The Cold War

The second World War brought untold suffering to million across the globe, but it also launched the United States into the position of a superpower for the next 50 years. With the utter destruction of nations across Europe, Africa, and Asia, both winners and losers, America easily assumed a dominant position in the coming international system and captured the ability to reconstruct the world using its high democratic ideals. The United States was the most powerful nation in the world. It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and with postwar America it was no different. Given the unilateral power to spread its ideals of self-determination, liberty, equality, and individualism; America instead effectively subverted these principles not only around the world, but domestically as well. The unlimited global power and Cold War paranoia of the postwar years to the assassination of John F. Kennedy proved a fatal mixture to American ideals. As World War II came to a close, the United States gained the world as the most powerful country on earth; But to maintain this power it sadly reverted to the imperalism abraod and the Red Scare at home; its reversion made her loose her soul. These hypocritical actions and policies shaped a new world not set by democratic and liberal ideals of FDR’s “Four Points,” but by the power motivated creeds of repression, greed, and violence. In the race to fill the power vacuum created by World War II, the United States abandoned its civic nationalist tradition to compete with the Soviet Union and ensure its economic and political dominance around the globe. If the 18 years after the war saw unprecedented levels of U.S. power and growth around the world, it also witnessed the deterioration of the cou...

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...or the rights of humankind as it claimed, but to dominant the globe in all aspects and destroy all competition.

The story of the United States after World War II is one of triumph and tragedy. After almost two centuries of proclaiming liberty and freedom, the country finally had the power to pursue those ideals across the globe. Unfortunately, as the U.S. gained more power it also lost its soul, relying on policies of self interest to expand and maintain its new dominance instead of harnessing its authority to improve the world. These policies accomplished the opposite of the traditional American ideals of self-determination and liberty, instead creating an atmosphere of fear at home and a system of imperialism abroad. It is only by accepting this failure can one stop the United States’ continued policy of self interest and try to regain its great soul of freedom.