Why can't 🇺🇸 let 🇯🇵, 🇹🇼, 🇰🇷, and most of East Asia be dominated by 🇨🇳?
Let's talk about the "Grand Area" and its importance to US foreign policy.
[THREAD]
To understand what the "Grand Area" is and its importance for US foreign policy since World War II, lets go back to the end of World War I. amazon.com/Paris-1919-Mon…
Following World War I, the United States was content to let the world do its own thing, both politically (see Senate rejecting League of Nations)...
...and economically (see Smoot-Hawley Tariff).
That doesn't mean the US was isolationist. Not at all, either politically (See Briand-Kellog pact).... amazon.com/Internationali…
...or economically (see Dawes Plan, named after Charles Dawes).
But the US wasn't an active globe-spanning internationalist nation either. It acted, if not like a "normal country", then at least like a normal major power. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
Indeed, even once Japan, Italy, and Germany became militarily aggressive in the mid-to-late 1930s, the US was still largely fine to let the world do its thing.
Such a sentiment is what fed into the original "America First" campaign
So what happened to change thinking within US foreign policy circles?
This 👇
As @stephenwertheim writes in his book "Tomorrow, the World", the suddenness of France's defeat (6 weeks) shocked the US foreign policy community. amazon.com/Tomorrow-World…
When coupled with Germany now militarily turning its sights on Britain...
...the possibility emerged that a key market of US trade was now threatened to be completely closed off.
As much as US foreign policy had been based on "letting the world do it's thing", that approach assumed the US could freely trade globally. amazon.com/Shaped-War-Tra…
While the US was still more than a year away from officially entering the war, the US government began taking actions.
That included planning. Specifically, the State Department commissioned @CFR_org to conduct a series of studies on the US needs, both during and after the war.
One of those studies focused on the economic needs of the United States.
The starting point of the report is acknowledging that the US economy depends on trade
Given that Germany was now militarily controlling Europe, the goal of the report was to figure out the global economic area -- excluding Europe --that could sustain the US.
The Western Hemisphere alone was not enough.
It lacked the export markets (especially offered by the UK) and raw materials (particularly those accessed via South Asia) required by the US
Instead, the area had to be expanded out, both to the East and West (explicitly excluding the Soviet Union). This global area deemed vital to the US economy was called "the Grand Area"
Essentially, the Grand Area was largely everything on this map, except for red areas and the black areas in Europe and Africa (this is a map showing the political alignment of the world in July 1941 -- the time that the report was written).
What might surprise some is that Japan was included...even though it was aligned with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
The report acknowledged that including Japan could pose a challenge.
Critically, the report states that the area must be "defended". It is silent on how, but acknowledges that it will require military and diplomatic efforts (and that those factored into defining the area)
In sum, for the US to be economically secure, a substantial portion of the globally economy had to be secure. Only the US could do that. amazon.com/Imperial-Brain…
As the War evolved, so did the definition of the Grand Area. The excluded parts were no longer both the Nazi and Soviet zones, but just the Soviet zones.
The idea of the US needing to take an active role in supporting and defending a key portion of the global economy fed into the planning conferences during the war, most notably Bretton Woods. amazon.com/Battle-Bretton…
Given the composition of the Grand Area, one can see why there was a perception that the US "lost" China when the Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949
Let's bring this discussion back to the point that opened this thread.
One should see how the idea of a "Grand Area" could feed into the view that the US must not allow another power, in Europe or Asia, dominate a region that is part of that area.
Indeed, the "Grand Area" idea is central to US policy being focused on maintaining "an Open World" amazon.com/Open-World-Ame…
In short, so long as the US defines its national economic interests as requiring the maintenance of a global "Grand Area", the US will perceive itself as having to stay militarily and political involved in East Asia (and beyond)
[END]
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Which of these two men is most responsible for World War II?
Short answer: not Churchill
Long answer: [THREAD]
To be clear, in this thread I am dealing with the onset of the war in Europe. The War in Asia was just as important and obviously connected to Europe. But that is for another thread. For now, I do highly recommend Paine's book "The Wars for Asia"
Solving the "Europe Problem" has vexed US foreign policy since the beginning.
[THREAD]
As I wrote last week, a key trait of US "grand strategy" since the founding of the Republic was "Go West" either by expanding US territory west or seeking to maintain trade with China.
Since the founding of the republic, US foreign policy has been about one thing:
Go west (and don't let Europe get in the way).
[THREAD]
I'll write more about "don't let Europe get in the way" in another 🧵. This one will focus on the "Go west" part (which will also touch on the Europe part).
One could go so far as to argue that the Republic itself was founded because of a desire to go west. Specifically, the colonials were forbidden to go west of the 1763 Proclamation line.
When you hear "Liberal International Order", just think "the G-7, for better and for worse"
[THREAD]
While some scholars and policy makers like to speak of the "Liberal International Order" as the collection of post-World War II international institutions.... cambridge.org/core/journals/…
...the phrase itself is much more recent in origins, largely a product of the mid-1990s.
As I wrote in my latest for @WPReview, shifting patterns in population growth will inevitably influence international politics. worldpoliticsreview.com/global-demogra…
This isn't a new idea. It's one found in classic works on change in world politics.