The Great Globe Itself: A Preface to World Affairs by Arthur Asa Berger

Author:Arthur Asa Berger [Berger, Arthur Asa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351481861
Google: QtwzDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B075CPJZ68
Goodreads: 43384083
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

1The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, Vol. IV, p. 180.

2The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, Vol. IV, p. 418.

3The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940, p. 673.

4Testimony of Admiral Harold R. Stark, Pearl Harbor Investigation, January 3, 1946.

5The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940, p. XXXI.

IV

“The United States at this minute stand at the summit of the world. I rejoice that this is so. Let them act up to the level of their power and responsibility—not for themselves but for all men in all lands—and then a brighter day may dawn on human history.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL: August 16, 1945.

“The American people have a genius for splendid and unselfish action, and into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of afflicted humanity.”

POPE PIUS XII: Christmas, 1945.

“We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Dec 1, 1862.

PRESIDENT TRUMAN inherited an American foreign policy in bankruptcy. President Roosevelt had gambled on his ability to convert Stalin from the aim of imposing Communist dictatorship throughout the earth to the aim of establishing a world collaboration of independent states. He had lost his gamble. Stalin had remained unconverted and was striving to dominate vast portions of Europe and Asia as springboards from which to leap further. Moreover, the foundation of the United Nations had been laid on the gamble that the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, France and the United States could be trusted not to attempt to extend their control over independent peoples, and, in consequence, deserved an absolute veto on any action by the United Nations. The U.N. as finally organized in San Francisco was powerless to act against an aggressor among the Big Five or an aggressor supported by any one of the Big Five: a bandit Great Power could veto all action by the police. Insofar as the U.N. was concerned, the Soviet Union would be free not only to subject permanently the once independent peoples over whom it had established control in Europe but also to grasp new areas—and its fingers obviously were itching for Iran, Turkey and Manchuria.

By the autumn of 1945 it was clear, except to those who did not wish to see, that the Soviet Union had replaced Germany as the embodiment of totalitarian imperialism, and that the foreign policy of the United States had been based on wishful thinking. The American people’s dream of world peace turned into a nightmare of atomic bombs. President Truman faced a time for greatness.

Power was in the hands of the people of the United States such as no people had ever held before. Our air force was incomparably superior to any other; our navy was larger than the combined navies of the rest of the world; our army was a superb fighting force at the peak of its efficiency; our industrial plant, by far the greatest in the world, was intact—and we alone had the atomic bomb which guaranteed the speedy destruction of any nation that might dare to risk conflict with us.

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