(3 of 5)
THE GLOBAL CENTURY Human society over the millenniums has evolved from villages to city-states to empires to nation-states. In this century, everything became global. Much of the first half was dominated by the death spasms of an international order that for 400 years was based on the shifting alliances of European nation-states, but this time the resulting wars were world wars. Now not only are military issues global, so are economic and even cultural ones. People everywhere are threatened by weapons anywhere, they produce and consume in a single networked economy, and increasingly they have access to the same movies and music and ideas.
THE MASS-MARKET CENTURY Yet another defining event of the century came in 1913, when Henry Ford opened his assembly line. Ordinary people could now afford a Model T (choice of color: black). Products were mass-produced and mass-marketed, with all the centralization and conformity that entails. Television sets and toothpaste, magazines and movies, shows and shoes: they were distributed or broadcast, in cookie-cutter form, from central facilities to millions of people. In reaction, a modernist mix of anarchy, existential despair and rebellion against conformity motivated art, music, literature, fashion and even behavior for much of the century.
THE GENOCIDAL CENTURY Then there was the dark side. Amid the glories of the century lurked some of history's worst horrors: Stalin's collectivization, Hitler's Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, Idi Amin's rampages. We try to personalize the blame, as if it were the fault of just a few madmen, but in fact it was whole societies, including advanced ones like Germany, that embraced or tolerated madness. What they had in common was that they sought totalitarian solutions rather than freedom. Theologians have to answer the question of why God allows evil. Rationalists have one almost as difficult: Why doesn't progress make civilizations more civilized?
THE AMERICAN CENTURY That's what TIME's founder Henry Luce called it in a 1941 essay. He was using the phrase to exhort his compatriots to prepare for war, to engage in the struggle for freedom. They did, yet again. And they won. Some countries base their foreign policy on realism or its Prussian-accented cousin, realpolitik: a cold and careful calculation of strategic interests. America is unique in that it is equally motivated by idealism. Whether it is the fight against fascism or communism, or even misconceived interventions like Vietnam, America's mission is to further not only its interests but also its values. And that idealist streak is a source of its global influence, even more than its battleships. As became clear when the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1989, America's clout in the world comes not just from its military might but from the power and appeal of its values. Which is why it did, indeed, turn out to be an American Century.
So what will the next century be? The reams of guesses made in the next two years are destined to be digitally retrieved decades hence and read with a smirk. But let's take that risk, peer into the haze and slap a few labels on the postmillennial period: