Аннотация:Once we cease to distract ourselves with lifeless arguments about isolationism, we shall be amazed to discover that there is already an immense American internationalism. American jazz, Hollywood movies, American slang, American machines and patented products, are in fact the only things that every community in the world, from Zanzibar to Hamburg, recognizes in common. Blindly, unintentionally, accidentally and really in spite of ourselves, we are already a world power in all the trivial ways – in very human ways. (Henry R. Luce, “The American Century”) Luce's famous essay “The American Century” called on Americans to accept their special “duty and opportunity” in the post-World War II era. They should, he wrote, exert “the full impact” of their influence on the world in four ways: through promoting systems of free enterprise, propagating training in practical, technical skills, becoming the Good Samaritan to the entire world in times of hunger and need, and spreading their ideals of freedom and justice. A central premise of Luce's essay was its identification of American power with the attractions of its culture. Luce's American Century was not articulated as a vision resting on arms buildups, nuclear capacity, covert intrigue, or other forms of realpolitik. It stemmed from the long tradition that identified American influence (or Americanization) with an inevitable and presumably welcomed process of cultural and economic modernization.
