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Book Review
| Weltmacht und Weltordnung. Amerikanische Auβenpolitik von 1898 bis zur Gegenwart. Eine Jahrhundertgeschichte (World power and world order. American foreign policy, 1898 to the present. A history of the twentieth century). By Klaus Schwabe. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005. 560 pp. €44.90, ISBN 3-506-74783-5.) In German.
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| American diplomatic historians have long been familiar with Klaus Schwabe's work on Woodrow Wilson and the peace settlement at the end of World War I. In this book, he extends that framework to cover the entire last century of American foreign policy. That policy, he argues, has utilized, and occasionally combined, an "imperial" approach—in which America seeks order and predictability—and an "imperialist" approach—in which America demands and exercises control through either military or economic means. The choice between those strategies, according to Schwabe, depends more on the world view of the American president and on domestic opinion than on any combination of global or strategic factors. |
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The drift toward imperialism began with the Spanish-American War. Schwabe traces the decision to embark on an "imperialist" policy of conquest and control as a response to a growing fear that an "imperial" policy was no longer adequate in a world in which "imperialist" powers sought to preclude America from spreading its values. Wilson's foreign policy, however, swung away from seeking direct control in an attempt to create a world in which American interests would be protected by the global acceptance of liberal internationalist values and the United States would not have to bear the cost of direct hegemony. |
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