The United States may be an uncomfortable and even an accidental empire, but an empire of sorts it is, and like any empire, it shapes the world in ways great and small. Beyond its role as the guarantor of economic and military stability for much of the globe, America extends its influence through the export of ideas about government and commerce. Increasingly as the century nears its end, these ideas have worked to remake other countries in the American image.
If this sounds like the ethos of the Cold War-exporting democracy and American values-it may be no coincidence that one familiar agent of Cold War missionary zeal is enjoying its best days since the 1960s. In response to a surge of volunteers, and higher demand for those volunteers from host countries, Congress will soon expand the ranks of the Peace Corps by 50 percent, sending 10,000 Americans-the highest number since the agency's early days-to 80 countries. And the Peace Corps' mission has expanded as well-volunteers today are as likely to help villagers write a business plan as dig a well.
But the U.S. effort to create American-like instututions abroad is far more ambitious and elaborate than it ever was during the Cold War. Virtually every arm of the federal government is now engaged in a dialogue with officials in dozens of other countries-an exchange that, with few exceptions, amounts to teaching other governments how to adopt the U.S. approach to almost any issue.
This effort extends from the largest and most significant-such as sophisticated military exercises conducted with nations as diverse as Kazakhstan and South Africa-to the tiniest and most mundane corners of the U.S. government. The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, for example, enforces domestic civil service rules and has only about 150 employees, but it still manages to host 20 to 30 foreign visitors a year, from every part of the globe. Through this program, countries such as Uganda learn, in theory at least, how to set up a fair process to judge workplace disputes.
This is just one part of an uncoordinated but vast effort to export the U.S. legal system to other lands. Various federal agencies and federally funded nonprofit groups have helped scores of countries write modern constitutions over the past few decades; South Africa and the Czech Republic are two examples. This enterprise has greatly expanded since the fall of the Soviet Empire. This same combination of federal agencies (such as the Agency for International Development) and U.S.-funded groups (such as the National Endowment for Democracy) has helped countries write criminal and civil laws, train police detectives and public defenders, and even set up a network of notaries public.
Reinforcing these fledgling legal frameworks are dozens of programs to help create an American-style political culture-in Russia, AID runs what amounts to an Academy of Democratic Values for politicians and top bureaucrats, drilling them on U.S. notions of church-state separation, the role of the armed forces in a civil society, and freedom of the press. More than 1,900 of Russia's elite have attended. Industry and professional organizations such as the American Bar Association also participate. And American labor unions often get money from U.S. international agencies to help promote collective bargaining abroad.
The effects of this great exportation of American methods and systems are manifest everywhere. After the financial crisis hit South Korea and other East Asian nations in 1997, federal officials identified one barrier to recovery-the lack of modern and efficient bankruptcy codes in many of these countries. A speed-up in funding from the U.S.-dominated World Bank helped Thailand and Korea rewrite their bankruptcy laws. As is generally the case in America's overseas proselytizing, these were not entirely selfless actions: A U.S.-style bankruptcy law helps to protect American companies doing business in these places.
In addition to an increase in scope, American missionary programs have also become far more specific and concrete in their aims. The effort is not merely to export American values; it is to export the American way of doing things, the entire American system of government really-piece by detailed piece. Here's one small example: For the Russian city of Novgorod, an AID-funded program wrote a new city charter-complete with rules for public participation in local budget-making-that was based on the charter of Hartford, Conn.
This remaking of the world in America's image is nothing new of course. European colonialists left governmental and administrative legacies all over Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But now some of those legacies are giving way to American methods-investigative judges being replaced by professional police and prosecutors for example. Today, even the one-time colonialists are adopting some of the American law and practice, despite the power of the 15-nation European Union to impose its own single standard. In the area of antitrust law, for example, EU regulators are moving slowly but perceptibly toward the American approach in which rigid guidelines are used to describe how much of a market one company can control.
Economics, in one form or another, is usually behind the success of American ideas of government and business. The dominance of American enterprise makes it more likely that U.S. approaches to business regulation will be accepted around the world. It helps, too, that the United States is usually the only nation willing to pay to export its ideas. This happens formally, through exchange programs such as the one at the Merit Systems Board, but also informally, through American dominance of international organizations.
Its dues may be in arrears at the United Nations, but the United States pays the largest share of the costs for maintaining virtually all important multilateral organizations, and that fact alone has helped it dominate these groups. Sometimes that domination is explicit-the United States holds the largest number of votes at the International Monetary Fund-but sometimes it is less obvious. At the 29-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, where all governments are ostensibly equal, the United States pays 25 percent of the budget, partly to keep the OECD from becoming the captive of European bureaucrats. In the past two years, the United States overcame European objections at the OECD to push through a new pact curbing business bribery, and stopped the organization from adopting for foreign investment rules that were opposed by U.S. bankers.
To see the myriad ways in which the United States replicates its laws and customs abroad, consider telephones. Fifteen years ago, the United States was alone in abandoning the idea of a single national telephone monopoly. The immediate effect was to stimulate investment and innovation in the United States, and sharply lower costs. This wouldn't have mattered much but for the size and strength of the U.S. economy, which gained an immeasurable comparative advantage over Europe and Japan. Technological advances in telecommunications here also helped enhance U.S. influence in the international standard-setting organizations that make sure people can talk to one another in different countries. Pressure then inexorably started to build in Europe to privatize and breakup its government phone monopolies, and the United States used international groups such as the International Telecommunications Union to effect those reforms. Through the ITU, U.S. officials successfully pressured foreign phone monopolies to slash the rates they charge foreigners to connect calls, a subsidy that had been shielding the monopolies from foreign competition.
A 1997 agreement in the World Trade Organization pushed telecommunications reform even further, giving European governments cover for a politically risky phone deregulation. The WTO also adopted a blueprint for regulating phone competition that is prompting other nations to create their own versions of the Federal Communications Commission, more deeply embedding American laws and procedures.
But it's in shaping the laws and standards that affect the spread of high technology and services that American business and government have had their greatest success abroad. The Internet is perhaps the best example-a potentially world-transforming development, and one that the rest of the world is being led to accept on U.S. terms. Indeed, America's promotion of the Internet is the most ambitious element of its trade policy because U.S. government and industry officials are effectively asking foreign governments to create a free-trade zone in cyberspace for words, images, intellectual property, physical products-anything that can be bought, licensed, or rented via the Internet.
In effect, this policy is exporting the United States' free-market, anti-tax regime and the free-speech rules that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed over the past few decades. To accomplish this ambitious goal, U.S. officials want other countries to clear away trade barriers-meaning Europe's value-added taxes and rules that restrict advertising, consumer protections, and data privacy.
Washington's confidence in U.S. dominance of the Internet is exemplified by its hands-off policy toward the groups that manage the Internet. The U.S. government recently backed a plan to transfer a critical Internet management function to Switzerland-the group that registers all those "dot coms" and other Internet domain names. U.S. officials believe this will help grow the Internet marketplace faster abroad, something that will only benefit American companies. It's not just Euro Disneyland anymore; America, for better and for worse, is the world's Tommorrowland.