ABSTRACT
The American people have been bombarded with descriptions of the “new” world in which they live. We live in a “global village,” in which goods, people, and ideas intermingle with little regard for national borders and identities. The world had dramatically changed. As World War II came to a close, US policymakers were unanimous on that point. The changes went beyond those resulting from the death and destruction directly relating to the conflagration of war, although no one doubted that the level of mayhem had reached nearly unimaginable proportions. It went beyond the new technologies of annihilation, though there was no denying the awe and fear created by those mushroom clouds over Japan. World War II had demonstrated how fragile that developing system had been. Jealousy, fear, greed, lust for power, and national rivalries—some ancient, some of more recent vintage—had tom the prewar world to shreds.
