America’s Worst Mistake

In 1945, the United States found itself at the tail end of a titanic struggle against two of the most evil regimes in human history. After inflicting awesome devastation upon Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, what was left capitulated, and the United States held the fate of Western Germany and the entirety of Japan within their hands. Some wanted to punish them for what they had done, but political expediency got in the way. We felt that we needed to contain communism, and both countries had a history of putting boots on Russian soil. So, we built them up into the greatest economic powers in each of their regions.

For the next half-century, American foreign policy was dominated by the brutal Realpolitik of the Cold War. Our activities were single-minded and generally amoral, like when we sponsored genocidal death squads in Guatemala after deposing its democratically elected government. We had no problem supporting murderous dictators and destabilizing communities across the globe so long as it served our economic and long-term security interests.

Then, the Soviet Union collapsed. It was the unipolar moment. We were the only real power on the world stage, alternatives to liberal democracy were on the decline, and we had a chance to sculpt the world in our image. Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by predicting the supposed “End of History,” a period where alternative ideologies to liberalism like communism, fascism, and theocracy would slowly die out and be replaced by a universal world order. Many were suspecting that in the absence of an alternative ideology, over time all the world’s time would grow to be like the United States and Western Europe.

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