Impact of World War II on the United States - Essay Example

Prior to the war, the New Deal was not able to overcome the stagnant state of the US economy despite the concerted efforts of the Roosevelt government. The unemployment rate remained steadily above 14 percent despite having considerably fallen since the darkest years of the depression. A consideration of a more penetrative government fiscal intervention gave way to speculations about real economic recovery in which it was posited that the recovery would become elusive if given to the care of the private sector (Vatter 1985, p. 7). Such recovery required much more Keynesian doses for the New Deal to finally affect full employment (Vatter 1985, p.11). Political impacts include several pursuits that aimed to repair a damaged economy during the New Deal era and the war itself.

A political, psychological, and economic shift was a product of the New Deal and World War II in the United States. These concerns troubled the American government during the war years and immediately afterward: big government, the economy, and communism at home and abroad. It was inferred that the bourgeoning bureaucracy that ensued in the United States during the WWII was one characterized by the mounting of commissions, agencies, and administrations, aiming to serve the legal and political necessities of the period.

Examples of these are the Foreign Economic Administration, Maritime Commissions and the War Shipping Administration, Selective Service System, US Employment Service, War Manpower Commission, War Labor Board, and War Food Administration (Vatter 1985, p. 87). Each of these had their on designated purposes in which central is the organizing and carrying out of American war-time economic production and output. All of these bureaucratic organizations formed a government front aiming to push through all forms of opposition in the interest of allied victory.

The War Production Board (WPB) was established in order to distribute strategic materials as well as suspend the production of consumer products. The WMC attempted to balance the appropriate distribution of men and women in military, industry, and agriculture during the war (Maddox 1992, p. 193). There was no questioning that the United States placed itself in a hegemonic position as a world power after the war, which may be referred to as one of its political impacts. Likewise, America's preoccupation with the promotion of democracy is essentially an idealist stance that emerged from the moralism and exceptionalism of the America political tradition (Ikenberry 2000, p. 103). This tradition is manifested through actual foreign policy, often carried out at the expense of more sober American international interests (Ikenberry 2000, p. 103). It is for the pursuit of making foreign policy commitments more acceptable to American public that the American democratic stance becomes a minor distraction.

The American promotion of democracy after World War II reflects a pragmatic and evolving understanding of creating a stable political order in the international arena, which was later called "an American liberal grand strategy"