The American Way of Victory

National Interest, The, Summer, 2000 by James Kurth

A Twentieth-Century Trilogy

THE TWENTIETH century, the first American century, was also the century of three world wars. The United States was not only victorious in the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War, but it was more victorious than any of the other victor powers. As the preeminent victor power, the subsequent strategies of the United States did much to shape the three postwar worlds. They therefore also did much to prepare the ground for the second and third world wars in the sequence. Now, ten years after the American victory in that third, cold, world war it is time to evaluate the U.S. victor strategies of the 1990s and to consider if they will make the twenty-first century a second American century, this time one of world peace and prosperity, or if they could lead, sometime in the next few decades, to a fourth world war.

The First and Second British Centuries

LIKE America at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Britain in the early nineteenth century had passed through a century of three wars that were worldwide in scope--the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and the successive Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). Britain had been victorious in each of these wars, making the eighteenth century something of a British one. The victor strategy that Britain pursued after the Napoleonic Wars laid the foundations for what has been called "the Hundred Years Peace" (1815-1914), making the second British century as peaceful as the first one had been warlike. [1]

The central elements of the British victor strategy were four; two involved international security and two involved the international economy. [2] The security elements were established immediately after the victory over Napoleon. They were, first, a British-managed balance of power system on the European continent, and, second, British naval supremacy in the rest of the world. The economic elements were established about a generation later. They involved, third, British industrial supremacy operating in an open international economy (Britain serving as "the workshop of the world"), and, fourth, British financial supremacy, also operating in an open international economy (the City of London serving as "the world's central bank").

By the beginning of the twentieth century; however, British naval and industrial supremacy were threatened by the spectacular growth of German military and economic power. When in August 1914 it appeared that Germany was about to destroy the Continental balance of power system with its invasion of Belgium and France, Britain went to war to stop it. The Hundred Years Peace and the second British century came to a crashing and catastrophic end with the First World War.

Victory therefore presents a profound challenge to a victor power, especially to a pre-eminent one: it must create a victor strategy to order the postwar world in a way that does not lead to a new major war. The British victor strategy after the Napoleonic Wars was successful in meeting this challenge for almost a century. But even this sophisticated strategy ultimately proved inadequate to the task of managing the problems posed by the rise of a new and very assertive power. As shall be discussed below, the American victor strategies after the First and Second World Wars were similar to the earlier British one in their efforts to combine several different dimensions of international security and economy; indeed, the American strategies relied upon some of the same elements, particularly naval, industrial and financial supremacy. They did not, however succeed in preventing the Second World War and the Cold War. The fundamental question for our time is whether the American victor strategies after the Cold War will succeed in preventing some kind of a new world war in the next century.

As it happens, the Spring 2000 issue of The National Interest contained an array of articles that can help us address this question. In considering the lessons that can be drawn from the earlier American experiences of living with victory, I shall be making use of them. In particular, these lessons underline the importance of managing the rise of Chinese military and economic power and of doing so in ways similar to those that Zbigniew Brzezinski advocates in his "Living With China." They also underline the danger but potential relevance of the arguments that Robert Kagan and William Kristol advance in their essay, "The Present Danger."

Living With Victory After the First World War

IT TOOK FOUR years of war and the massive engagement of the United States before, in November 1918, the Western Allies succeeded in defeating Germany. But even in defeat, the nation whose rise to military and economic power Britain had failed to manage still retained most of its inherent strengths. The German problem, which had been at the center of international relations before the war, was redefined by the Allied victory, but it was still there, and Western victory still had to focus upon the German reality.