“Vistas to the Future”

Abstract

Abstract This discourse-analytic chapter examines the different space-times embedded in Henry Luce’s essay “The American Century,” President Truman’s speech “A Special Message to Congress on Greece and Turkey,” and National Security Resolution 68. The chapter also analyzes how these documents positioned different global actors and constituencies vis-à-vis the future. It explores how the United States was discursively positioned vis-à-vis the postwar future and how the nation’s claim of exceptionalism figured in that positioning. The analysis demonstrates how a temporal interpretation of the Cold War manifested in foreign policy discourse, and, moreover, how this discourse granted the United States a privileged role in shaping the postwar geopolitical future. Its central argument is that various space-time and Self/Other contrasts aligned different geopolitical actors with different space-times in such a way that rendered the postwar global future the special province of the United States.