[This is the
second of six articles I am writing on the respective positions of Britain, the US,
France, Germany, Russia
and China
in the post-war world]
Presidents:
1945-53 Harry S Truman 1977-81 Jimmy Carter
1953-61 Dwight D
Eisenhower 1981-89 Ronald Reagan
1961-63 John F Kennedy 1989-93 George Bush
1963-69 Lyndon B
Johnson 1993-2001 Bill Clinton
1969-74 Richard M
Nixon 2001-09 George W
Bush
1974-77 Gerald Ford 2009- Barack Obama
The US
was the overwhelming victor of the Second World War. Although she had spent
enormous sums of money equipping herself and her Allies and had suffered heavy
casualties (405,000 dead), her homeland and civilians were untouched, her
industries were operating at full capacity and her huge armed forces were
victorious in Europe and the Pacific. Franklin
Roosevelt, the inspiring leader since 1933, died in office in April 1945 just
before the German surrender in May and his successor vice-President Harry
Truman took the fateful decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in
August 1945 ending Japanese resistance. The Nuclear Age had dawned and the US
maintained global dominance for the next 25 years.
Early Post-War Years
 |
| Harry S Truman |
 |
| Dean Acheson |
There was inevitably a period of confusion as millions of
soldiers returned to civilian life and industries once geared up for war
production changed to manufacturing other much-desired items. Generous schemes
were established to assist GIs re-integrate, but there were shortages of
materials and many strikes – union power was curbed by the Taft –Hartley Act of
1947, passed over Truman’s veto. Against the expectations of pundits, Truman
won re-election in 1948 and surrounded by a competent New Deal team later
including Dean Acheson, headed a successful presidency. He took the risk of
alienating Southern Democrats by ordering the desegregation of the armed
forces, which took some years to take full effect.
Foreign affairs were an urgent priority. Europe was
prostrate but the US
responded generously with the Marshall Plan greatly helping reconstruction in Western Europe. The Iron Curtain divided Europe into
Allied and Soviet spheres, with partitioned Berlin an isolated island. The Soviets
blockaded Berlin
in 1948-49 but an Anglo-American airlift lasting 10 months triumphantly defied
this pressure. Immediate recognition of the State of Israel in 1948, despite
State Department misgivings, upset the Arab world but was electorally popular.
NATO was established in 1949, underlining the US
commitment to Europe; West and East
Germany were created. In 1949, the Soviets
showed they were rapidly catching up in the arms race by exploding their first
atom-bomb.
In Asia, Japan
was governed by US General McArthur and China,
though rent by civil war, was a special US interest. The triumph of Mao’s
communists in 1950 came as a nasty shock and the US
persisted in a policy of only recognising Chiang-Kai-Shek’s Nationalist
government, now exiled to Formosa
(Taiwan).
A major crisis arose when North
Korea invaded the South in 1950. A UN force,
mainly American, was despatched but the war was bitter and 30,000 US soldiers
lost their lives. China
intervened dangerously and the US
commander McArthur disobeyed Truman who dismissed him in 1951.The fighting
ended in 1953 with de facto partition
but no peace treaty was ever signed.
The US
in the 1950s
Soviet and Chinese hostility stiffened the attitude of a
growingly conservative US. The expansion of Communism was to be limited by the
policy of Containment associated with
the state department official George Kennan. This policy came to be exercised
aggressively in the 1950s, especially by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles,
who would intervene politically or even militarily when communism threatened.
The US came to support some
unattractive anti-communist regimes, notably those of Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and others in Latin
America.
 |
| Dwight D Eisenhower |
 |
| John Foster Dulles |
An anti-communist hysteria and spy-mania engulfed Washington through the
House Un-American Activities hearings and the wild accusations of Senator Joe
McCarthy until his bubble was pricked in 1954. As an omen of much worse unrest
later, Eisenhower used Federal powers in 1957 to force the desegregation of
schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, when governor Orval Faubus defied
the law.
Despite these problems, the US enjoyed a golden age of
capitalism in the 1950s. Great corporations expanded and prospered, the stock
market rose headily, business was good. No country could rival the US; American
cars, clothes, machines, movies and life-style were admired and yearned for.
