Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

due to natural resources and the immigration of cheap labor from all overthe world, are impressive and characteristic achievements of the Americanexperiment.Another aspect is the role of America in world politics, especiallyduring the twentieth century. President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) respondedto world politics in the period from 1917 through 1919 in a waythat laid the foundation for an American foreign policy and aimed at thecreation of a stable world order under liberal-capitalistic internationalism.By bringing a peaceful, international order to Europe in 1917, while Europewas torn, according to Wilson, between Germany’s military imperialismand Bolshevik revolutionary socialism, he envisioned that America couldprove to the world its unique mission in moral and political order. Liftedhigh above the unenlightened past in Europe and Asia, the United Stateswas to create a new world society. Wilson considered “Americanism” to bea country’s unselfish gift to mankind. Resting on expansive commercial andfinancial influences, all countries united in a peaceful, international capitalismcould cooperate in the growth of undeveloped countries, in guaranteeingterritorial integrity and in opening trade to all on the seas. The president’sadvisor in Europe, Colonel House, saw the necessity of integrating Germanyinto this new political order and economical world system. The integrationof Germany was to be established after the First World War by disarmingthe Germans, signing treaties to guarantee territorial integrity, promotingindustrial expansion, and establishing permanent peace. Though the goalscould not be reached after the First World War, towards the end of the SecondWorld War, President Roosevelt and his secretary of state, Hull, believed ina new international order like Wilson’s. They shared Wilson’s antipathy fortraditional European politics. After the war, Central Europe was disarmed,at Yalta territorial integrity was secured, the Marshall Plan paved the wayfor industrial expansion, and from establishment of NATO to the placementof cruise and Pershing II missiles in 1984, a “permanent peace” was aspired.The American business spirit has influenced foreign policy as greatlyas it has the American political process, the legal system, the press, education,and the entire country’s cultural life. This has resulted in grave misuseof democracy and the balance of power in the branches of government. Thismission of moral and political order, which many Americans have believedin, also resulted in an undeclared war in Southeast Asia. The executive branchof government directed the Defense Department in a war, which taught thecountry that half a million soldiers plus 700,000 South Vietnamese allies intotal command of the air and sea, backed by the world’s greatest war ma-312