How America Got It Right: The U.S. March to Military and Political Supremacy - Hardcover

Alexander, Bevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400052882 ISBN 13: 9781400052882

Publisher: Crown Forum, 2005

Synopsis

At last, a historian tells the truth about America’s role in the world—refuting the lies of anti-American propagandists.

Left-wing critics—both at home and abroad—relish blasting our country for being the world’s sole superpower, or even an “imperialist” power.

But as acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander shows in How America Got It Right, these criticisms are completely off the mark. Alexander reveals how the United States has done and continues to do exactly the right thing in military and foreign affairs. As the world’s dominant political force and military power, he says, we are the only nation that will actually go into the world and strike down evil. And we must not shirk that responsibility—especially because we cannot rely on our so-called allies to defend our freedoms.

Alexander tells the dramatic and sometimes surprising story of how, from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, America’s core principles and ideals have shaped our march to economic, military, and political supremacy.

How America Got It Right reveals:

·How in the War on Terror we’re simply repeating the process of World War II—going wherever we have to in the world to destroy those who threaten our safety

·How unpatriotic critics of American foreign policy fail to understand the clear threats we now grapple with—but how our leaders get it

·How America boldly—and correctly—asserted this nation’s unique status to the world long before we had the military strength to back up our daring proclamations

·How, at almost every turn, our leaders demonstrated remarkable foresight that enabled America to become the world’s dominant power

·How a policy of securing other people’s freedom is in fact grounded in American tradition, not a dangerous departure from precedent

As Americans debate what our nation’s role in world affairs should be, Alexander shows how—far from overreaching or bumbling into situations in which we shouldn’t be involved—the United States has properly embraced its role as world leader. Covering more than two centuries of history, How America Got It Right refutes those critics who suggest that America has somehow gone off course or overextended itself.

Indeed, according to Alexander, our government has got it right. America’s critics have got it wrong, because what they are hoping for—peace without a price—will never come to pass.
We saw early in our colonial history that—because of our isolation from Europe, and because of the immense wealth and bounty of our land—we had the opportunity to build the greatest, freest, and most prosperous nation ever to arise on earth. We spent the first century and a quarter of our independent existence in creating this great nation. But to protect this treasure, we found that we needed to establish the world’s paramount military structure and become the world’s preeminent political power. This book is the story of America’s march to economic, military, and political supremacy, and the ideals that have guided us along the way. —From How America Got It Right

About this title

About the Author:

Bevin Alexander is the author of eight books of military history, including How Wars Are Won, How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, and Lost Victories, which was named by the Civil War Book Review as one of the seventeen books that have most transformed Civil War scholarship. He was an adviser to the Rand Corporation for a recent study on future warfare and a participant in a recent war game simulation run by the Training and Doctrine Command of the U.S. Army. His battle studies of the Korean War, written during his decorated service as a combat historian, are stored in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. He lives in Bremo Bluff, Virginia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

ONE: THE ILLIMITABLE FRONTIER

Imagine, if you will, the sense of awe that seized the first settlers at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607, at Plymouth in Massachusetts in 1620, and at the other landings along the coast of North America in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Here were little English communities hacking out perch sites on the very edge of an unknown land. These pioneers thought they would find in America something resembling the tame, limited, surmountable horizons of England. But they discovered that this new world was absolutely different. The scale was vaster than anything they had encountered before. An immense, almost unbroken forest extended into distances beyond their comprehension. Rivers, greater, wilder, and more magnificent than the grandest stream in Britain, poured out of the continent—the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, the Roanoke, the Cape Fear, the Savannah, and many others. The settlers saw that the land drained by these rivers must be vast, that half a dozen Englands could easily be fitted in along the coast. As the decades went by, they ventured up the rivers to find the headwaters, confident that the highlands where the rivers arose would mark the limit of this new land, and only the huge South Sea lay beyond. But when they finally reached the great chain of mountains called the Appalachians and gazed out from its heights, they were utterly confounded—before them an even more boundless, more astonishing land stretched out to seeming infinity toward the setting sun.

This was the moment when the American character was formed. Whatever limits of class and status that the settlers had brought with them from Britain would fall away to insignificance in this prodigious land. When astute individuals looked toward the limitless frontier that they now knew would beckon continuously on the western horizon, they realized that no king, no aristocracy, however selfish, could crush them. At any time they could cross this frontier and put all of Europe's restraints behind them. This had immense and overwhelming effects throughout the colonies. Americans, whether they crossed the frontier or not, were destined to be forever free.

A sense of democracy and equality spread among the people. The seeds of a future republic were sown. Long before Thomas Jefferson articulated it in the Declaration of Independence, Americans recognized their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But something else came along with the discovery of the illimitable frontier. Americans began to see that they had the opportunity to create a country of a wholly different order of magnitude and of a wholly different concept from even the richest countries of Europe. This new land could not only span an entire continent but could also achieve unbelievable wealth and strength. A new aspiration formed—to build on this marvelous, rich, fortunate continent the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, and to people this nation with men and women who were not only prosperous but also free and happy.

