ABSTRACT
Asia, where the arrogance of power began and, at least temporarily, ended. In August 1945 President Truman authorised a form of indiscriminate bombing which slaughtered 400,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world awakened to the new atomic order and at its head was the US, economic powerhouse and sole possessor of the atom bomb. Thirty years later President Nixon oversaw the conclusion of the most humbling defeat in modern American history as a Third World state forced the self-proclaimed champion of the Free World to sue for peace. The lives of 55,000 service personnel, $150 billion and 10 million tons of bombs had been squandered in a futile attempt to win a limited war in Vietnam that, for the North Vietnamese, could have no limits. Massive US military strength was insufficient to win this type of conflict, and the impact of the war on America, commonly referred to as the Vietnam Syndrome, was of greater significance for its foreign and domestic policy than any other Cold War experience. An anti-war movement swept through American society and sparked a period of congressional reassertion that challenged the Imperial Presidency and hampered American leadership of the Western Alliance until the Reagan revival in the 1980s.
