How the United States created an identity that shaped the rest of the world.

Probably the most powerful nation ever seen, the US is special. It boasts military, economic, and cultural reach that is unmatched. That does not, however, mean it has been unchallenged. Since the Second World War, when the US unequivocally led a global civil society, a series of threats to US security and hegemony have emerged. Traditional theories such as Realism and Liberalism have sought to explain US foreign policy towards such threats. However, underneath its traditional core, the normative values of the US which underpinned its identity were just as, if not more, influential in identifying and framing its enemies. It is possible to look the case studies of the Soviet Union, violent Islamic terrorism, and the contemporary rise of China to assess how, and to what degree, US foreign policy was influenced by the construction of its own identity in lieu of traditional power calculations as advocated by realists in particular.

The interplay between ideas, interests, and identity in framing the foreign policy of the world’s most “indispensable nation” and how this policy sought to influence the international order, has practical as well as theoretical implications. Principally, because the power the United States can wield is unrivalled. Its military budget accounts 40% of the entire globe’s combined spending; it…