This Fleeting World

84 This Fleeting World
and political realities of modern capitalism explains the decision of U.S.
governments to finance postwar reconstruction in Europe (through the
Marshall Plan) and in Japan, even if that meant turning former enemies
into commercial rivals.
Partly in this spirit, and partly under pressure from indigenous anticolonial
movements, European governments surrendered the empires they
had conquered during the late nineteenth century. During the forty years
after 1945 roughly a hundred nations achieved independence from their
European overlords, and another batch of new nations emerged after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. By 2007, the United Nations had
192 members.
Industrialization spread beyond the core regions of the late nineteenth
century, partly with the active support of the major capitalist powers.
Economic growth was particularly rapid until the late 1990s in eastern
and southeastern Asia, in particular in South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia,
Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore, all of which were influenced by the
Japanese model of growth.
Rockets and Rubles
Global economic growth occurred despite the partitioning of the world into
two major power blocs. The capitalist and Communist powers challenged
each other militarily, economically, and politically. For several decades these
rivalries threatened to ignite a third world war, fought this time with nuclear
weapons. However, the Cold War was also a contest for economic and political
hegemony. Both sides agreed that during the modern era economic
growth is the key to political and military success. Yet the two blocs offered
rival paths to economic growth, and for perhaps three decades it was hard
to know whether the command economies of the Communist world or the
capitalist economies of the West would generate the most rapid growth.
After Stalin’s death in 1953 Soviet living standards began to rise as
his successors steered more investment toward consumer goods and housing.
During the 1950s the Soviet Union enjoyed a string of successes
that seemed to demonstrate the technological dynamism of its command
economy. These successes included the creation of Soviet nuclear weapons
and missiles, the launching of the first space satellite, Sputnik, in October
1957, and the launching of the first human, Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968),
into orbit in 1961.