ABSTRACT
The twentieth century was the ‘age of ideologies’ because it was the age of mass politics. Most of the ideologies that dominated the period – nationalism, socialism, communism, conservatism and liberalism – were born in an earlier epoch. The ideological dominance of liberalism in the US supported more than the conviction that America set international standards for freedom and democracy; it had always been accompanied by anxieties that its special advantages could be imperilled by overseas entanglements. The Roosevelt administration’s internationalism, hegemonic by 1945 in Congress, consistently envisaged a leading role for the US in building the post-war political order and as the war came to an end it was equally determined to reshape the global economy. Conflict was “endemic” and waged by the Soviet Union “by violent or non-violent methods” in accordance with what was expedient. Foreign communist parties were run by an inner core closely co-ordinated “as an underground directorate of world communism, a concealed Comintern.”.
