The Long Arc Of American Power

"“We [the U.S.] began as a sliver of a country and next thing you know we're a continental power, and we did not do that primarily through our great diplomacy and our good looks and our charm. We did that primarily by taking the land from other people.”"

"“Now, this is not a revisionist history that's meant to beat up on the United States for having become a world power, because if we hadn't done that, if we hadn't become this continental power, then we could never have prevailed in the World Wars...The world would have been a much worse place and we could never have played the role we did in the Cold War and at least up until recent times, the post-Cold-War world. So generally speaking, I'm glad for this American assertiveness, but to me, it's striking just how little we understand that about ourselves.”"

"“A lot of the institutional machinery, a lot of the intellectual and leadership development capability of the United States began in this period starting in the late 19th century and accelerating into the inner [World] War years [1918-to-1941]. And without that, we would not have had the great leaders like [Gen. Dwight D.] Eisenhower, and [Gen. George C.] Marshall, trained in the way they were.”"

U.S. territorial expansion transformed a small republic into a continental power primarily by taking land from other peoples. That territorial growth enabled the United States to prevail in the World Wars and to play decisive roles in the Cold War and the post–Cold-War era. American assertiveness produced substantial global influence even as public understanding of the coercive origins of that power remains limited. Much U.S. grand strategy and national-security institutional development arose during the late 19th century and accelerated through the interwar years. Those institutional and leadership-development processes helped train leaders such as Eisenhower and Marshall.

Read at The Cipher Brief