“An empire of wealth” by John Steele Gordon (2004)

In the process of creation “empire of wealth”, the economy of the United States has experienced enormous bursts in 1800s.
Gordon tries to explain how the economy of the United States developed and change to a dynamic economy.
He begins the story from the mid 1800 when the federal government operated in deficit, the national debt increased and the treasury depleted.
In order to solving these problems, the government began to sell bonds and taxed all kind of property, rents, interests, salaries. Totally everything else was taxed as well. On the other hand, it began to printing money. The results of issuing fiat money were inflation and hoarding. In that condition congress established a system of nationally chartered banks which were allowed to issue banknotes. During the war despite the improvement of industry, in the south, most of the industries were destroyed as a result of war; the bonds and paper money issued by confederate became worthless, agriculture devastated, the cotton crop could not be exported.
With the end of the war and slavery, a new system of agriculture developed and the system of sharecropping arose. In that time the economy of south based on agriculture and extractive industry.
In The time between Civil War and world war, the American economy, changed profoundly, grew instantly and became more diversified. After the Civil War the economy of the union was a kind of unstable capitalism without regulation and regulators.
There was no central bank and mechanism to regulate the nation’s money supply. By 1900 there were many state-chartered banks which were small and financially weak. Gradually, the national banking act and the tax on banknotes issued by state-chartered banks, gave the country a uniform currency for the first time. In the following years industry and trading ameliorated; industry companies grew rapidly and railroads organized as corporations. The expansion of American railroads after Civil War was extraordinary; in fact United States established the largest railroad system in the world. Railroading became the country’s largest industry. Naturally just government could regulate this enormous industry.
Something else that influenced all sectors of economy was steel. Declining the cost of production of steel and its limitless using, enhanced the industrial power. Also, the American economy was increasingly fueled by oil. The expansion of standard oil affected the economic system profoundly.
Clearly, the growth of American industry changed the nature of American foreign trade. The United States became an exporter of agriculture and mineral products and manufactured goods. In 1900 United States exported locomotives, engines, rails, electrical machinery, wire, pipes, boilers and other goods. By 1907 American exports doubled and the United States enjoyed its prosperity.
In 1913 by the new Federal Reserve System, there was established a central bank that was the turning point in the economic history of the United States.
One of the features of United States was that the concept of primogeniture never had mean. The country prepared the condition for writers, artists, scholars and robber barons. The United States was a great cultural and intellectual power as it was an economic one.
The first years of the 20th century seemed as dawn of a new era of progress and prosperity. The country was advancing economically and socially as never before.
In fact Gordon focuses that most of the economic problems in the United States resulted from the Jeffersonian legacy of weak, and poorly regulated financial institutions-a The absence of a central bank caused many of the excessive booms and busts of the nineteenth century.
The story of “empire of wealth” is so entertaining and informative for understanding the trend of forming the robust economic system of the united state.

A New Republic by John Lukas, (2004)

Immigration of masses of people to United States was a determinant element in the character of the nature. In nineteen century huge numbers of people from British Isles, German, Scandinavia, Russia, Italy, Greek and other countries were immigrating to united stats. In the last years of nineteen century and in the First World War the rate of immigration grew.
Huge immigration had bilateral effects on Americans and immigrants.
Immigrants changed America; Immigration changed the religious and racial composition and America. One of the results of immigration was the transformation of American patriotism into nationalism. Immigration influenced the foreign policy. It Influenced on American life and culture from food to drink to music to movie industry. Even the pattern of Germanic education influenced American education.
America changed immigrants; the immigrants conformed to America and requirements of American life, they became Americanized. Americanization gave the exceptional pattern of behavior, speech and thought which made them different from non-Americans. Democratic nature of American system was something that immigrants found as an exceptional character of United States and tried to internalize that.
The influences of immigration on America and influences of America on immigrants made the nation with new men and women.

The two empires:
Until 1897 the British Empire was the greatest power in the earth. It was the largest empire in the history of the world. It had a quarter of the population of the world, it owned one fifth of all the land of globe, and its navy ruled most of the seas. British parliament, industry, sports, cloths, language were the most powerful ones the in glob. Those years were zenith of British power and British prestige.
During the years 1895 and 1898 between the relationship of Great Britain and the United States a revolution occurred. The alliance between United States and British in both world wars led to their victory and gradual abdication of the British Empire and continuing rise of American empire. The spirit of American imperialism was strengthening more and more. Eventually, by 1900 the idea of Pax Britannica replaced with the image of Pax Anglo-Americana.
The important point is the similarity of Great Britain and the United States. Americanization of the world was Anglicizing, somehow. English-speaking language and Protestantism were the most important elements that the two nations were in common.
On the other hand the conception of American and British Empire were different. While the dynamism and expansive sensation of the American empire were growing, the dynamism and expansion of British Empire began to decrease. The Americans were thinking about their manifest destiny while the British Empire was older than American one.
During the first decade of the new century England became more and more American. On one hand social distribution of power in both nations was the same and on the other hand their public culture was similar.
After the war in 1918 United States became the greatest power in the world. In fact the financial center of the world moved from London to New York. The president of the United States became a universally admired statesman of the world. In sum in the history of the United States the zenith of the American power was 1918. Another apogee of the United States power was in 1945.
By 1950 the democratic society moved to a bureaucratic one. It was bureaucracy that developed and institutionalized, that is why mass man replaced by organization man. Bureaucratization did not limited to government but a productive economy transited to an administrative economy. On the other hand all aspects of life including private lives were democratized.
Totally the nation which was created at the peak of the Modern Age became the representative of western civilization.

