Book

Description

The Manifest Destiny induced American Indian Wars enabled the United States to carve out the 48 contiguous states plus two detached states Hawaii and Alaska, which gave birth to an imperial nation. President George Washington described the historic birth of an American imperialism as an “infant empire”. A decisive U.S. victory in the 1898 American-Spanish War not only culminated the Spanish rule in the Americas, but resulted in U.S. acquisition of new territories in the western Pacific and Latin America such as Puerto Rico, Philippines, and Guam. With the Monroe Doctrine, expansionism through annexation, subjugation, or military intervention became a U.S. tradition. The Great Wars turned the U.S. into a global power, the 1944 Bretton Woods accepted the dollar hegemony, and the Truman Doctrine (which instigated the Cold War era to contain the Soviet influence) made the United States become a true superpower or only hyperpower in the world. President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 had the objective of ending years of diplomatic isolation, settling the Taiwan question, counterbalancing the power of the Soviet Union, and opening up China to trade. Over four decades since Nixon’s visit, China has become monstrous economically and militarily, and overly agitated by this the United States government has turned to mob-like strategies to curb China’s rise, such as abuse of sanction power, weaponization of the dollar, and even US-China ‘decoupling’, but experts are not sure if this will work without significant negative global repercussions as the Cold War did to contain the Soviet influence and the spread of communism. While American imperialism and the dollar's hegemony have been diminishing, the factors that contributed to that aided China's remarkable rise. However, its ambitious growth plans have turned China into an environmental hazard to the world's scarce and finite natural resources. Many are sceptic that China will become a superpower with the autocrat CCP and its willful disregard for the environment.