World wars have transformed the USA into a “European power”. Its desire to free itself of Europe’s influence, fueled by suspicion and frustration, has always endured in American society.
The Monroe Doctrine: the rise of the USA and resistance to European influence
In 1776, when America proclaimed its independence, the new state emerged as a result of the colonists’ opposition towards the Metropolis. The result was an entity in which opposition to Europe was inherent. The inhabitants of those territories where Europeans often took refuge, fleeing discrimination and punishment for their own convictions, designed a state where the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were declared as “inalienable truths”. The people became the source of power. America would not be a monarchy, and the first president stepped down after his second term, thus signaling the short-lived and limited nature of its power. The Enlightenment, the search for truth, the Protestant spirit seeking the foundation of an entrepreneurial society, the involvement of morality in decision-making, all would contribute to the dawn of one of the world's greatest powers. As Jill Lepore notes, “the United States rests on a dedication to equality, which is chiefly a moral idea, rooted in Christianity, but it rests, too, on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching. [Its founders] believed truth is to be found in ideas about morality but also in the study of history”.
The American people’s desire to protect their state against European influence based on these new precepts was soon given a name. Launched by the fifth American president in 1823, the “Monroe Doctrine”, basically called for an America for Americans. In other words, it told powers across the Ocean that the time had come for Europe to end its interventionist and colonialist policies on the American continent. Therefore, after Napoleon’s defeat, as Europe was returning to conservative ideas and leadership, the United States of America entered a period of isolation that would last nearly a century, during which time they expanded their territory, fought a bloody civil war, but were protected from conflicts with the outside world. Shielded by the oceans, America was growing stronger and richer. Many Europeans looked across the Atlantic with envy, pining to live the American dream. “Before I came to America, I thought the streets were paved in gold. When I came here, I learned three things: The streets were not paved in gold, the streets weren't paved, and that I was expected to pave them” an Italian emigrant recalls, according to his testimony preserved at the Museum of Ellis Island, the main gateway into the USA at the end of the 19th-century.
Woodrow Wilson and America's first attempt to leave its mark on the world
By the time Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, an event that would lead to the outbreak of World War I, it became clear to the Americans that this was a conflict in which they had no place, that the Europeans were once again disputing their own supremacy. “A vote for Wilson is a vote for peace”, a senator from president Woodrow Wilson's party said during his campaign for a second term in 1916. Shortly after winning the election, however, Wilson was faced with an extremely sensitive conundrum. According to the Zimmermann telegram, sent by the German Foreign Minister to the ambassador in Mexico, the Mexican government was promised support to recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico from the Americans, provided they joined with the Central Powers. Then there was the issue of Germany’s submarines attacking several ships, as a result of which a significant number of American citizens lost their lives. In addition, there were also voices that claimed that Americans had a duty to support their old allies from the War of Independence, namely the French. Thus, president Monroe’s era of isolationism came to an end, the USA entered the war on the Allies’ side, decisively tipping the scale of the war towards its very end.
Woodrow Wilson, however, the son of a Presbyterian minister, trusting in the messianic role of his nation, did not want to squander his country’s manpower and resources without leaving his mark on the world. At first, he proposed, even during the war, a peace without victors and vanquished, in order to put an end to material destruction and the loss of so many lives. Then, Wilson launched a 14-point program, by means of which he presented before Congress, in January 1918, his vision of Europe and some of the issues he considered to be of critical importance. Among these were those referring to territorial integrity, such as the restoration of Poland, which had been partition in the 18th century by Russia, Austria and Prussia, the nations of Austria-Hungary securing autonomy, returning Alsace and Lorraine to France, but also freedom of navigation across seas and oceans or the elimination of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Last but not least, the 14th point became the real stake of Wilson’s vision for the end of hostilities, namely the establishment of a League of Nations, an instrument the American president believed would help him put an end to future wars.
