Andrew S. Terrell - HIST 6393: Empire, War & Revolution!

Fall 2010

• McCormick, Thomas J.. America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War
and After (Second Edition). The American moment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995.

Hegemony requires both military and economic power. The problem with the US

hegemony of the 20th century, McCormick contends, was the inability to sustain both

prerequisites. America’s Half-Century examined the period from the post-WWII era through

1989 analyzing successive moments and trends from the vantage of global capitalism rather than

the nation state. In essence, McCormick linked the rise and fall of American supremacy to

several changes within the peripheral states and formerly inferior market places of the world. The

result is a very provocative interpretation of Pax America.

McCormick contends that capitalism since its establishment has been an expansionist

system. So as America climaxed with its economic might after WWII, the state was in a position

for hegemony. The world changed with WWII and the United States emerged as the only

legitimate global power. So began an era where nation states would play and trade in accord with

America’s free trade principles, currency converts, and the global economy structure. However,

the system could not be sustained as America worked to rebuild and help other countries either

expand in similar fashion, or create competitive markets for its adversaries. Reminiscent of Paul

Kennedy’s famous synthesis, McCormick contends that America over invested abroad, overspent

in the military budget, and allowed for domestic issues to spread too far. Like Kennedy,

McCormick sees how reapportioning public monies to military security undermines the very

economic prowess of a hegemon.

McCormick’s world systems analysis allows diplomatic historians to approach the Cold

War era of Pax Americana. He pushes aside the preconceived notions of American
Andrew S. Terrell - HIST 6393: Empire, War & Revolution! Fall 2010

exceptionalism in favor of seeing America’s hegemony as only the latest in a line of great

powers. However, the seeming one-sided approach to explaining everything good and evil of

America’s half century of hegemony overlooks valuable and equally legitimate rationales for

changes in the world stage from the end of WWII to the present. Noneconomic factors inevitably

exist in American foreign policy behavior. Yes, economics can be found in everything, but they

are hardly independent of other factors. There are also many issues realist scholars will have with

McCormick’s paltry evidence such as how atomic diplomacy at inception was targeted toward

making Europe more susceptible to the American dollar (as if it was not already during the war).

Nonetheless, the emphasis on economic contributions certainly is important for scholars of

American foreign policy.

In a second edition epilogue, McCormick accepts some other factors are indeed logical,

rational explanations for the way the Cold War ended. He then continued this thought to include

what a world system could look like in a bipolar world. Perhaps his realizations towards the

latter portion of the monograph are most interesting for foreign policy scholars as such

predictions and explanations work much better with keeping global political economies as a

chief player (if not kingpin) of the current era.