The 20th century commenced with the British Empire at the zenith of its power. However, the United States acquired unprecedented economic and military power and political clout after the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14-point liberal internationalism provided the impetus to the founding of the League of Nations (1920), but when the US Congress voted against joining it, the League of Nations’ prestige and authority suffered a sharp decline. It was some measure of the power the US enjoyed.
In the aftermath of World War II, the British Empire quickly faded away, as Hitler and the Japanese depleted its economic resources and caused extensive damage to its industrial and military might. The war also rendered Britain heavily burdened by debts to the US. President Franklin Roosevelt, a committed social liberal and opposed to colonialism, compelled Winston Churchill to retreat from his imperialist ambitions, most notably on the question of Indian freedom.
The greatest gift of the United States and especially of President Roosevelt to the world was the founding of the United Nations (1945). It was a peace project based on social, liberal values, which spoke of the need to facilitate economic development and progress. For the first time in history, colonial occupation and conquest were outlawed. The UN Charter recognised the sovereign equality of all nations, a novel idea even though asymmetry of power in international politics was a fact. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the committee that propounded the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, although non-binding, became a source of inspiration for old and new states to adopt constitutional provisions that proclaimed the entitlements of citizens as free and equal members of society.
President Roosevelt was hopeful that Marshal Stalin could be persuaded to become a partner in the new world order based on human rights, peace, economic development and internationalism. Since both had worked together to defeat Nazism, the US president was convinced that Stalin would be amenable to continuing cooperation in peacetime as well. The Soviet ruler responded positively; a new vision of peace and progress seemed to hold out great promise. However, Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945. Thus, an historic opportunity was aborted.
President Harry Truman, less liberal and more religious than his predecessor, replaced the conciliatory attitude with confrontation vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. At that time, the US Congress was dominated by rabid Republican right-wingers (a fact that we are now very familiar with). They pressured Truman to adopt an explicitly hostile approach towards the Soviet Union. Truman expressed that unambiguously when Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov called upon him. He was admonished demonstrably for following an expansionist policy in Eastern Europe. Henceforward, the Soviet Union began to be seen as a veritable threat to the free world, capitalism and democracy.
Although the Soviet Union had borne the brunt of Nazi aggression — its industries and agriculture were destroyed under the scorched earth policy of the Nazi war machine and 25 million citizens killed — the Truman administration excluded the Soviet Union from the Marshall Plan or other forms of economic help. After the Americans exploded the atomic bomb and used it in Japan, the Soviets hastened their efforts to acquire the same capability. That was achieved on August 29, 1949. Thereafter, the bipolar confrontation between the USA and USSR came to occupy the global political horizon. Both began to be referred to as superpowers.
The Cold War set in motion a frantic arms race that greatly multiplied their conventional and nuclear weapons arsenals. Great powers and regional powers followed suit. International cooperation, human rights and economic development that the founding of the United Nations had promised was scuttled as both geared up to play zero-sum games, dragging the world into several regional conflicts.
While looking for democratic allies, the United States did not hesitate to take conservative regimes, ruthless dictators and bloodthirsty juntas under its wing. It particularly began to use religion — all types — as a political tool against atheistic communism. On the other hand, the Soviet Union created a string of client states in Eastern Europe and sought control over them with an iron hand, isolating them from the rest of the world. Moreover, it allied itself with radical Third World regimes, some of which were highly repressive and guilty of extensive human rights violations.
Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that both were drawn into bloody conflicts in different parts of the world, though they eschewed direct military engagement. In most cases, the Americans were on the side of conservatives and status quo forces whereas the Soviets sided with liberation movements. US prestige suffered greatly because of the Vietnam War and other such actions where its naked use of force against hapless peasants and other poor masses were a major break with the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial policies of Roosevelt.
Domestically, US liberal values had begun to suffer greatly when McCarthyism (1949-1959) witch-hunted for individuals suspected of so-called anti-American activities — a euphemism for repressing leftists and communists. US military industry sought to reap increasing profits by the production and sale of arms, something the Soviet Union matched with its arms marketing ventures. The military-industrial complex became so powerful that President Dwight D Eisenhower warned that it could undermine democracy and establish a totalitarian garrison state.
That did not transpire and the US remained an open society and a land of opportunities that attracted ambitious people from all over the world. Its academic and scientific achievements set the pace for the rest of the world. Simultaneously, big business expanded its power internally and the weapons industry was a major beneficiary externally of such developments.
(To be continued)
The writer has a PhD from Stockholm University. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest publication is The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at [email protected]