The end of the “American Century”?

“We Americans are unhappy,” is the opening line in a famous 1941 Life magazine article, in which Henry Luce called for Americans to harness the nation’s ingenuity as a benevolent force in the world. Partly aimed at the nation’s 1930s isolationism, his earnest exhortation to be imaginative and bold also spoke to a moment when decisive action might well turn the tide of the Second World War in Europe. The so-called American ideals that Luce identified include love of freedom, equality of opportunity, self-reliance, justice, truth and charity, among others. It is questionable whether Americans truly embodied all these values in 1941, but it mattered that they thought they did. That unshakeable confidence led to engagement with the wider world and a drive to create a better world.

It is hard to ignore the current dismantling of much of the moral rhetoric and internationalist sentiment that infuses Luce’s piece. American confidence is gone, and those ideals seem quaint and antiquated, begging the question: is the “American Century” at an end?

While our present government leadership may decry the ideals Luce identified, what is sometimes forgotten is the bipartisan agreement that led to this stance. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wartime leadership are common knowledge, but few realize that Herbert Hoover, Republican president from 1929-1933, at one time embodied the birth of the American Century and the nation’s ambition to be a power abroad.

Hoover certainly was not a charismatic orator, nor was he an intellectual or a military leader. Born in Iowa in 1874 and orphaned as a small boy, he moved to live with Quaker relatives in Oregon, where he began work at 14. After passing the entrance exam for the new Stanford University, Hoover graduated with a geology degree, working to pay his way through college. This early habit of hard work continued in his engineering career and eventually led him to a personal fortune by the time he turned 40. This is when Hoover turned to public service.

The United States remained officially neutral in 1914 when war broke out, but that did not mean it was inactive. Americans intervened aggressively in wartime trade disputes, supplied armaments, and under Hoover’s watchful eye, fed nine million Belgian and French civilians. By the time Hoover’s multiple agencies—public, private, mixed—wound down a century ago, the United States had provided food, material relief, and medical aid to two dozen European countries. Hoover oversaw the massive American Relief Administration and European Children’s Fund, making him a household name, and along with Wilson, the face of the US abroad.

While relief workers pursued a mission to save and improve the world, millions of Americans started learning the fundamentals of “Western Civilization” in newly created, uniquely American university classes. US intervention abroad supplemented a new interest in collecting and teaching the cultural heritage of other nations, helping to construct a historical narrative in which Americans had reached the pinnacle of progress.

This was new. The 1917 American Expeditionary Force marked the first large-scale US intervention in a global conflict. Nearly simultaneously, the nation funded massive relief programs, leading to a need to redefine American identity. Did they have moral authority, and if so, on what was it based? Were they uniquely placed to bring efficiency and technological knowhow to an ailing world? Why should Americans act to ameliorate suffering of strangers? American loans, agricultural surpluses, and transport capacity all supported US claims for supervision of a return to normalcy after conflict. Postwar loans bankrolled the world, in the process creating wealth for many in the United States.

Propaganda campaigns broadly publicized US generosity and humane leadership, creating a sense of what it meant to be an American in a globalizing world. Domestic efforts to improve society in the Progressive era now found new fields of operation abroad, creating a kind of international classroom for Americans to rescue those in need of help. Modern advertisements made it clear to Americans that not only did food provide sustenance but it was a principled imperative for a democratic nation—wealth begat responsibility. This rhetoric echoed Americans’ own sense of their mission to save the “Old World,” so it resonated with both volunteers and ordinary donors to the cause.

By the 1920s, Americans conceived of their own nation’s citizens as modern, progressive, rational, neutral, and efficient. They juxtaposed these qualities with a Europe in tatters, one that had squandered its modernity and for whom the war served as proof of its moral and political bankruptcy. By making explicit the connection between US governmental relief and American expertise, aid workers echoed the increasingly coherent rationale of US moral responsibility to model democracy for others. Rescuing a grateful world had become central to an American global mission and self-identity and thus began the American Century.

As the current Trump administration moves speedily to defund and discontinue various aspects of foreign aid, the United States is sending a message that it no longer sees itself as a global power for good. Hoover’s organizations created a model that saved lives and created a market for surplus food that American farmers had produced, helping to bolster prices and to reduce stocks of army rations and grain. This coalition brought together missionaries, reformers, financial institutions, diplomats, and farmers for the purpose of aid and development. Hoover fervently believed that food aid encouraged global stability and created a positive image of the United States abroad, and this idea, echoed by later presidents such as Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, was a central value of the “American Century.” In 2025, it appears the United States is ending that century-long commitment to foreign responsibility.

Featured image by Jakob Owens via Unsplash.