middling unctionaries that made the colony run smoothly. Tey lackedthe education, training, and most certainly the capital resources to run a successul busi-ness enterpriseespecially a new one based on a more equitable model. Tey thereoresimply repeated or tried to reproduce the same productive models rom the colonial

days, and thus ailed to diversiy the economy, going by what had always worked in theirexperience. Moreover, the new nation was now shut out rom the reliable, i dependentand peripheral, position in the colonial powers economic system.Some, like Haiti,were impoverished by having to pay an indemnity at gunpoint to its ormer colonialoverlords or the losses they incurred with Haitian independence. Haitian scholar AlexDupuy has pointed out that, as a result o colonialisms social and economic relationsand structures, the new Haitian elites were thus unable to maintain the plantation sys-tem, much less create an industrial inrastructure. Moreover, the ruling elites were not ahomogeneous monolith, but ragmented groups, constantly in competition, creatingand perpetuating instability and authoritarian rule.

Because most American policymakers have not been ully cognizant o the deep his-toricaland man-maderoots o such poverty and cycles o violence, they have nottrusted the colonized or decolonized to handle liberalism, either economic or political.American leaders, and most American citizens, believe that economic liberalism (thecapitalist system) best ostered political liberalism (democracy), and vice versa. Tetricky question has always been: which one should come rst? Lack o condence in thecolonized/recently decolonized non-white peoplesand a healthy dose o vested mate-rial interestshas meant that US policy almost invariably supports efforts to ensure thateconomic liberalism is ostered and maintained, ofentimes at the expense o politicalliberalism. And the rationale to prioritize economic liberalism over political liberalismhas posited the ormer as a necessary developmental step: economic liberalism (or ree

trade, or globalization) will bring investment; investments will create jobs; the jobswill make the people industrious and create a strong civic society; the existence o astrong civic society will lay the oundation or democracy. But orgotten or neglected inthis logical scheme is that nothing requires these jobs to be good jobs, with worker saety,good wages, and worker benetselements all necessary or a strong civic society bycreating a sizeable and prosperous middle class. Moreover, as we know, efforts to makethe jobs into good jobs were and continue to be brutally suppressed.Tereore, anessential link rom capital investment to democracy has ofen been missing. As workerso the Global South have been telling us, democracy is needed rst to ensure democracy


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and the establishment o democratic institutions. We in the Global North cannot seemto hear this message suffi ciently, i at all.

Tis essay has argued that ideological narratives, including nationalist oundingmyths, must be considered in order to understand the worldviews that guided and con-tinue to guide policy. Tis belie that America still serves as a beacon to the world ismaniest in the inaugural address o President Barack Obama:

And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, rom thegrandest capitals to the small village where my ather was born: know that Americais a riend o each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a uture opeace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

Obamas address is a paean to American exceptionalism. Te theme o only in Americaresounded in Obamas addresses and in media commentaries leading up to the election

and inauguration.

o the surprise o country music ans who recalled George W. Bushusing the same song in 2004, Obama chose Brooks and Dunns song, Only in Americato close his DNC nomination acceptance speech.For a presidential nominee commit-ted to uniting a blue and red Americaand trying to get electedthis strategy madesense. As the new president, however, he spoke to the wider, global audience and said:o the people o poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your armsourish and let clean waters ow; to nourish starved bodies and eed hungry minds.

Every president since ruman has made a similar commitment. Some may argue thatcertain administrations were more sincere in this commitment than others. As Williamsrecognized, the impulse to help others spoke to a generosity among Americans, thoughthis quality has hardly been exclusive to Americans. What has been unique is the global

reach or hegemonic power o the United States. Tere have always been dissidents andmoments o greater dissidence. Yet the majority o Americans have tended to see theirhegemony as benevolent. It is a conviction that comes rom an exceptionalist ideologyabout the nations historic mission in the world. And it helps to explain how US policy-makers and pundits can moralize and dictate to poorer countries to embrace ree tradewhen the United States and Europe have more protectionist measures on their agricul-tural products than the entire Global South combined.

Afer /11, Americans became increasingly aware o a global current o hostilitydirected toward them. Uninormed o cold war history, many remain conused as towhy this might be so. Or perhaps inormed by a cold war history that ocuses largely on

the struggle with the Soviet Union, they orget the violence unleashed during this periodon the peoples o the poorer and poorest nations on earth. And they do not understandthe patterns o colonialism predating the cold war that created the Tird World. o besure, some Americans are quite aware and critical o the US oreign policies that propelthe current grievances.Yet many Americans persist in thinking otherwisethat itmight be a clash o civilizations or perhaps something intrinsic to the United States.Obama reinorced this stance by pronouncing also at his inaugural: We will not apolo-gize or our way o lie nor will we waver in its deense. Saying that the United States willbe steadast in deending the American way o liea amiliar phrase rom the Cold


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Warcontinues to deect attention rom actual US policies in the world. Whats best orAmerica or, more accurately, or some Americans, has not been whats best or mostpeople in America or the world. Most Americans do not know this or, perhaps, do notwant to know this. It does not t the stories we have been telling about ourselves.

