CITATION
REVIEW
Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy by Stephen Wertheim is a work that really asks the reader to think. Recently published, in 2020 Wertheim’s work seeks to answer the question of when, why, and how foreign policy elites of the United States decided that they had to achieve global armed primacy (the supreme political and military power of the world). Written over five chapters, the heart of this work is an intellectual history that tracks the thinking of U.S. elites in response to the events taking place prior to, during, and after, U.S. entry into the Second World War.
Specifically, Wertheim rebuffs those who would center the story of U.S. global supremacy on the idea of the U.S. leaving behind isolationism. Further, Wertheim also rebuffs those who would center the story of U.S. global supremacy on the idea of the U.S. always coveting domination. Wertheim’s work persuades the reader that U.S. global supremacy was a choice. A choice that was made due to World War Two, which led elite persons within the United States to imagine and take steps that would extend U.S. forms of law and order across the globe.
Wertheim’s work rests on the paired assumptions that the foundational nature of U.S. action and policies includes “exceptionalist nationalism” and internationalist behavior. In introducing these assumptions and tying them together, Wertheim demonstrates how pre-1930s elites balanced U.S. public opinion and power relations with the choice to not contemplate supremacy. It is this described foundational nature then, that the author has underlying the work as to why post-1930s elites acted the way they did in response to the events going on around them.
This book is also interesting in that it does not go further into why the U.S. would seek to keep supremacy in the post-World War Two era than the creation of the United Nations. However, the fact that it does not go further is not a bad thing. In fact, it demonstrates a good writing technique, in knowing when to stop writing. Wertheim stops his work after he answered his original question (when, why, and how, foreign policy elites of the United States decided that they had to achieve global armed primacy). For the author, the answer to the research question is that the U.S. choose global supremacy in the later 1930s due to the war events taking place by shifting U.S. public opinion in favor of activeness in the world while positing the U.S. as a leader in the United Nations.
Scholars of the United States in the world, the United Nations, and the relationship between the U.S. and the U.N., U.S. grand strategy, and general U.S. politics, need to have this work on their reading list. It offers interesting insights which leave the reader contemplating the relationship between the U.S. and the world. It also leaves plenty of room to contemplate if Wertheim’s theory surrounding the thought processes elites and this work of ideas holds weight beyond the era it speaks of.