The Post WWII Era - Essay Example

The post-WWII era marked the turning point for the United s, as it went from being a Republic to an Empire. Aggressive war is a hallmark of an empire, and the US was branching out into the business of “nation-building” and fighting against the spread of Communism. In reality, it was extending its empire outward. Involvement in the assassination of Mosaddegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo, and Diem in Vietnam was part of the great game of houses. The “strategy” of containing communism meant stationing troops around the globe in opposition to communist forces.

Today, the US empire has troops stationed in over 100 countries worldwide. This started in the aftermath of WWII when the US had tremendous goodwill and respect from the rest of the world. Treaties were signed, bases were constructed and the troops have been stationed in far-flung locations ever since. The central idea on which the United States was founded is the Rule of Law. That concept, as the central ideal that America was known for, has special application to the period just after WWII.

Following WWII, the US pioneered the field of international law with the Nuremberg war trials, effectively telling the world that not only was no man above the Law, but no nation was above the law. This was a first in the history of the world. The popular slogan of peace, justice, and the American way is a reference to the rule of law, not democracy. However, with the transition to an empire, the concept of democracy is now emphasized and one does not hear much about the rule of law. The rule of law sums up a plethora of ideas: trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty, the right to face one’s accusers, freedom of speech, religious free exercise, right to keep and bear arms, freedom from arbitrary search, and seizure, and the list go on.

All the Constitutionally guaranteed rights come down to the rule of law. Without rule of law, we devolve to a situation described by Mao: All political power emanates from the barrel of a gun. The American commitment to its ideals: A central requirement in a republic under the rule of law is that the government is required to obey its own law and the means exist for any citizen to force the issue. Citizens have rights that the government is required to respect, and a means of redress. All that began to change in the 1950s in the midst of the paranoia of the cold war.

The 1950s and early 1960s saw the US government become involved in assassinations such as that of Mohammad Mosaddegh and Patrice Lumumba, human experimentation such as the MKULTRA experiments, and wars such as the United Nations “police action” in Korea. Evidence heard by the Church Committee investigating the activities of the CIA and FBI found numerous abuses of US Citizens during the 1950s and 1960s, specifically operation COINTELPRO that targeted US citizens exercising their rights of free speech and freedom of association.

The cold war developed from two empires with opposing ideologies, The United States and the Soviet Union. The rest of the world either had to choose sides or tried to stay out of the way. It was inevitable, like Marx’s view of history, that there was a conflict between the two. The two empires had completely different views of just about everything and the Russian preoccupation with invasion had proven correct again in WWII. Suddenly, in the aftermath of WWII, the US was judged a true super-power and as such was viewed as a threat.

Another view of the cold war is that it was a plot by the military-industrial complex to generate excess profit and ensure steady business. Read Anthony Sutton's books, specifically Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (in three volumes). It is extremely difficult to argue with the evidence he provides to support this view. Under this view, the cold war was always just a story to sell to the masses while excess profits were reaped by a select few companies. A worldwide form of Hegelian Dialectic engineered to create the synthesis desired.

Following WWII, the nature of the conflict between the two empires began to emerge. The first conflicts came in Berlin and later, the conflicts would escalate and be fought by proxy in other countries. The nature of the conflict was that both sides desired to expand their own sphere of influence and contain the sphere of influence of the other. As each side collected every greater destructive device to ensure the destruction of the other, the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” was born.

At times, the conflict was violent, as in Korea and Vietnam, and at other times peaceful. As each side developed a new technology or weapon, gained or lost another country to their sphere of influence, or adopted a new cultural meme, the other side would analyze the situation and try to find a way to counter it. Always there was observation, interpretation, and analysis to fashion a policy to deal with whatever had happened. Every policy was viewed and tested in terms of the reaction of the other side.

Both sides feared nuclear oblivion, and apparently not much else. As far as the issues that influenced their decisions, the Americans were more concerned about their image to the world in general and the voters at home. The Soviets tended to be concerned about the effectiveness of their operations because membership in the politburo tended to be for life.