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1. Many thanks to Richard H. Immerman, Petra Goedde, Cindy Franklin, and MichaelSherry or their extraordinary patience, sharp insights, and last minute interventions. Allerrors and aults are mine, o course.

2 Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press,1), xi.

3. James W. Cook and Lawrence B. Glickman, welve Propositions or a History o U.S.Cultural History, in James W. Cook, Lawrence B. Glickman, and Michael OMalley, eds.,Te Cultural urn in U.S. History: Past, Present, and Future(Chicago: University o ChicagoPress, 200), 35.

4. Cook and Glickman, welve Propositions, 12. Cook and Glickman helpully point out sixbroad denitions o culture that, in addition to the anthropological sense, cultural histori-ans have used, sometimes in combination. Tey are: (1) artistic expression; (2) the largermatrix o commercial institutions and structures in which artistic orms are produced andconsumed; (3) any social or institutional sphere in which collective orms o meaning aremade, enorced, and contested; (4) a semiotic or discursive system; and (5) transnationalor global circulation. See pp. 1014.

5. Rather than see cultures as internally coherent units, different and irreconcilable with

each other, as Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and others once did, since the 10s themajority o anthropologists understand culture as being perpetually in process, shaped byhuman interactions and societal interactions. Keith Brown, Samuel Huntington, Meetthe Nuer, in Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, eds., Why Americas op Punditsare Wrong: Anthropologists alk Back(Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2005), 44.

6. Akira Iriye, Culture and International History, in Michael J. Hogan and Tomas G.Paterson, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2434. See also: Akira Iriye,Across the Pacic; an InnerHistory of American-East Asian Relations (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 16);Akira Iriye, Power and Culture: Te Japanese-American War, (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 11).

. o ask this question is not suggesting that only people with the same ethnic, racial, or social

status can study each other. Instead, it asks scholars to pay attention to their presumptionsabout their subjects and requires them to be sel-consciously aware o the intimate connec-tion between knowledge and power. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the SubalternSpeak?: Speculations on Widow Sacrice, Wedge/ (Winter/Spring 15): 12030.

. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1).. Aferword, in Orientalism(1 reprint, New York: Vintage, 14), 3452. See also: Said,

Representations of the Intellectual: Te Reith Lectures(New York: Pantheon, 14).10. Samir Amin, Te Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World(New

York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), especially pp. 120. See also: David Harvey, Te


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Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge,MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1).

11. Odd Arne Westad, Te Global Cold War: Tird World Interventions and the Making of Our

imes(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).12. eun A. van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach(London: Sage, 1), 12.13. See the works o the anthropologists cited above and the works o cognitive linguist George

Lakoff: with Mark Johnson,Metaphors We Live By(Chicago: University o Chicago Press,10) and Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Tink, 2nd ed. (Chicago:University o Chicago Press, 2002).

14. Hunt, Ideology, xi; Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American SocialScience and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era(Chapel Hill, NC: University o NorthCarolina Press, 2000). See also: David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haeele, andMichael E. Latham, eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the GlobalCold War(Amherst, MA: University o Massachusetts Press, 2003); David C. Engerman,Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian

Development(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Nils Gilman,Mandarinsof the Future: Modernization Teory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 200); David Ekbladh, Te Great American Mission: Modernizationand the Construction of an American World Order(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 200).

15. What Gramcsi called cultural hegemony is not equivalent to political scientist JosephNyes notion o sof power. As Randolph B. Persaud has pointed out, sof power is apurely utilitarian toolas i cultural hegemonic power is something done to others, outthere in the wider world, rather than an ongoing process that describes the way the UnitedStates or any state unctions. Nyes advocacy o sof power is a strategy or those whowant to rally, maintain, and even urther American power abroad. Randolph B. Persaud,

Shades o American Hegemony: Te Primitive, the Enlightened, and the Benevolent,Connecticut Journal of International Law(Spring 2004): 260.

16. For example, eminists and womens rights advocates pushed the discourse such that it isnow common sense that women are capable o more responsibilities and skills than inthe past.

1. Susan Smulyan, Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century(Philadelphia: Universityo Pennsylvania Press, 200), 1314.

1. c., David C. Engerman, ed., Special Forum: Modernization as a Global Project,Diplomatic History23:3 (June 200).