Imperial Grunts; the American Military on the Ground(2005) by Robert D.Kaplan

Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts is an examination of life on the ground for the American military in faraway lands. Kaplan begins whit describing Yemeni from the point of U.S. military source. He illustrates Yemeni as a conveniently chaotic in the heart of the Arabia. In that stovepipe bureaucracy, all of the power was in the hand of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Americans was just tribe that Saleh trusted. Ali Muhsen Saleh was the second powerful man in Yemeni after Saleh, he controlled an armored division that protected the capital. Terrorism, in Yemeni was so common. People were aggressive, commercial-minded, and well-armed. Yemeni had more assault rifles and grenade in the world. Tribal kingdoms in Yemeni-in all cities- grew and created imperial and aristocracies.
The whole Yemeni summarized in four worlds:” family, village, tribe, guns-tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. By empowering aristocracies, internecine violence and civil wars grew and because of disorganization, soviet found Yemeni government easy to change and in 1990 south Yemeni state collapsed in the course of the worldwide dissolution. In any case something that existed in all Yemeni was tribal feuds and the problem was that how to manage such an emporium.
Also Kaplan gives a history of the role Special Forces have played in Colombia. The role of U.S. Army Special Forces expanded in Colombia. The army was better gauged in Colombia, which represented a severe form of social breakdown than Yemeni or anyplace in the Middle East. reliance on American techniques and weapons systems, and the relationships between American officers and their third world protégés, gave the U.S. the access it needed to train a third world army.
While the United States army special forces couldn’t reform the whole Colombia army, it could improve some of the host country’s elite units which could then project power into the FARC-controlled badlands. The training of foreign armies provided the green berets’ basic function. Yet military was the most respected institution in Colombia, a large percentage of Colombia than Yemeni was considered by American military to be injun country. Key here is the conclusion that American power can only be exercised in a sustained way through discreet relationships at provinces and tribes. Author explains about transparent humanitarian role for SF. The task that United States appeared to have in both Yemeni and Colombia was similar and it was similarly impossible to make countries out of places that were never meant to be countries.

Reaganite Realism Should Guide Foreign Policy -Richard V. Allen

Richard V. Allen as Reagan's first national security advisor explains Reagan's policies in his administration era. Allen believes that the mystery of Reagan's success is his believe in "having simple answers to complex question not to be simplistic". He argues that Regan tried to deal with foreign challenges and domestic struggles that have treated United States but there were some principals that Regan was regarding in his policies; first of all Regan did not believe in military power for strategic problems, Reagan had a plan, a grand strategy and at the same time he welcomed advisors'ideas and tried to learn from adversaries.
In Regan era as other administrations, United States had encountered with various foreign challenges especially Islamic terrorism. Allen explains how Regan acted in that critical situation. The foreign policy of the United States during Reagan administration was the strategy of "peace and strength".
As Allen cites Reagan brought the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. He changed the policy of "détente" by the previous administrations- Nixon, Ford, and Carter- . In his new policy he focused on three fronts; decrease Soviet access to high technology and diminish their resources, including depressing the value of Soviet commodities on the world market; increase American defense expenditures to strengthen the U.S. negotiating position; and force the Soviets to devote more of their economic resources to defense and the most visible was the massive American military build-up.
Another Reagan's proposal was the Strategic Defense Initiative, he believed that defense prevented nuclear war. Reagan's supporters argued that SDI gave Reagan a stronger bargaining position.
In a policy which became known as the "Reagan doctrine", he supported anti-communism groups around the world. He found communism as a grotesque chapter in human history and he predicted that communism would collapse.
When Gorbachev ascended to power and offered to winding down the arms race, Reagan employed a skillful diplomacy and invited Gorbachev to peace. As a result of unique Reagan's policies, in 1988 the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe and also in 1989, their forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Some scholars believe that Reagan had made world safe from nuclear war.
Allen notices to the policies that Reagan had employed about Israel and Lebanon. When United States joined a unanimous U.N. Security Council Resolution and demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon, Reagan announced the formation of a new multinational force with France and Italy and defined a commission to "enabling the Lebanese Government to resume full sovereignty over its capital. As the president said his goal was just making it possible for the lawful authorities of Lebanon. As the result of Reagan's drastic diplomacy, according to an agreement, Lebanon and Israel ended the states of war and Israel began to withdraw from Lebanon.
About Persian Gulf, from my point of view, contrary to Allen view, Reagan's diplomacy was not fixed; it should be said that the main interest of the Reagan team regarding the Persian Gulf was landlocked Afghanistan which Soviet troops had entered in 1979 ,not Iran, or war, Reagan devoted resources to building up U.S military infrastructure in the Gulf. At first Iran remained on the back burner of the administration's policy concerns, in 1982 when Iranian troops invaded Iraq, it became obvious to Baghdad, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait that it was not possible to defeat Iran. Thus the official attention focused on the situation in the Persian Gulf. United States found that this condition threatened the stability of American allies in the region and they blamed Iran intransigence for its continuance. On the other hand U.S employed the policy of selling arms to Iran in order to forestall soviet political gains and American hostage in Lebanon. But after Iran-contra revelation United States engaged military in the Gulf against Iranian forces. Reagan's unstable policies toward Iran influenced Iran policy and in over all led to a loose of American prestige and influenced in the third world.
Totally Reagan era is evaluates as a good and moral period as I mentioned in dealing with foreign affairs, the administration was anti- communist, employed a foreign policy of "peace and strength" and played a major role in the end events of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the world from a bipolar to a unipolar military structure, providing America a unique "window of opportunity. Because of Reagan's policies and the results of them Reagan's presidency was known to many as the "Reagan Revolution,"