With the Central Powers emerging as victors, Woodrow Wilson became the first American president to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an official capacity, at the head of a delegation comprising over 1,300 people. At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson time and again invoked the tenets and values of Christianity, to the point that, when asked how the negotiations were going, Prime Minister Lloyd George joked: “not bad, considering I am seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon”, alluding to the American President and the French Prime Minister, respectively. A champion of peace and preacher of the Gospels, Wilson promoted the League of Nations and, to see his dream come true, he accepted some of the Europeans’ terms that sometimes were at odds with his own beliefs. He promoted self-determination even with double standards. On the other hand, Wilson launched the largest program to date coming to the aid of those affected by the war – the hungry, the orphaned, the disabled. The American Red Cross carried out missions from Vladivostok to the Atlantic. America presented itself to the world as the victor who helped both allies and the vanquished, the savior of today and the guarantor of tomorrow's peace. Through this “diplomacy of mercy”, America conducted its foreign policy using instruments that had been scarcely put to work before. Morality had become the source of an alternative strand of diplomacy, a wealthy state claiming it was its duty to help those in need. Based on these principles, even Bolshevik Russia would receive aid from an American mission, even if this meant strengthening the government in Moscow. As Julia F. Irvin noted, at the time, the message was that “being a good American citizen also required being a good citizen of the world”.
The end of Europe’s “American era”?
This new value in world politics, generosity, could be treated as nothing short of idealism, but for Wilson it was also a way of showing Europeans that America had in the meantime become a great power, and the new world order could not be accomplished without its contribution. As Henry Kissinger emphasized, “on the ruins and disillusionment of three years of slaughter, America stepped into the international arena with such confidence, strength and idealism that its exhausted allies would never conceive of”. The collapse of empires, based on the principle of self-determination, would be the first change in a broader process. It’s something the American president had pointed out as early as 1917: “After the war is over, we will make them embrace our way of thinking, for at that time, beyond all other issues, they will be at our disposal from a financial point of view”, Wilson wrote to Colonel House. It was this intertwining of idealism and pragmatism that would underlie the functioning of the new power.
In the end, Wilson completely changed the map of not just Central Europe, but the entire world, because his legacy based on self-determination would also destroy the colonial empires after World War II. However, while redrawing the map of Europe and imposing a new rhythm on the world, Wilson could not defend himself from the Republicans’ rage, whom he had not taken to the Paris peace talks. Thus, the League of Nations continued without America, which made the organization useless in the critical moments of the interwar period. After the end of Wilson’s term, the United States resumed its isolationist policies, and the memory of the human losses caused by the war, followed by the economic recession, became strong-enough arguments in the 1930s for Americans to remember that George Washington himself, in his farewell speech, recommended that Americans keep away from Europe’s problems, which had little or nothing to do with America’s. It took World War II for the USA to resume its close ties with Europe. After this major event, America became a global power and the leader of the “free world”. The Marshall Plan, although addressing Europe in its entirety, was accessed only by those countries outside communist space. It did mark, however, the beginning of what was called the “American era”. Europe was practically divided in political terms between free Europe and communist Europe, or American Europe and Russian Europe. From this perspective, formulas such as J.F. Kennedy’s, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, or Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, turned American presidents into symbols of Europe’s liberation.
In 1986, Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad, the director of the Oslo-based Nobel Institute, described America’s expansion in the post-war period using a formula that would become famous: “empire by invitation”. Less than ten years later, Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe during the Balkan crises of the 1990s, published an article in Foreign Affairs titled America, a European Power. Holbrooke studied Europeans' inability to act in the case of the wars in former Yugoslavia. Then, on a sarcastic tone, he expressed his frustration with the fact that, while Europe was sleeping, he spent his days making phone calls to stop a war between Turkey and Greece over an uninhabited rock in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Then NATO intervened in Yugoslavia in 1999, launching new waves of expansion in ex-communist Europe, and in 2008 Kosovo proclaimed its independence. For each of these developments, America rightfully owned up to its title of “great European power”, but at the same time, this deepened Washington’s conviction that Europeans did not feel responsible for their own security.
In the context of America’s new approach to foreign policy, when it seems that after 80 years of collaboration, US foreign policy overseas is no longer centered on Europe, it remains to be seen whether the old continent has found the answer to Henry Kissinger's question from 30 years ago: “Who do I call when I want to call Europe?”