1. David Ekbladh, H-Diplo Article Review on Special Forum: Modernization as a GlobalProject, Diplomatic History23:3 (June 200), No. 23-A, July 2, 200, accessed at ; Nils Gilman, H-Diplo Article review,No. 23-B, accessed at .

20. See the argument in Kevin Hoskins Te Wages o Empire: Working-Class Americans,Cuba Libre, and U.S. Imperialism (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2012).

21. Jrgen Habermas, Modernity: an Unnished Project, in Maurizio Passerin dEntrvesand Seyla Benhabib, eds., Habermas and the Unnished Project of Modernity(Cambridge,MA: MI Press, 1), 3, 45.

22. Habermas credits Hegel (10130) as being the rst philosopher to develop a clear con-cept o modernity. In contrast, Walter D. Mignolo insists that Hegel was a regional histo-rian who presented his work as universal history that became identied with modernity


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and with European Enlightenment. Jrgen Habermas, Te Philosophical Discourse ofModernity(Cambridge, MA: MI Press, 16), 5; Walter D. Mignolo, Te Darker Side of theRenaissance: Literacy, erritoriality, & Colonization, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI: University o

Michigan Press, 2003), 42.23. Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: Te Spanish American Empire and Te Early

Scientic Revolution(Austin, X: University o exas Press, 2006).24. Scholars o Spanish America nd that they must challenge a northern European bias in

English-language historiography. See Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors:Iberianizing the Atlantic, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanord University Press, 2006);Walter D. Mignolo, Coloniality o Power and Subalternity, in Ileana Rodrguez, ed., TeLatin American Subaltern Studies Reader(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 432;Immanuel Wallerstein and Anibal Quijanos Americanity as a Concept, or the Americas inthe Modern World-System,International Social Science Journal44 (12), 545.

25. See also: Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, And Nation: Explorations of the Historyof Science in the Iberian World(Palo Alto, CA: Stanord University Press, 2006).

26. Mignolo, Darker Side of the Renaissance, ch. 5.2. Walter D. Mignolo, Te EnduringEnchantment: (Or the Epistemic Privilege o Modernity

and Where to Go rom Here), South Atlantic Quarterly101:4 (2002): 254.2. George C. Caffentzis, On the Scottish Origins o Civilization in Silvia Federici, Enduring

Western Civilization: Te Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and its

Others(Westport, C: Praeger Paperback, 15), 2.2. Te time/space connection was also oundational to republican ideology, which drew rom

Enlightenment notions o societies as organic entities with a liespan. See Drew R. McCoy,Te Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America(10; Chapel Hill, NC: TeUniversity o North Carolina Press, 16).

30. Mignolo, Te EnduringEnchantment, 35.

31. Joan W. Scott, Gender: A Useul Category o Historical Analysis,American HistoricalReview1, no. 5 (December 16): 10535.

32. See Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, (New Haven, C: Yale University Press, 2003); Naoko Shibusawa,Americas Geisha Ally:Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006);Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: Te United States and India, (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2000).

33. For example: Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation(London: Routledge, 15); Meyda Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: owards a FeministReading of Orientalism(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1); Mari Yoshihara,Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (New York: OxordUniversity Press, 2002); Rana Kabbani, Imperial Fictions: Europes Myths of Orient(London:Saqi Books, 200); Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsiders: Te Harem in Ottoman andOrientalist Art and ravel Literature(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 200).

34. Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked theSpanish-American and Philippine-American War(New Haven, C: Yale University Press,1); Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War ForeignPolicy(Amherst, MA: University o Massachusetts Press, 2001).

35. lvar Nez Cabeza De Vaca, Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition, Harold Augenbraum,ed. and Fanny Bandelier, trans. (1542; New York: Penguin Classics, 2002); Katharine H. S.Moon, Sex Among Allies(New York: Columbia University Press, 1); Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond


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the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America(New York: NYU Press, 2004);Dorinne Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Teater (New York:Routledge, 1); Shibusawa,Americas Geisha Ally.

36. Kelly Shannon, Veiled Intentions: Islam, Global Feminism, and U.S. Foreign Policy sincethe late 10s (Ph.D. diss., emple University, 2010).

3. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association o the Women o Aghanistan, a group ormed tobroadcast the misogynistic abuses o the aliban, argue that the presence o US orcesworsened the saety o Aghani women. See: , accessedMarch 23, 2010. Iraqi eminist Yanar Mohammed likewise argues that the Obama adminis-tration has not improved the dire straits in which Iraqi women nd themselves, and thatthe re-imposition o sharia law in Iraq diminished the minimal rights women enjoyedunder Saddam. , accessed March 2, 2010.

