The United States was a superpower, with three-quarters of the global capital and two-thirds of the worldwide industrial capacity. Militarily, it maintained occupying troops from the Philippines and Japan to Germany, while expanding its economic influence through the Marshall Plan, war loans and grants from liberated countries. The United States had achieved its greatest territorial expansion, taking over administration of a large number of Pacific islands. As General MacArthur said in his September 2, 1945, speech aboard the USS Missouri, “We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.” But following World War II, isolationism was not an option. After the first struggle, Washington abstained from an expansive foreign policy, even declining integration into the League of Nations. With boots in the dust of rubbleĪt the end of World War I, the United States became a creditor to Europe and by the end of World War II, its indispensable protector. In Iraq and in Afghanistan, we are not there yet. relations with Germany and Japan reveals valuable lessons on transforming enmity into partnership. Nearly seven decades after the end of World War II, evaluating the evolution of U.S. But this was a different time and place.Ī defeated Japan became a key ally of the United States, a relationship that endures today. administrator in Iraq, he should have felt like Douglas MacArthur after the surrender of Japan. Early on a sunny morning in May 2003, Paul Bremer entered the former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s new Green Zone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |