With the return of global competition between great powers in the 21^st century, the world is increasingly moving into a new period of international history. This evolution allows historians to look at the long arc of what has become known as the American Century (1890s to 2008) for the first time. This panel will present an analysis of four inflection points in US diplomatic history that span the American Century.

The first presentation will address the emergence of the United States on the world stage as a peer competitor. In an effort to align growing national potential with tentative foreign expansion, the diplomatic exertions from 1890 to the US entrance into WWI was by turns overly exuberant and then reticent, an unease only settled by its relative rise after the destruction of WWI.

The second paper will consider the practical and intellectual process by which the US embraced a new global role after 1945. During the subsequent two decades both US leaders and US allies articulated, recognized, and embraced American primacy within the new international system. This system’s original focus was transatlantic, a central aspect of the presentation, though we will also consider global implications of American power and how many contemporary challenges facing the US and its allies were anticipated in this postwar conversation.

The third presentation will explore the ways the United States wielded its power in what was widely perceived among the national security establishment as its sphere of influence, Latin America. Some of the Cold War’s most profound and transformative episodes occurred in Latin America, including the Cuban revolution and missile crisis; the peaceful election in Chile of the first openly Marxist head of state; the Nicaraguan revolution and regional war in Central America; and the neocolonial war over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. US foreign policymakers employed a variety of strategies to enforce “hemispheric solidarity” in the face of the perceived Soviet threat. This presentation will examine some of these strategies at key inflection points in the Cold War and evaluate how effectively they achieved long-term US policy objectives.

The final paper will address America’s relative decline following its peak at the end of the Cold War. As the United States became increasingly mired in Middle Eastern conflicts, states such as China gained in strength, and challenged an American-led, liberal world order. The paper will attempt to historicize the post-Cold War period by moving beyond questions about whether the American decline was inevitable, or what type of theory best explains it. Instead, the paper will ask why actors and intellectuals understood the evolution of post-Cold War politics in the way that they did.

Taken as a whole, this panel offers a reexamination of the United States, viewed not as a status quo power but rather through its 20^th century efforts to renegotiate international power structures, a role that may return with increasing relevance in coming years.