3. See the cartoons rom the era o the Philippine-American War collected in Abe Ignacioet al., Te Forbidden Book(San Francisco: Boli, 2004).

3. Quoted in Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: Te American Conquest of thePhilippines, (New Haven, C: Yale University Press, 14), 134.

40. Shibusawa,Americas Geisha Ally, ch. 2. Nonetheless, American policymaking elites selec-tively applied liberal paternalism.

41. Gail Bederman,Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in theUnited States, (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 16).

42. I am not discussing the notion o alternative modernities because I am not convincedthat the western, universalist bias can be eliminated by this concept.

43. For urther discussion on religion, see Dianne Kirbys chapter in this volume.44. For urther discussion o western civilization as an ideology, see Federici,Enduring Western

Civilization.

45. Joyce Appleby, Recovering Americas Historic Diversity: Beyond Exceptionalism,Journalof American History (September 12): 4131.

46. Shibusawa,Americas Geisha Ally, quote on p. 0.4. Bederman,Manliness & Civilization.4. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood; Fritz Fischer,Making Tem Like Us: Peace Corps Volunteers in

the s(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1).4. See McCoy, Elusive Republic.50. Westad, Global Cold War, 3.51. W.W. Rostow, Te Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 160).52. For instance, the two rival powers either supported or attacked, either directly or covertly,

the governments o Cuba, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, North or South Vietnam, Northor South Korea, South Arica, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, and Aghanistan. See Westad,Global Cold War.

53 Greg Grandin, Te Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago:University o Chicago Press, 2004).

54. W.W. Rostow, Te Stages o Economic Growth, Te Economic History Review12:1 (15): 116.55. David F Schmitz, Tank God Teyre on Our Side: Te United States and Right-Wing

Dictatorships, (Chapel Hill, NC: University o North Carolina Press, 1);Schmitz, Te United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2006).


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56. Frantz Fanon, Te Wretched of the Earth, trans. by Richard Philcox (161; New York: GrovePress, 2005), 144.

5. Alex Dupuy, Haiti in Te World Economy: Class, Race, and Underdevelopment since

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1).5. Aviva Chomsky, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a

Global Working Class(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 200). For instance, in 200,seventy-six trade unionists were murdered worldwide, with orty-nine in Colombia alone.Gustavo Capdevila, Labor: Colombia Still Leads in rade Unionist Murders, Inter PressService/Global Inormation Network (IPS/GIN) wire, June 10, 200, ound at: , accessed June 22, 200.

5. Barack Obamas Inaugural Address, New York imes, January 20, 200, sec. U.S./Politics,, accessed June 22,200.

60. During his speech on race given on March 1, 200, Obama asserted that in no othercountry on Earth is my story even possible. Te text o the speech can be ound at: , accessed June 22, 200. David Berreby reminds us,however, that other nations have elected heads o state rom stigmatized ethnic minoritiesor oreign enclaves, including: Britain, Peru, India, and Kenya. Berreby, Only inAmerica? Te wrongheaded American belie that Barack Obama could only happen here,Slate Magazine, posted November 1, 200, , accessedJune 22, 200.

61. Obama Uses Brooks & Dunns Only in America to Close Convention Speech | CMBlog, posted August 2, 200, , accessed June 22, 200.

62. Obama inaugural address.63. Persaud, Shades o American Hegemony, 23. See also: Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans:

Te Myth of Free rade and the Secret History of Capitalism(London: Bloomsbury Press,200).

64. For instance, see Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War,and the Roots of error(New York: Pantheon Books, 2004). Even Osama bin Laden citedUS policiessupport or Israeli tanks in Palestine, the World War II bombing o Japan,and economic sanctions on Iraq that starved millions o children. See Osama bin Laden,Speech on September 11 Attacks, October , 2001, reprinted in Joanne Meyerowitz, ed.,History and September th: Critical Perspectives on the Past (Philadelphia: empleUniversity Press, 2003), 2445.

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Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in theUnited States, 1011. Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 16.

Chomsky, Aviva. Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a GlobalWorking Class. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 200.


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Cook, James W. and Lawrence B. Glickman and Michael OMalley, eds. Te Cultural urn inU.S. History: Past, Present, and Future. Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 200.

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Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1.Engerman, David C. and Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haeele, and Michael E. Latham, eds. Staging

Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War. Amherst, MA: Universityo Massachusetts Press, 2003.

Fanon, Frantz. Te Wretched of the Earth, trans. by Richard Philcox. 161; New York: GrovePress, 2005.

Federici, Silvia. Enduring Western Civilization: Te Construction of the Concept of WesternCivilization and its Others.Westport, C: Praeger Paperback, 15.

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