07/20/2020
Wertheim, cofounder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, details the thinking behind America’s pursuit of global dominance from the 1940s to the present day in this impeccably researched debut history. Disputing the notion that Pearl Harbor thrust the U.S. into its role as “chief arbiter of global affairs,” Wertheim contends that government officials decided to pursue world supremacy more than a year earlier, when the fall of France to Nazi forces in June 1940 made clear that America “had to impose order by force or else suffer in another power’s world.” He sketches the history of American internationalism prior to WWII; introduces readers to a plethora of “foreign policy elites,” including FDR’s assistant secretary of state, Adolf Berle, and Whitney Shepardson, a director of the Council of Foreign Relations who spearheaded planning efforts for the postwar world order; and details actions to turn the United Nations into a vehicle for U.S. hegemony. Questioning the wisdom of continuing to pursue “global military dominance” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Wertheim writes that America in the early 21st century has been left with “awesome destructive power and little prospect of peace.” Scholarly yet accessible, this fine-grained account sheds new light on an era and a worldview too often obscured by gauzy patriotism. (Oct.)
In writing the history of the country’s decision to embrace a militarist vision of world order—and to do so, counterintuitively, through the creation of the United Nations—Wertheim provides an importantly revisionist account of U.S. foreign policy in the 1940s, one that helps us think anew about internationalism today…The contemporary stakes of Wertheim’s work are plainly apparent…A reminder of just how strange it is that Americans have come to see military supremacy as a form of selfless altruism, as a gift to the world.
Boston Review - Sam Lebovic
The Trump and Biden administrations have seen a sharp shift away from the United States’ desire to be the preeminent power in the world. But how did it get there in the first place? In painstaking detail, Wertheim draws the battle map of intellectual warfare that went on during World War II between U.S. thinkers who wanted the United States to continue the tradition of British preeminence and those who didn’t.
Foreign Policy - Jack Detsch
You really ought to read it…It is a tour de force…While Wertheim is not the first to expose isolationism as a carefully constructed myth, he does so with devastating effect. Most of all, he helps his readers understand that ‘so long as the phantom of isolationism is held to be the most grievous sin, all is permitted.’
The Nation - Andrew J. Bacevich
Excellent…An important contribution to the history of U.S. foreign policy, and it is also relevant to contemporary debates about the proper U.S. role in the world.
Daniel Larsonn Conservative
One does not need to be universally opposed to all of American policy since the Second World War to see the immense value of this book in showing the ideological lineage we have inherited that distorts how we talk about Grand Strategy through the present.
Global Security Review - Christopher Mott
Wertheim delves into an important bit of history to try to pinpoint exactly when and why the United States embraced the global military supremacy that Americans have taken for granted for decades…He is on [firm] ground in arguing that today U.S. global military dominance has outlived its original purpose.
Foreign Affairs - Jessica T. Mathews
For almost 80 years now, historians and diplomats have sought not only to describe America’s swift advance to global primacy but also to explain it…Any writer wanting to make a novel contribution either has to have evidence for a new interpretation, or at least be making an older argument in some improved and eye-catching way. Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, the World does both…[An] estimable book.
Wall Street Journal - Paul Kennedy
Not only a sharp and well-argued historical analysis of American foreign policy, but also a persuasive political argument about America’s place in the world today…The rise of the American Empire was not facilitated by ‘absent-minded’ policy makers. Instead, the drafters of the plan were very much aware of their own ambitions while not necessarily sharing them with the wider public…An exceptionally readable blend of intellectual history, foreign policy and international theory.
Journal of Strategic Studies - Or Rosenboim
A brisk, deeply researched, and thought-provoking revisionist history of the US foreign policy establishment surrounding World War II, pinpointing the moment when America abandoned its traditional mode of engagement in world affairs in favor of global hegemony underwritten by military force…This is an essential read for understanding how American empire came to seem permanent and inevitable—a topic very much relevant today.
Jewish Currents - David Klion
In the wake of [WWII], decision makers regarded military restraint not as a virtue but as a recipe for chaos. Intervention was seen as inevitable, and isolationism became a dirty word. Politicians debated particular engagements, but they rarely questioned America's role as global cop…But as Wertheim reminds us, foreign policy elites chose to take on this role, and they can choose to leave it behind.
