The United States in 1989: A Brief History of the Future

I seek to explore the ideas, events as well as the motive forces that are recasting American democracy after 1989, a period both of extraordinary opportunities and challenges of the United States.

The present reconfiguration of self-determination and democracy is but an iteration of a long-standing American concern with the nature and the extent of Aself-government.@ Then and now, the quandary of a self-governing American people is captured in the history of both the deep entanglement of the United States in the world, the unceasing effort to seek out the world and pull it in -- people, territory, goods, knowledge -- and the equally insistent efforts to put the world off and negotiate a separation that would define the nation, the territory and its political culture from and over against the world. It is also a history of the world being attracted to -- much as it is distracted and repulsed by --  a United States of America that, even while behaving as a distinctly parochial power, has always claimed to be a model, global nation.

While American historians have explored the problem of self-determination and democracy in past ages with great insight, this commentary falls short when it comes to exploring the present. The themes of “empire” or “market,” and not least “homeland security,” have dominated the political debate. I plan to explore in my paper, how the quintessential American question of self-determination and democracy has been rearticulated in these debates and how they rephrase the question of sovereignty in and for a global age.