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Long before the United States because a
major force in global affairs, Americans believed they were
superior to others because of their inventiveness, productivity,
and economic and social well-being. U.S. expansionists assumed
a mandate to "civilize" non-Western peoples by
demanding submission to American technological prowess and
design. This civilizing mission provided the rationale to
displace the Indians from much of our continent, to build
an island empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean, and to
promote unilateral -- at times military -- interventionism
throughout Asia. In our age of "smart bombs" and
mobile warfare, technological aptitude remains preeminent
in validating America's global mission.
Michael Adas brilliantly pursues the history
of this mission through America's foreign relations over
nearly four centuries from North America to the Philippines,
Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. The belief that it is our
right and destiny to remake foreign societies in our image
has endured from the early decades of colonization to our
current crusade to implant American-style democracy in the
Muslim Middle East.
Dominance by Design explores the
critical ways in which technological superiority has undergirded
U.S. policies of unilateralism, preemption, and interventionism
in foreign affairs wile raising us from an impoverished
frontier nation to a global power. Challenging the long-held
assumptions and imperatives that sustain the belief in the
civilizing mission. Adas gives us an essential guide to
America's past and present role in the world as well as
cautionary lessons for the future.
Michael Adas is the Abraham E. Voorhees
Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
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