It was a vision unparalleled in history. It was not an ambition for empire. It was not a scheme to subdue other peoples. It was rather a desire for a single people sharing alike in the wealth and blessings of the land, and in the freedom of a society without classes and castes. As the colonies grew and more and more people flooded into it, this dream took on a reality and a certitude that led straight to the American Revolution and beyond.

As the frontier advanced inland, the pioneers became less and less European and "more and more American," as Frederick Jackson Turner, the great historian of the westward thrust, points out.This American not only was independent, but he took as his birthright the authority to travel wherever he wished into the west and to build there a prosperous future with his own hands.

From this immense social movement two ultra-American principles emerged. The first was a deep resolve to gain freedom, democracy, and prosperity, and then to keep them. The second was a related resolve to challenge anybody, whether British overlords or other European powers, who might threaten American security or independence. This determination was brandished in the "Don't Tread on Me!" rattlesnake flag of the American Revolution. Only the older settled towns along the coast expressed much interest in integrating Americans into a global economy. And there was virtually no interest in extending American ideals throughout the world. Americans were focused on their own land and their own freedoms, and they were going to brook no interference from anyone in getting them.
A nation that restricts its leadership to a narrow aristocracy deprives itself of most of its brainpower. Britain crippled itself in this fashion at the time of the American Revolution, with devastating consequences. Britain's leadership, almost entirely drawn from the privileged classes, was so incompetent that it ignored every opportunity to deflect colonial discontent before revolt started, selected generals incapable of conducting effective military operations, and appointed politicians who wrecked every prospect for negotiated peace.

Adam Smith, the great Scottish philosopher who laid the foundations of classical free-market economic theory, understood the disastrous path Britain was following and offered a solution in his monumental work The Wealth of Nations. He called for the consolidation of Britain and its American colonies into a single federated nation, with all its parts having equal representation in a unified parliament. But by the time Smith's book came out in 1776, it was too late. The colonies declared their independence on July 4 that year, and Britain's leaders were determined to bring the colonies back under their heel by military force, not compromise.

But regaining America by military force was a hopeless task so long as the Americans remained defiant. Britain was unable to bring its greatest strength, the Royal Navy, to bear against the thirteen colonies, because they were a land power, not a naval power. Though militarily weak, the colonies covered so vast an area that Britain could not possibly control more than a fraction of it at any time. The moment British forces departed a region, it would become free again. If the Americans were unwilling to return to British rule, Britain could never conquer them.

Adam Smith and other Britons appreciated this fact, but they did not have the authority to change national policy. Smith recognized that the ruling elite's unwillingness to face reality would result in calamity and would ruin Britain's last chance to have a major role in the development of a great new world power. He predicted that, in about a century, America would outstrip Britain in wealth, population, and strength, and that the disparity between the two would accelerate in the years beyond. If Britain could work out a union with America, its importance would be enhanced for a significant epoch to come. But, whether part of a union or not, Britain was destined in the end to become merely an appendage to the greater whole, because the English-speaking world's population and power were going to be centered in America, not England.

The first great success of the American patriots came on October 17, 1777, when a British army under John Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga on the Hudson River in upstate New York. Burgoyne had gotten into an impossible position because of abominable leadership. British general William Howe, instead of moving his large army up the Hudson from New York City to assist Burgoyne, took it instead to capture Philadelphia. Burgoyne, cut off from all help, had no choice but to capitulate.

The surrender created a sensation in Britain. Belatedly, the leaders realized they were on the wrong track. In March 1778 Parliament repealed all legislation offensive to Americans (the infamous Sugar Act, the Tea Act, the order closing the port of Boston, the law mandating quartering of troops in colonial homes, and so forth), and in April the government sent a commission headed by the Earl of Carlisle to offer the Continental Congress what amounted to complete independence, with the only proviso that the Americans recognize the British sovereign. This was, in effect, what came to be called "dominion status," which London later granted to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. If this offer had been made any time before the surrender at Saratoga, the thirteen states most likely would have accepted it, and they would have become the first British dominion.

But the overture came not only after the Americans had realized Britain's incapacity to reconquer them, but also after they had seen the great advantages that would accrue if they no longer were tied to British apron strings. The radical Thomas Paine in his pamphlet Common Sense, published in Philadelphia in January 1776, had pointed to one great benefit of total freedom—Britain could not drag the Americans into European wars in which they had no concern. Already, then, Americans were wary of the "entangling alliances" that Thomas Jefferson would later warn against in his first inaugural address. These alliances, they saw, would limit American sovereignty and would divert attention and resources away from the main task they already recognized, that of conquering the North American continent.

Besides, the Americans had the alliance that absolutely guaranteed our independence. The French had been waiting for the opportunity to strike down Britain. They had been humiliated by the British in the Seven Years War (1756-63), had lost Canada and most of their other colonies, and wanted revenge. The colonists' victory at Saratoga showed the French that by allying with the Americans they would be on the winning side. On December 1...

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Forum
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400052882
• ISBN 13: 9781400052882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320