Savior and Seducer

From the author of A Renegade History of the United States, a boldly persuasive, provocative counter-narrative that reframes our understanding of America’s role in the wider world

Over the past 250 years, historian Thaddeus Russell argues in his bold and eye-opening new book, America has projected two opposing forces abroad: one imperial and the other liberating. Contrary to the common view that the Founders were isolationists, he contends that they envisioned a global empire—and that, ever since, the nation has cast itself as a savior, claiming a mission to uplift the world and impose the American way of life through armed force. Simultaneously, Russell shows, the global spread of American popular culture emerged as one of modern history's most subversive forces—an existential threat to authoritarian regimes that was frequently more destabilizing than military intervention, yet free of the violent blowback that typically accompanies foreign intrusion.

Russell’s striking narrative extends earlier portrayals of America’s imperial ambition. He argues that the Civil War and Reconstruction were a colonial project by the North to conquer a seceded sovereign territory and remake it in the North’s image. He shows that while progressive ideals helped justify U.S. military rule in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, the jazz introduced by American soldiers in Manila nightclubs had a deeper and more enduring global impact. He contends that U.S. entry into World War II was driven less by defensive or humanitarian imperatives than by imperial calculation—making two regional conflicts into a global war—and that it ensured the culmination of the Holocaust. He also documents how authoritarian regimes, from the Soviet Union to contemporary Iran, have been eroded from within by “the American way of life.” Finally, he argues that Donald Trump has not withdrawn the United States from the world so much as reframed its imperial mission: from the progressive export of ideals to a more openly territorial and transactional assertion of power. 

As elegantly written and impeccably documented as it is provocative, chronicling familiar characters as well as those lost to history, Russell adds a vitally important addition to our national narrative, shining an electric new light on our nation’s relationship to the wider world.