#53 1914-1945 The Unforeseen Consequences: The USA Takes World Power

Perhaps the key unintended event that occurred at the end of the two global wars was that the USA consciously decided, at the meeting in Bretton Woods in the USA in 1944, to become the world's dominant power. The idea that the British and Americans might share the world between them had been seriously discussed in the 15 years before 1914. The originator of these ideas was Cecil Rhodes, owner of diamond and gold mines in South Africa. Rhodes formed a group of like-minded British leaders as we discussed in previous blogs. His closest associate was Alfred Milner, who looked after Rhodes’ final will, whose funds provided the cash to keep the group together. Other keen imperialists were Lord Rothchild, the key British banker of the time; and Lord Balfour who led the Balfour declaration in 1917, plus a host of senior politicians and senior men in newspapers. Details remain limited; the discussions were first how to defeat Germany and then how to create a world empire with the USA and Britain working in unison. Not surprisingly, such discussions had not been held in public and few historians have ventured to investigate, despite the availability of considerable evidence.

The immediate goal was that German aspirations to be a world power had to be destroyed before any joint movement toward global ascendancy could be worked out. The British-American scenario never occurred. In 1945, the British economy was shattered, and America was both the world’s leading creditor nation (all the belligerent nations owed the USA huge sums of money for purchases of food and munitions during the war) and even more important, Washington had accumulated the greatest volume of gold in her vaults. Britain won the war but had lost her empire. Losing the empire was no small thing; it meant losing everything she had fought for since she had entered the world stage at the beginning of the 17th century. The USA unilaterally decided that world power was theirs for the taking.

Britain has never admitted to her people that she had permanently lost her position as the greatest global power on this earth. Paradoxically, she had won the two major wars of the 20th century against Germany, and she had avoided being invaded, while the rest of Europe was in ruins. Yet she had lost everything that her upper classes valued above all else: her colonies and her power in the world. In the key Bretton Woods Agreement she handed over the keys to world power without the blink of an eye. Britain henceforth tied up her relationship with the USA in terms of 'the special relationship', and has repeated that phrase ever since. It was obvious to everyone involved that if Britain was to retain her political dignity she would have to follow the dictates of the USA in foreign and - in broad terms - her domestic policy too. Britain became like a vassal state too, she was forced to accept US policy on a world scale.

The USA appeared on the world stage with a big bang, if you will pardon the pun. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities which announced her entrance. In 1944, at a meeting with the British at the village of Bretton Woods in the northeastern USA, the leaders of the two nations made a historic agreement on the future global infrastructure: something that had been missing in the interwar years; it would remain intact in most respects until the present day. The British team was led by J.M Keynes who put forward his own ideas which were rejected by the US team. There was to be no joint world leadership.

US  Colonisation in the 19th century and Industrialisation

The USA did not appear out of the blue. North America’s appearance at Bretton Woods was in some important ways a continuation of American growth that had begun ever since American settlers defeated the British colonists in 1783 in their War of Independence.

The best way to view the linear growth and continuation of American world power is as follows:

• The USA became an independent nation of 13 states in 1783

• Over the next 120 years, (until 1900) the American economy became the largest in the world in terms of GDP; the settlers consolidated their continent into a single nation-state, largely by warfare, defeating and then removing the indigenous people; the acquisition of vast areas of land which turned into private property. At the same time, they moved rapidly into an urban capitalist society over the 19th century.

• Roughly over the next 40 years, 1900 to 1940s, the American government consolidated its empire over the North American continent, economically and militarily throughout the region. She entered two major wars in 1917 and 1941. Neither was a defensive war and, except for the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbour, she was never attacked again by another nation-state.

• In 1944, the USA asserted her global dominance and prepared to conquer all who were not prepared to accept her role as the world power.

Taken with this longer view, we can see her rise to global ascendancy. Initially, the USA government obtained control of a vast continental landmass; the US military had killed the indigenous populations and expropriated their lands. The privatisation of land and the use of human slave labour characterised much of the Americas’ in the 19th century.

Ideologically the Americans used a variant of the racist ideology that the Europeans had used to justify to themselves their right to colonise the world.  White supremacy and the ‘American Dream’ were the twin ideologies of the USA that justified their own colonization of North America. The same white nationalism then moved logically to attempt to command the world.

This ideological movement to justify the take over as world power was not inevitable. There were many in positions of power and among the voting populace in the USA who argued that she should leave the rest of the world alone. The USA at the time was relatively self-sufficient in all the commodities that were needed at that time for the industrial process. The isolationists were probably in the majority, but they lost the argument. In both major wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45, the USA entered the conflicts when they had decided their war aims which was the side they wanted to win.

None of the above could have occurred without the dynamic economic industrial capitalist growth that provided the necessary conditions - wealth, knowledge, political, and social organisation - both to obtain power over its domestic empire and to prepare for power on a global scale.

The USA must be unique in that she has been at war domestically or overseas almost continuously over the last 200 years. Over the 19th century, the USA had been at war throughout the century as she slowly eradicated the indigenous peoples. By the end of the century, the USA began to invade and colonise. They took naval control of the Caribbean seas in the 1890s and built the Panama Canal to join the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. In 1917 they joined the 14/18 war, and in 1943 the 39/45 war. America from its earliest days had been a belligerent war-like nation. Firstly, she expanded into the continent, and then overseas. Finally, when she considered the moment was right, she took control of the rest of the world and created the mechanics to govern in 1944.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, by Joe Rosenthal, February 23, 1945. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is an iconic photograph of six United States Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the final stages of the Pacific War.

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