The mighty dollar allowed Americans living abroad to live like kings.
Easy-going President Eisenhower, a popular war hero, ran a largely laissez-faire administration. As he
relinquished office he wisely warned against the power of “the
military-industrial complex”
There were a few international set-backs; Nasser seized the
Suez Canal in 1956 and collusion between key US
allies, Britain, France and Israel to
regain it upset Eisenhower who refused to support them. A period of
recrimination followed when Nasser kept the
Canal. An attempt by Hungary
to break free of foreign domination was ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet tanks
in 1956. Soviet scientific progress was apparent as they beat the US to
launch the first satellite Sputnik in
1957 to be followed in April 1961 by the first man in outer space with Yuri
Gagarin’s historic flight.
The American Dream
The Americans must have regarded themselves as the most
fortunate of people. National wealth brought great material comforts. The US
standard of living, her easy luxury, her gleaming consumer goods outstripped
those of any other country. A flood of immigrants was absorbed into the
melting-pot, employment levels were high, equality was proclaimed – even if
black Americans lagged behind. Since 1945 American culture had been vibrant.
Novels, if not their best, flowed from Hemingway and Steinbeck. Norman Mailer,
James Jones and JD Salinger captured the imagination of a new generation. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road spoke to the disillusioned; Arthur Miller’s dramas
thrilled his audiences; the All-American verities of artist Norman Rockwell in
time gave way to experimental Rauschenberg. Wonderful movies streamed out of
Hollywood, including timeless MGM musicals to make the world sing, dramas like All about Eve or A Star is Born, Cecil B deMille blockbusters and comedies ranging
from Abbott and Costello to Bob Hope. The reach was global as pop music
burgeoned from the sophisticated tones of Frank Sinatra to the raucously
dynamic Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.
The Sixties and early Seventies
The 1960s were more troubled. They started off in a blaze of
optimism as John Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower, representing a new and more
glamorous generation. A memorable Inaugural address fired the idealism of
service and another at the Berlin Wall proclaimed Western freedom – but the
rhetoric was greater than the achievement. A crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba in October
1962 brought the world to the brink until Khruschev backed down. Kennedy had
acted decisively. When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas
on 22 November 1963, the US
and the world were stunned and regretted what might have been if Kennedy had
served his full term.
 |
| John F Kennedy |
 |
| Lyndon B Johnson |
The assassination of JFK high-lighted the worrying trend
towards political violence in the US. Civil Rights workers were
murdered in Mississippi, Malcolm X was gunned
down in 1965, Martin Luther King shot dead by a white racist in 1968 and Robert
Kennedy, campaigning for the Democratic nomination, killed in Los Angeles also in 1968. The new President,
Lyndon B. Johnson, was a Southern machine politician and expectations were not
high. However LBJ understood how Capitol Hill worked and made very substantial
legislative progress on what he called The
Great Society confirming voting rights, educational rights and employment
rights for American blacks. This was a huge achievement to emerge from much
turmoil.
Johnson was less fortunate overseas. For years the US had been at
the edges of the conflicts in Indo-China. When the French were defeated in
1954, American aid and later “advisers” bolstered the mainly Catholic regime of
Ngo Dinh Diem (assassinated in 1963) against North Vietnam and the local
communist Vietcong. JFK had increased US
involvement and in 1964 Johnson used an obscure naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin
to justify obtaining from Congress freedom to wage open war against North Vietnam.
Despite immense US
commitments and optimistic assessments, little military progress was made and
there was a shock when multiple targets were attacked in the 1968 Tet Offensive.
The US gradually withdrew
its armies in 1973 but the war dragged on until South Vietnam finally collapsed in
1975. This was a heavy blow to US
prestige in Asia and the war split US
society grievously; the human cost of 58,000 US dead was chilling.
 |
| Richard M.Nixon |
 |
| Kenry Kissinger |
.
