“New Vistas of Opportunity”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines how the temporal identity of America manifested and functioned within the social scientific theory underlying its approach to Cold War policy in the 1950s and 1960s, modernization theory. It examines the space-time contrasts embedded within the theory’s development scheme, how those space-times created Self/Other contrasts, and how those contrasts, in turn, positioned America in a privileged position vis-à-vis the global future. It demonstrates the discursive means through which the future of the newly decolonized societies was aligned with American interests and how a historically specific vision of the future was transformed into a universal, inevitable future. This chapter demonstrates that American efforts to secure and wield power drew upon contrasting projections of the global future that pitted an American future against a Soviet future and appropriated the future of the newly decolonized societies as part of its Cold War strategy.