The Audacity of Hope

In less than a decade, the infrastructure of a new world order was in place. There was a
U.S. policy of containment with respect to communist expansion, backed not just by
U.S. troops but also by security agreements with NATO and Japan; the Marshall Plan to
rebuild war-shattered economies; the Bretton Woods agreement to provide stability to
the world’s financial markets and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to
establish rules governing world commerce; U.S. support for the independence of former
European colonies; the IMF and World Bank to help integrate these newly independent
nations into the world economy; and the United Nations to provide a forum for
collective security and international cooperation.
Sixty years later, we can see the results of this massive postwar undertaking: a
successful outcome to the Cold War, an avoidance of nuclear catastrophe, the effective
end of conflict between the world’s great military powers, and an era of unprecedented
economic growth at home and abroad.
It’s a remarkable achievement, perhaps the Greatest Generation’s greatest gift to us after
the victory over fascism. But like any system built by man, it had its flaws and
contradictions; it could fall victim to the distortions of politics, the sins of hubris, the
corrupting effects of fear. Because of the enormity of the Soviet threat, and the shock of
communist takeovers in China and North Korea, American policy makers came to view
nationalist movements, ethnic struggles, reform efforts, or left-leaning policies
anywhere in the world through the lens of the Cold War—potential threats they felt
outweighed our professed commitment to freedom and democracy. For decades we
would tolerate and even aid thieves like Mobutu, thugs like Noriega, so long as they
opposed communism. Occasionally U.S. covert operations would engineer the removal
of democratically elected leaders in countries like Iran—with seismic repercussions that
haunt us to this day.
America’s policy of containment also involved an enormous military buildup, matching
and then exceeding the Soviet and Chinese arsenals. Over time, the “iron triangle” of
the Pentagon, defense contractors, and congressmen with large defense expenditures in
their districts amassed great power in shaping U.S. foreign policy. And although the
threat of nuclear war would preclude direct military confrontation with our superpower
rivals, U.S policy makers increasingly viewed problems elsewhere in the world through
a military lens rather than a diplomatic one.
Most important, the postwar system over time suffered from too much politics and not
enough deliberation and domestic consensus building. One of America’s strengths
immediately following the war was a degree of domestic consensus surrounding foreign
policy. There might have been fierce differences between Republicans and Democrats,
but politics usually ended at the water’s edge; professionals, whether in the White
House, the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA, were expected to make
decisions based on facts and sound judgment, not ideology or electioneering. Moreover,
that consensus extended to the public at large; programs like the Marshall Plan, which
involved a massive investment of U.S. funds, could not have gone forward without the
American people’s basic trust in their government, as well as a reciprocal faith on the
part of government officials that the American people could be trusted with the facts
that went into decisions that spent their tax dollars or sent their sons to war.