World War I's Impact on U.S. History: Economy and Society
In the early 20th Century, a general fear existed that a huge war would break out due to the circumstances existing at that time and therefore every small incident was considered deadly. However the triggering factor was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914 resulting in World War I (WWI) or the Great War. WWI took place from 1914 to 1918 and major countries took part in it; war resulting in drastic consequences such as collapse of economies and death of millions of people. The two main groups fighting against each other were Triple Alliance and Triple Entente (also known as the Western Powers). The U.S did not participate in the war in the beginning and tried its best to remain neutral. However, it was forced to join the Triple Entente when German submarines sank ships in the Atlantic which had American citizens on it. There was needless killing and slaughtering and nearly 12 million died in Europe as a result of this war. Europe sustained a massive detriment due to the war and it broke into numerous new territories. Even though the number of casualties and deaths was extremely high, this War did have certain benefits to it and is particularly important in shaping U.S history.
U.S. Foreign Policy, Human Rights, and the Myth of Virtuous Power
American foreign policy occupies a unique place in the world. American foreign policy regarding interacting with other nations is a non-homogeneous mixture of politics, economics, and the unique American culture which…
US Hegemony and the Continuity of Imperial Foreign Policy
To state that there are no fundamental differences between international politics in 1900-45 and afterwards would be to carry the argument to an extreme, even though the continuities are greater than the discontinuities. Above all else, the liberal, democratic states and empires in the U.S. and Western Europe were highly interventionist and aggressive in the developing world and Global South long before World War II, and this did not change in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Even governments that were democratically elected were sometimes overthrown and replaced by more pliable regimes, such as the ‘friendly' dictators of Central America and the Caribbean. At the same time, though, there has also been far more harmony and cooperation between the Great Powers since 1945 than in the previous fifty years, especially through NATO and the European Union. America's alliance with Japan, Britain, France and Germany has survived various stresses and strains over the decades, and even the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this requires an explanation. None of the imperial powers has fought a major war since the invention of nuclear weapons, even though they have intervened frequently against the non-nuclear states of the developing world. Perhaps this alliance is explained by political and ideological affinities, as liberals maintain, or by cultural affinities as opposed to Muslim and Orthodox civilizations, as Samuel Huntington explains—although admittedly Japan is left as quite an outlier here.