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May 13, 1998
Outward Bound
As nations grow wealthier, they tend to define their interests in more expansive terms and to cast about for ways of increasing their influence. And these rising, restless powers often collide with those that are more established--with fateful results. Germany's rapid economic growth in the last quarter of the 19th century, and its search for a "place in the sun," helped set the stage for World War I. Some fear that a fast-growing China may soon play a similarly disruptive role.
But what is it, exactly, that causes growing nations to pursue an expansionist course? One answer is that more wealth leads to more military and political power, and power breeds ambition. Nations that have the means to mold the world around them soon believe they have the need to do so. In this view, often associated with the Greek historian Thucydides, cycles of growth, expansion and decline are a natural part of international life. Some more recent writers, on the other hand, have treated expansionism as the product of exaggerated feelings of insecurity. If the fears of rising powers can be assuaged, in this view, there is no reason why they must upset the international order.
In "From Wealth to Power" (Princeton University Press, 199 pages, $29.95), Fareed Zakaria comes down firmly on Thucydides' side of this debate, albeit with one important caveat. It is not the growing wealth of a country's people as such that leads to expansion but the increasing ability of their central government to command a share of it. "State power is that portion of national power the government can extract for its purposes." It is when leaders perceive an increase in their ability to extract national resources that they "will expand the nation's political interests abroad."
Mr. Zakaria persuasively illustrates this argument by examining America's emergence as a great power. Although the nation's economy grew dramatically after the Civil War, it was only in the late 1890s that the U.S. truly began to expand its global interests. Until almost the end of the century there was "a glaring disparity between America's strength and its paltry influence." The reason was not a lack of opportunities, or an absence of ambitious presidents and secretaries of state. It was Congress -- eager to cut taxes, block new expenditures and recapture some of the authority that had accumulated in the executive branch during the Civil War -- that stood in the way of expansion.
As the 19th century drew to a close, the rush of industrialization gave rise to big companies, big cities and big labor unions, and to a shift in the distribution of power within the American political system. Presidents, backed by public opinion, became more assertive in their relations with Congress; executive branch agencies (including the armed forces and the foreign service) grew bigger; and the federal government as a whole increased its importance relative to the states.
These changes put more resources in the hands of national leaders and paved the way for a revolution in America's world role. In the 1890s and early 1900s the U.S. began a major naval buildup, fought and won a war with Spain, acquired territory outside the North American continent (including Hawaii, the Philippines and Puerto Rico), built the Panama Canal and participated in global diplomacy on an equal footing with the great powers of Europe. These undertakings were due not to feelings of insecurity on the part of America's leaders but to an acute awareness of their increasing power.
Mr. Zakaria's account of turn-of-the-century American diplomacy is concise and insightful. But one comes away struck by the continuing limits on the power of the American state, and on the character of American foreign policy. After a very brief fling with imperialism, the U.S., unlike its European counterparts, did not proceed to acquire a vast portfolio of colonial possessions.
The reasons were mainly ideological. Many Americans regarded the forcible extension of dominion as contrary to the nation's principles. Even those who did not still took it for granted that subject peoples would eventually become full citizens, a prospect to which others objected on racist grounds. The U.S. would expand its influence in the coming century, but it would not seek again to expand its territory. Despite its enormous power, America has not generally appeared menacing to countries that do not themselves harbor expansionist ambitions.
Nor did the domestic authority of the federal government proceed to grow without limit. Congress continued regularly to assert itself against ambitious presidents, and to this day the nation's prevailing political beliefs encourage a healthy suspicion of excessive state power. Among other benefits, limits on government have contributed to America's economic vitality. Self-restraint, at home and abroad, has helped the U.S. to remain a great power long after others, with stronger states, have faded from the scene.