LBJ did not stand for re-election in 1968 and there were
serious riots as Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic candidate at Chicago. George Wallace,
governor of Alabama,
stood on a racist platform as the third candidate. The Republican Richard Nixon
won the election comfortably and the liberal 1960s were over. Richard Nixon was
unlovable but an experienced politician who became expert in international
affairs. Early on, he was able to bask in the reflected glory of the NASA
Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969. Closely advised by Henry Kissinger, Nixon
pulled off a momentous détente with China
in 1972 and a US
settlement of the Vietnam War with the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. His real
virtues were overshadowed by the shameful Watergate scandal of 1974 and
painfully he resigned to avoid impeachment.
Economic Pressures
The US’s
total dominance of the global economy could not last. By the 1960’s Japan had made great strides as had Germany and the
EEC. The US started to run a
balance of payments deficit rectified not by higher taxes but by overseas
deposits in the US
as a safe haven. Inflationary pressures arose both from Johnson’s Great Society
and from the cost of the Vietnam War. The dollar had become overvalued and in
1971 the Bretton Woods system which had run from 1945 broke down. The dollar’s
fixed exchange rate ended and it ceased to be convertible into gold; in due
course all major trading currencies floated. Although the US as much as Europe
suffered when the Arabs imposed their oil embargo in 1973, followed by a huge
increase in the cost of oil, the US deficit was easily offset by the flood of
petro-dollars returning to her. The US
sucked in global liquidity from the Middle East, and later from China, which
was recycled by Wall Street into a variety of financial instruments,
contributing to the Economic Crisis of 2007.
The unhappy 1970s and the Reagan Era
Nixon’s stopgap successor Gerald Ford lacked charisma and
was followed by dogged Democrat Jimmy Carter. Both suffered from an economic
recession and “stagflation”. Ford fell out with intransigent Israel, who had
plenty friends in Washington, and Carter was eventually brought down by his
failure to end a 444-day diplomatic hostage crisis in Iran in 1980, whose
revolutionary Shia Muslim government was rabidly anti-American. Important arms
limitation treaties were signed with the USSR and a green agenda was
established by idealistic Carter.
The US
wanted a change and embraced former movie actor and California governor Ronald Reagan. He was at
69 older than any other incoming president and no intellectual but his two
presidential terms were highly successful, greatly reviving the Right.
 |
| Ronald Reagan meets Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 |
Nonchalant, confident and homely Reagan has a rather simple
world vision. The US was
threatened by the “evil empire” of the USSR
– so US
military expenditure was much increased and the Star Wars missile defence plan initiated. Libya was funding terrorism – so Tripoli was the target of
a punitive bombing raid in 1986. Taxes were too high – so Reagan cut business
taxes and followed the monetarist policies elucidated by Milton Friedman. The US economy
responded and prosperity returned, even though some taxes were re-imposed. He
frowned upon welfare dependency – so he cut programmes for the poor and urged
them back to work. In all this he was supported by his close ally Margaret
Thatcher of Britain
who operated similar policies. The USSR’s
ramshackle economy could not compete with the US
on defence and Reagan’s successor Bush witnessed the destruction of the Berlin
Wall in 1989, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and
finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union
in 1991. Much of the credit goes to Ronald Reagan.
Life in the US from 1960 to the present
There has of course been a transformation in the last 50 or
so years but some things do not change. The US remains by a wide margin the
richest country in the world and a global leader. Her people are a curious
mixture of the puritanically religious, the dedicatedly commercial and the
wildly unconventional. Her politicians do not have the debating and
intellectual skills valued in Europe but seem
to manage pretty well. Business enjoys a much higher prestige than elsewhere.
The cultural reach is enviable. Fine concert orchestras and
auditoria abound. Most cities have galleries and museums of estimable quality.
The theatre survives and some television is of a high standard. Writers like Gore
Vidal, Tom Wolfe and Lewis Lapham have scandalised, amused and instructed us,
as have gadflies like Truman Capote. The art world has seen reputations come
and go including those of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The film industry
has rather abandoned Hollywood itself but the world has still thrilled to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas or the films of Clint Eastwood and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. The horrors of Vietnam
were evoked by The Deer Hunter and Platoon and there have been fine sci-fi
fantasies from Back to the Future
onwards. Pop music has seen black Americans take a leading place with many fine
Motown artistes, energetic Michael
Jackson and lovely but tragic Whitney Houston.
