Extrinsic State: Mass Politics and Extraterritorial Sovereignty in the American Century

How did ruling other peoples around the world alter the ways in which Americans ruled themselves? This paper will attempt to answer that question by focusing on the formative early years of American global hegemony. Between the “destroyers for bases” agreement with Great Britain in 1940 and the onset of the Korean War under United Nations auspices in 1950---and before the global rivalry with the Soviet Union hardened into a Cold War system of interstate contention---the United States embarked on an unprecedented project of extra-territorial sovereignty. Extemporized amid the military exigencies of global conflict in the Second World War, formed by the tutelage and opportunity structure afforded by the “special relationship” with Britain and its empire, this project evolved into an interlocking set of international commitments. These commitments amounted to much more than treaty obligations or the transient conveniences of diplomacy and entente. They required offshore state-building on a vast scale. Given the extraordinary resource extraction this entailed, how did the politics of international commitments reshape domestic politics and policy: what was the “blowback” of refugee aid on immigration policy? of UNRRA and subsequent food relief on OPA-style rationing, price control, food stamps, school lunches, etc.? of TVA-style modernization projects on designs for other “little TVAs” throughout the US? of Bretton Woods institutions on the politics of financial regulation and antitrust? of the ERP and other forms of aid to socialist allies on the reframing of the welfare state after 1945 around market/insurance instruments and a militarized model of full citizenship? To answer these questions I will place elite policymaking decisions in the context of a shifting opportunity structure in Congress, among organized interest groups, and within the electorate.