Americas Global Ascendancy - Essay Example

?America's global ascendancy, 1918-1945 The United Kingdom’s participating in World War I had a tremendous impact on its economy and thus undermined its global supremacy. Furthermore it allowed another nascent superpower, the United States of America to claim global supremacy. After being the largest foreign investor of the world before the War broke out the Mistress of the Seas became one of the biggest debtors. Britain’s interest payments made up some 40% of the entire government spending. Within the period of 1914 and 1920 inflation doubled. The value of the Pound Sterling, its consumer expenditure, fell by more than 60%. The coal Germany sent to Britain as reparations depressed the victor’s local economy, hastening General Strike of 1926. During the World War I private investments made by the British abroad were sold, raising some ?550 million. Nevertheless ?250 million new investments were made within the course of war. As a result the net loss was some ?300 million. During the war Great Britain lost some 40% fleet sunk by German submarines. Most of these losses were replaced in 1918 and soon after the war was over. As military historian Correlli Barnett argued, that war made no serious economic damage on Britain yet “crippled the British psychology” (Barnett 2002) Other changes have included increasing British Dominions’ assertiveness. Such battles as Vimy Ridge and Gallipoli for Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders led to grown national pride as well as a growing reluctance to be subordinate to the Crown. Those battles used to be depicted favorably in these nations propaganda as significant of their power and valor during the War. The War also released pent up native nationalisms, as native elites and often populations tried to take advantage of the precedent of introduction of self-determination in the counties of Eastern Europe. Great Britain had to face disturbances in Ireland, Egypt, Iraq, India and Palestine within a period of time when those territories were supposed to be demilitarized. This notwithstanding, the only territorial loss Great Britain sustained was the loss of Ireland, where the delay in resolving the home rule issue, along with the Easter Rising of 1916 increased popular support for separatists and led immediately to the outbreak of the 1919 Irish War of Independence. Consequent change followed in 1919. With the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Britain found herself in charge of more than 13 million of people and 4,000,000 square kilometers. Former German colonies as well as possessions of Ottoman Empire were distributed among the Allied powers as mandates of League of Nations. It was the time when the British Empire reached its territorial peak (Ferguson 2004, p.315). Unlike Great Britain the Unites States of America participated in hostilities but a year and a half and did was not as devastated as European belligerents. Furthermore that war gave a tremendous impetus to the development of US national economy. As it goes in a song popular soon after the War was over, having seen Paris American soldiers were reluctant to stay at their farms no more. They moved from their farms to the nearby smaller cities and towns offering labor force for the industry. Agriculture was becoming increasingly mechanized due to the widespread used of such heavy equipment as tractors. As a result the output of American agriculture increased rapidly. A year after World War I was over Woodrow Wilson crusaded for United States to join the League of Nations that he had been effective in creating yet he rejected the Republican compromise over the issue so it was not possible to obtain a 2/3 majority. During a cross country tour to promote the League of Nations Woodrow Wilson sustained a number of strokes. He never recovered completely and lost its skills of the leadership so he was rendered unable to compromise or negotiate. Consequently the Senate rejected America’s entry into the League of Nations (Cooper 2009, ch 23-24). During the course of War America rendered successfully substantial financial and material support to the allies making thus them indebted. Nevertheless, soon after the war was over Americans began to take advantage of the former enemy’s troubles. The First World War left Germany in a state of disaster with no reparations payments following to the victors. The United States effectively organized payment of those reparations. According to the Dawes Plan the United States loaned money to Weimar Germany so the latter could pay the reparations to the victors like France and Britain, which in their turn could pay their own debts to the United States. In the 1920s American and European economics reached new levels of prosperity and production (Cooper, ch 26) After World War I was over the United States of America enjoyed a period of un-balanced prosperity in comparison to the devastated by war Europe, except for a period of recession in 1920-1921. Wages and prices for agricultural goods fell dramatically by the end of the war whilst new industries, including movies, gasoline, highway construction, housing and automobiles flourished. After the wave of discoveries of oil that began with 1860s Pennsylvanian Oil Rush and culminated with oil-booms in Oklahoma, Texas and California and some other areas, the united States went on as the global leader in oil production, now still more important as the age of trucks and automobiles had already came (Brown, 2009). This notwithstanding the age of Prosperity did not last for long and in 1929 The Great Depression began in the United States and then throughout the rest of the capitalist world. It lasted mover ten years and in fact ended with the beginning of the World War II. It was not until American Administration increased Federal spending that was supposed to support the Second World War. It was not until then that American economy completely recovered. Within a period of time between 1939 and 1944, when the peak of wartime production was achieved, the nation’s output hardly