The US
seems basically conservative, but she enjoys an excellent education system and
the people are better travelled and less parochial than once they were. Their
pride in their own country and her achievements is admirable.
The US
from 1989 onwards
Although George Bush Senior saw the end of the Berlin Wall
and the collapse of the USSR,
his presidency was essentially an addendum to that of Reagan. He handled well
the invasion of Kuwait by
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
and saw to Saddam’s dislodging and defeat; he might have pressed his advantage
harder. Preppy Bush did not have Reagan’s popular touch and he gave way to
Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1993.
Clinton
had the good fortune to preside over a period of unparalleled prosperity. He was folksy and articulate, pushing forward
the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada
and Mexico,
pressing a State Insurance Program for children through the Republican Congress
together with other welfare reforms. He undertook in return to balance the
budget. Overseas, the Cold War was over but NATO forces had to intervene against
the Serbs in Bosnia in 1996 and in 1999 NATO handed over Kosovo, where Serbia
had been harassing ethnic Albanians, to UN administration. Various embassy
bombings in East Africa underlined the growing
threat from Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Clinton’s womanising became an issue and he was accused of
perjury and almost impeached; the US
had little appetite for such a move and Clinton
escaped, remaining a popular, if personally flawed, president.
The two presidential terms of his Republican successor
George W Bush were beset by great problems. The election was won by a whisker
of votes in Florida;
Bush himself was not an impressive figure, oddly inarticulate publicly. He
surrounded himself with Neo-Con
figures, given to extreme rightist opinions, although there were mainstream
Republicans too. He relied on advice from his experienced Vice-President,
Richard Cheney.
On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked 4
civilian airliners and flew them in suicide attacks on the New York World Trade
Centre, whose twin towers collapsed, on the Pentagon, which was seriously
damaged and on the Capitol, saved by the brave actions of the passengers.
Almost 3,000 people were killed; the US rallied patriotically round her
President.
 |
| Richard Cheney |
 |
| George W Bush |
Bush declared a War on Terror invading Afghanistan which harboured Osama bin Laden and overthrew the Taliban. Establishing a stable regime proved elusive and the Taliban continue to mount a major insurrection. He had a handful of allies, notably Tony Blair’s Britain. More controversially he and his allies attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, on the pretext that it was developing weapons of mass destruction, later unproven. Saddam was overthrown and hanged but murderous sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia emerged and more than 100,000 Iraqis have since died. Both wars became very unpopular in the US and Iraq has been evacuated and an Afghanistan withdrawal is under way.
Domestically Bush dismissed the Kyoto green protocols, spent large sums on welfare
and Medicare as the economy improved but his second term was difficult. He was
blamed for mishandling Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Much worse was the
Economic Crisis which simmered from 2007 with sub-prime mortgage worries but
exploded in 2008 with the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and difficulties in many
other financial institutions. Wall Street had been inadequately controlled in
retrospect by Alan Greenspan, 19 years heading the Fed. The sober-sided bankers
of yesteryear had morphed into greedy well-heeled shooters betting, and
ultimately losing, in a vast global crap-game. Greenspan’s successor Ben
Bernanke had to clear up a horrible mess and the world economy has stalled.
The Future
The election of Barack Obama as President was a triumph for
the long struggle for black civil rights. He inherited a deep well of goodwill,
but though his rhetoric has often been inspiring, his achievements have
disappointed and his crab-like caution has frustrated his supporters.
 |
| Barack Obama |
Yet in the final analysis the US occupies an immensely strong
place in the world. Her GDP is twice that of her nearest rival, China. The Cold
War and the overt threat of nuclear war are over. Diverse and multi-racial US society is
peaceful and forward-looking. Internationally the US has earned loyal friends. How to
live with an assertive Muslim world remains a challenge and patient diplomacy
may be required to bring China
fully into the family of nations.
Long may the US
flourish!
SMD
26.08.12
