A Liberal
Dose
December 15,
2022
Troy D.
Smith
“WWII and
the Rise of American Hegemony”
Last week I introduced a brief series of columns on the
subject of hegemony. If you missed part 1, I will give you a quick review. Hegemony
is when one among a cohort of powerful countries, usually as a result of being the
least damaged in a catastrophic war, gains influence over the others by being
dominant militarily, politically, and economically. This requires the hegemonic
power to become a “global policeman,” engaged in wars around the globe to
protect their national interests. The United Kingdom of Great Britain achieved
hegemony during the Napoleonic wars, and held it for about 125 years. In that
time, “the sun never set on the British Empire” and London was the financial
center of the world. At the same time, in order to preserve that hegemony, the
U.K. fought wars in Afghanistan, South Africa, Burma, Egypt, China, India, the
Crimea… and the list goes on and on. Nonetheless, they maintained their hold and
by the end of WWI in 1918 were at the height of their power.
It all started to unravel with WWII and the beginning of the
Nazi bombardment of Britain in 1940. The major cities of England were pounded
into rubble and they lost many of their colonies to the Germans and Japanese. Most
of those colonies were regained with the surrender of the Axis powers, but
Britain was terribly weakened and within a few years after the end of the war
many of their largest and most lucrative colonies around the world declared
independence and broke away.
The Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were also
pounded into rubble. Most of the other major world powers were also greatly
damaged as the war unfolded on their own doorsteps: France, Russia, China…
virtually all of Europe and Asia. Only one major combatant emerged relatively unscathed:
the U.S.A. Yes, a lot of service members died -though a much smaller percentage
of the population than in the other major countries -but, other than Pearl
Harbor, there were no major battles fought on American soil. By the end of
WWII, the U.S. had replaced the U.K. as the leader of the Allies and the “free
world.” This was demonstrated in the summer of 1944 when representatives of all
the allied nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and voted to change the
basis of international currency exchange from the British pound to the American
dollar. It was further cemented two years later when the new United Nations organization
was headquartered in New York City. By the late 1940s, America had military,
political, and financial dominance. The Soviet Union was a rival superpower
during the Cold War, yes, but only the U.S. had hegemony. To prevent the
Soviets from wresting that hegemony away, for the first time in American
history a “military industrial complex” developed and a large standing army was
maintained during peacetime, which has been the norm ever since.
U.S. government policy toward their former WWII allies the
Soviet Union started to gel right after the war ended. In February, 1946, U.S.
Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. George Kennan sent President Truman the famous “Long
Telegram” outlining the belief that communist powers were ideologically
incapable of coexisting with capitalism, and that therefore communism must be “contained”
and not allowed to spread to other countries. Following the “Truman Doctrine,”
the U.S. from that point forward would always side with anti-communist factions
no matter the circumstances. This often led to tunnel vision, with many
Americans thinking all communist countries were a united monolith with the same
international goals. It also led to constant involvement in foreign wars.
In 1947, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Walter Lippmann
wrote a book called Cold War which
warned that putting every single political event in the framework of
capitalism-vs-communism would cause western governments to miss the true underlying
issue… nationalism. Doing this in the 1950s would lead to catastrophe in the
1960s.
To be continued.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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