Explicit doctrines of racial supremacy are in bad odor nowadays, particularly among foreign policy elites; such retrograde ideas are viewed widely as the justly neglected relic of a long-forgotten era. Suggestive of this trend are the critical studies of the “construction of whiteness” that have proliferated of late. Among other things, these studies have asked a quite profound question: How was it that those who had warred on the shores of Europe – English versus Irish, French versus German, Russian versus Pole, Serb versus Croat, even Jew versus Gentile – all of a sudden on arriving on these shores were reconstructed as “white” and provided real or imagined privileges based on “white supremacy”?

Some of these studies have noted that in addition to providing a cohesive identity for disparate European immigrants, “whiteness” and “white supremacy” had the added advantage of providing a convenient rationale for seizing the resources and labor of those of a darker hue who were presumed to be “inferior”: that is “race” (“whiteness”) was derived from “power” and, yes, “power” was derived from “race.”

Still, despite the richness of this plethora of studies, few have sought to place the construction of whiteness in the context of U.S. foreign policy – although this global context was highly relevant in this process: minimally, preventing the proliferation of ethnic tensions that had helped to plunge Europe into war so often encouraged the construction of “whiteness” and “white supremacy.”