Readers of these blogs will know that establishing world power has always required sophisticated ideology to justify action across the world. The centre of ideology in the hundreds of years after 1492, up to 1945 centred on race and racism; that European and then American invasions were by ‘superior’ peoples. Race was always a flexible tool and the exact variant varied over time determined by who were the perpetrators of the invasions and the moment in history.

The ideological story that followed 1945 would be determined by the USA. This blog discusses the new ideological tale told by the Americans and the old European colonial powers who had lost all their colonies as a consequence of the wars that ended in 1945.

All the old colonialist powers in Europe lost global power. After 1945, the USA consciously decided that it had a ‘competitive advantage’ over all other states. She was sufficiently strong economically that she did not need colonies to take a globally dominant position. During her discussions with Britain in 1943, she laid down that one of her prime conditions for the peace was that all colonised countries were to be open to USA trade. By 1945, the USA was sufficiently powerful to enforce this decision against the wishes of the older colonising powers in Europe and Japan.

Perhaps the most important historical global change after the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945 was the USA taking over world power.