Looking Outward

Abstract

This chapter considers the rise of the United States to world power status and hegemony in the Western Hemisphere at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that America’s decision to “turn outward” and establish an imperial presence in the world embodied the recognitive practices constitutive of world power status. Specifically, American leaders envisioned that a powerful naval capability and sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere would be the backbone of its national greatness on the world stage and lead the established powers to recognize its position among the system’s world powers. The fragility of the United States’s aspiring social identity and the importance of British recognition to that identity became apparent during the Venezuelan Crisis, when the United States initiated an international crisis over its right to become involved in hemispheric disputes. The crisis was defused when British leaders engaged in recognitive speech acts that constructed a shared, Anglo-Saxon identity, which would become the foundation for cooperation between the two adversaries. These recognitive speech acts expressed a normative acceptance of American power and legitimated its status among the world powers.