doubled. Eventually, unemployment plummeted – from 14% at the beginning of World War II to less than 2 per cent in 1943 as the labor-force increased by ten million (Bagby W, 1999). The war economy was not a triumph of free enterprise yet was a result of government regulating business. As unemployment remained rather high throughout the years of New Deal, net export, consumption and investment – the pillars of the growth of any economy – was still low. It has been the Second World War, but not the New Deal that has finally put an end to the crisis. Neither did the New Deal substantially change the distribution of power within American economy and society. Furthermore it had rather strong impact on the distribution of wealth among American population Isolationist attitude with respect to foreign wars in America had waned yet the United States initially refused to enter the War and limited itself to providing weapons and supplies by means of Lend Lease to the Soviet Union, china and Great Britain. Such feelings changed rapidly after the unforeseen Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After being attacked the United States entered the war itself and waged war against Japan, Nazi Germany and Italy (Crowley, 1947 pp. 849). In the course World War II American economy doubled and then even trebled in size due to a massive industrial mobilization that was by artificial price and wages controls. In addition to some 300, 000 women volunteers 16 million of men joined US Army and the Navy (World War 2 Casualties 2003). Hardly entire Nation was tuned into tremendous war machine affecting the country far more than any other conflict the United States had ever fought before. Having won a bitter competition for reelection to the third and fourth terms Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s health got deteriorated so seriously that he died on 12 April, 1945. Harry S. Truman succeeded Roosevelt and went on with most of the latter’s wartime policies, though changed the cabinet. In August 1945 Americans dropped atomic bombs on Japanese towns Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some weeks later Japanese Empire surrendered. These bombings not only precipitated the end of World War II but marked the beginning of the new era, the era of American supremacy at the global scene. Once again America won the global war without being devastated as other belligerents have been. Furthermore America once again has made a tremendous profit on war. The Soviet Union, China and Great Britain owed the United States vast sums of money and materials. Furthermore these devastated by war countries needed still more money, equipment and supplies and the United States of America were the only power able to loan them what they needed. Soon after the end of the World War II United States offered European countries European Recovery Program, also known as Marshal Plan. This plan of reconstruction developed during a meeting of European states in June 1947. The program was operated during five years beginning in April 1948. During that period of time $13 billion in technical and economic assistance were given to help the rebuilding of devastated by war countries of Europe that had already joined the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. This sum was in context of a United States gross domestic product of $258 billion in 1948. Furthermore it was on top of $12 billion in American help to Europe within a period between the end of the war and the beginning of the Plan which is counted separately from the Marshal Plan (Hogan 1987, 36) The Program addressed all the obstacles to the postwar recovery. The plan focused on the efforts to modernize European business and industrial practices using highly efficient American models, reduce the number of trade barriers and after all instill in Europeans the sense of self-confidence and hope. By 1952 the funding ended and the economy of each of the participant nation had already surpassed pre-war levels. For every Plan recipient, output in 1951 was over 30% higher than it had been before the war had broken out Eichengreen (Van der Wee, 1984p. 44). During the next twenty years Western Europe had unprecedented prosperity and growth, yet economists are not sure what proportion has been due to the Marshal Plan. The Plan was hardly the first element of European integration. It erased artificial trade barriers and set up European institutions that were supposed to coordinate entire economy of Europe as a whole – i.e. it stimulated peaceful political and economical reconstruction of communist-free Europe. The political effects of American Marshal Plan might have been as significant as the economic ones have. The Plan allowed the free nations of Western Europe to decrease the post-war rationing and austerity measures as well as to bring political stability and reduce political discontent. Nevertheless the main significant effect of the Plan was reduction of the communist influence on Western Europe. Throughout the region communist parties waned in popularity within the years that passed after the Marshal Plan. Marshal Plan fostered the trade relations that helped to create the north Atlantic alliance that would last throughout the so-called Cold War. References Bagby, W. M. America's international relations since World War I. New York: Oxford university press, 1999 Barnett, C 2002, The Collapse of British Power. Pan books Brown, N.D. Texas in the 1920s. Handbook of Texas Online. Online viewed 25 April 2011. Texas State Historical Association http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online Cooper, J.M. 2009, Woodrow Wilson. Knopf; 1st Edition Crowley L.T., 1947Lend-Lease in Yust, Walter, ed. 10 Eventful Years. Chicago: E.B. Inc, 19 1:520, 2, pp. 858–860 Hogan, M.J., The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 Van der Wee H, 1984 Prosperity and Upheaval: The World Economy, 1945-1980 World War 2 Casualties. World War 2. Otherground, LLC and World-War-2.info. 2003. Online viewed 25 April 2011. < http://www.world-war-2.info/casualties/> Read More