Printed Page 879 Chapter Chronology
Conclusion: Defining the Government's Role at Home and Abroad
More than two hundred years after the birth of the United States, Colin Powell referred to the unfinished nature of the American promise when he declared that the question of America's role in the world "isn't answered yet." In fact, the end of the Cold War, the rise of international terrorism, and the George W. Bush administration's doctrines of preemption and unilateralism sparked new debates over the long-standing question of how the United States should act beyond its borders.
Nor had Americans set to rest questions about the role of government at home. In a population greatly derived from people fleeing oppressive governments, Americans had debated for more than two centuries what responsibilities the government should shoulder and what was best left to private enterprise, families, churches, and other voluntary institutions. Far more than most industrialized democracies, the United States had relied on private rather than public obligation, individual rather than collective solutions. In the twentieth century, Americans had significantly enlarged the federal government's powers and responsibilities, but the years since the 1960s had seen a decline of trust in government's ability to improve people's lives, even as a poverty rate of 20 percent among children and a growing gap between rich and poor continued and intensified into the twenty-first century.
The shifting of control of the government back and forth between Republicans and Democrats from 1989 to 2010 revealed a dynamic debate over government's role in domestic affairs. The first Bush administration's civil rights measure for people with disabilities and Bill Clinton's incremental reforms both built on a deep-rooted tradition that sought to realize the American promise of justice and human well-being. Those who mobilized against the ravages of globalization worked internationally for what populists, progressives, New Deal reformers, and many activists of the 1960s had sought for the domestic population: protection of individual rights, curbs on capitalism, assistance for victims of rapid economic change, and fiscal policies that placed greater responsibility on those best able to pay for the collective good. Even the second Bush administration, which sought to limit government's reach, supported the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare prescription drug program, and it departed from traditional conservative policy in a gigantic program to bail out failing businesses when the financial crisis hit the economy in 2008. The controversy surrounding Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy and reform health care and the financial industry replayed America's long-standing debate about the government's appropriate role.
The United States became more embedded in the global economy as products, information, and people crossed borders with amazing speed and frequency. New waves of immigration altered the face of the American population. Although the end of the Cold War brought about unanticipated cooperation between the United States and its former enemies, globalization also contributed to the threat of deadly terrorism within America's own borders. In response to those dangers, the second Bush administration launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama ended the Iraq War in 2011, but he pursued terrorists aggressively and continued the war in Afghanistan. Both administrations sought to maintain the preeminence in the world that the United States had held since World War II, but debate continued about how best to use America's power.