Old Progressives and the Cold War

Abstract

At the end of World War II, the United States was unquestionably the most powerful nation in the world. Its navies and air force circled the globe; its economy was untouched by the ravages of war; its political power and prestige were never greater. Most American leaders, sensing this great power and recognizing that the old European-dominated system of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been irrevocably destroyed, believed that it was now the responsibility of the United States to take the leadership in creating a new world order. While not all of them would have endorsed Henry Luce's glowing forecast of an American century, most of them nevertheless thought of a future in which the interests of Americans would be intimately linked with the interests and security of people everywhere. Some, like former Vice President Henry Wallace, couched these aspirations in the humanitarian language of a people's century or a world New Deal. Some, like Assistant Secretary of State Will Clayton, seemed haunted by the specter of a recurring depression, a calamity that he and others hoped to avoid through the expansion of America's international trade. Still others worried over the strategic problems produced by the wartime revolution in weapons technology and over the decline of Great Britain whose power in the past helped to maintain American security. Almost all of them were stirred by the memory of World War I and the failure of the peacemakers, and most now agreed that the United States should play a major role in winning the peace. What made this task especially difficult was that American goals and leadership were not universally accepted; they were challenged by the growing power of the Soviet Union and by the struggles of third-world peoples for selfdetermination and economic development. In response to these challenges, the Truman administration created a new diplomacy designed to contain such challenges and to defend America's newly achieved global supremacy. As