Influential…Since World War II, the U.S. idea of internationalism has become fatally intertwined with the idea of maintaining the United States’ global military dominance.
Foreign Policy - Michael Hirsch
How did the United States acquire the will to lead the world? How did primacy come to be the natural posture of America’s policy elite? In this groundbreaking new history, Stephen Wertheim overturns our existing understanding of the emergence of American global dominance. A work of brilliantly original historical scholarship that will transform the way we think about the past, the present, and the future.
Wertheim provides an important historical corrective to the notion that the United States sleepwalked into global supremacy…An important read.
He brings into sharp focus the doings of elites…America’s pursuit of global supremacy was, in his engaging and studious retelling, less the final outcome of long-simmering forces or of latent but unreasoned belief systems than a ‘deliberate decision’ made by a numerically small group of individuals at a very specific moment in time.
Humanitas - Matthew Cantirino
Even readers who question Wertheim’s premises or differ from him on current policy will find much to learn in a concise, jargon-free study grounded on careful research.
Law & Liberty - William Anthony Hay
Stephen Wertheim isn’t only a great historian of American foreign policy. He uses history to offer a critique of American foreign policy that Americans desperately need now.
Forcefully argues that primacy-by-choice has had parlous consequences—for both the United States and the world.
Diplomatic History - Susan L. Caruthers
Original…A bold and sweeping reinterpretation of history…It is also a tract for our times. As such, its key point is that the United States’ commitment to global military dominance arose from the specific, unforeseen and exceptional circumstances of 1940–41 and represented a departure from the nation’s previous path.
S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History - John A. Thompson
Wertheim challenges the longstanding U.S. foreign policy by dismantling a narrative about American ‘isolationism’; in doing so, he provides the intellectual foundations for the reemergence of a truly liberal American grand strategy.
The only recent book to explore U.S. elites’ decision to become the world’s primary power in the early 1940s—a profoundly important choice that has affected the lives of billions of people throughout the globe…Contributes to the effort to transform U.S. foreign policy by giving pro-restraint Americans a usable past. Though Tomorrow, the World is not a polemic, its implications are invigorating…Wertheim opens space for Americans to reexamine their own history and ask themselves whether primacy has ever really met their interests.
New Republic - Daniel Bessner
Americans now believe global leadership is their birthright; this splendid book uncovers the origins of that conviction. Wertheim’s detailed analysis of strategic planning before and during World War II shows that the pursuit of global primacy was a conscious choice, made by a foreign policy elite that equated ‘internationalism’ with the active creation of a world order based on U.S. military preponderance. Myths about the seductive dangers of ‘isolationism’ helped marginalize alternative perspectives, leaving armed dominance and military interventionism as the default settings for U.S. foreign policy. A carefully researched and beautifully written account, Tomorrow, the World sheds new light on a critical period in U.S. history and reminds us that internationalism can take many different forms.
A stimulating revisionist view that sees the move to world dominance as a conscious choice.
How did the idea of American military supremacy come to be understood as essential and inevitable? In this important and beautifully crafted revisionist history, Stephen Wertheim shows the way a foreign policy consensus in favor of American predominance was forged as Hitler ransacked Europe. It became an assumed necessity after World War II, and later fueled military build-up and ongoing armed conflict. By revealing the contingent path of American global militarism, Wertheim makes an urgent and overdue reassessment possible.
Excellent…An important contribution to the history of U.S. foreign policy, and it is also relevant to contemporary debates about the proper U.S. role in the world.
American Conservative - Daniel Larson
How did the idea of American military supremacy come to be understood as essential and inevitable? In this important and beautifully crafted revisionist history, Stephen Wertheim shows the way a foreign policy consensus in favor of American predominance was forged as Hitler ransacked Europe. It became an assumed necessity after World War II, and later fueled military build-up and ongoing armed conflict. By revealing the contingent path of American global militarism, Wertheim makes an urgent and overdue reassessment possible.
