108 America’s Economic and Military Engagement with the World

1945–1980

In a 1941 editorial in Time magazine, publisher Henry Luce proclaimed the dawning of what he termed the “American Century.” With a missionary’s optimism, Luce’s expansive vision of America’s role in the world included global leadership in political, military, economic, and cultural affairs. It is hard to dispute his powers of prophecy. The half century since World War II witnessed America’s rise to global dominance fueled by its economic and military resources. America’s foreign policy, however, was shaped by contradictory impulses. Policymakers were both confident — critics would say arrogant — from their World War II victory, but also anxious to stem the tide of communism’s growing subversive influence. This marriage of confidence and anxiety led to the creation of a “national security state” with enormous and far-reaching power to defend American interests at home and abroad. Those national interests, however, were defined by policymakers wearing red-tinted glasses. They saw world events everywhere within the paradigm of the Cold War conflict between a God-fearing, capitalist, and democratic America and an atheistic, communist, authoritarian regime in the Soviet Union. Americans believed they could meet the advances of communism and feared the consequences of not doing so. So they did. Luce was right. This became the American Century, but critics wisely asked: at what cost?