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Most interventionists cheered Luce's appeal. But even some of them were disturbed by the missionary's son's missionary zeal. The Nation called Luce's program magnanimous but also smug and self-righteous. The Literary Magazine at his alma mater, Yale, called it "jingoistic jargon." Luce's favorite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, later wrote that the very title implied an "egoistic corruption."
Luce, distressed and puzzled, once said he regretted using the phrase American Century. He need not have. Sure, the title and the piece itself had arrogant overtones, a belief in a divinely ordained American mission. Yet there was also chastisement for American faults and some prudent qualifications.
Today what seems more striking than the almost quaint idealism and the bombastic style (forgive me, Harry) is the degree to which, shorn of rhetoric, the essay proved to be a realistic program, anticipating the Marshall Plan, Truman's Point Four call for American technical assistance abroad, the Kennedy Peace Corps, Food for Peace. America as a powerhouse of democratic ideals, as the champion of freedom and the source of material sustenance and technical expertise -- all animated U.S. foreign policy the past half-century.
What, if anything, of this vision remains valid? No matter how American wealth and power may have changed, Luce's assumptions still apply with remarkable force.
The world has indeed become "indivisible," interdependent. More than ever we -- and others -- need a "vital international economy" with open trade. Democracy, once regarded by many as hopelessly inefficient compared with the planned and regimented dictatorships, has proved itself indispensable to productive economies. We have learned much more about the connection between the abundant life and freedom. We have also learned that communism is really a new form of feudalism, a fixed society. Such a society cannot create abundance.
With the Soviet decline and the emergence of a prosperous and uniting Europe, the U.S. contribution to the Continent's defense and political stability, while still important, will diminish. That is as it should be. The fact that the U.S. is standing aside as the Germans give economic aid to the Soviets (and the Japanese to China) may be read as a sign of reduced American means and influence. But it is also an overdue form of burden sharing that the U.S. has long urged and that must increasingly be carried beyond the present NATO area.
While the threat of an attack on Western Europe and of global war is much reduced, the next century will bring other dangers.
The most important form of power will be economic, not military. That is already a truism -- but not true everywhere. Indeed the world can be divided into those who live in the era of economics and those who cling to noneconomic, atavistic forces: religion, national or tribal passions, militarism.
The distinction is not precise or absolute. But, as the leading example, the European Community is founded on economic principles. A succession of terrible wars has sharply reduced the nationalist-tribal and militarist instincts in Western Europe. The Community is trying to build a supranational order based on economic cooperation and competition, on material self-interest, ultimately on reason. Japan is also pouring most of its once militaristic energies into economic channels.