In the last hundred years, the course of human civilization has taken a number of dramatic turns; we have gone from a relatively equitable and imperial pre-industrial society to a very one-sided, technologically advanced and globalized place. Colonialism has been dramatically reduced, technology has advanced by leaps and bounds as a result of World War II and the arms race, and more. Racial and ethnic conflicts have begun to come to a head, either being resolved or advanced greatly (the Civil Rights movement) or perpetuated beyond measure (the Israeli-Palestine conflict). Toward that end, it is important to consider how the world has changed, both in geography and in ethical direction, in the past one hundred years. Power has shifted greatly towards a few superpowers (America included) instead of a greater number of equally formidable nations; Communism has been combated in many countries to leave democracy in its wake, for better or worse; and ideologies have changed greatly to fuel a globalized capitalist economy that shows no signs of slowing down.
The event that absolutely spurred this change in ideology and military technology was undoubtedly World War I, its outcome changing the face of colonialism in favor of the Allies. The advent of trench warfare and a plethora of new military technologies (the machine gun, fighter airplanes, etc.) were created to wage this war, using Industrial Revolutionary principles like mass production to change the face of conflict from traditional, face-to-face warfare to machine-driven mass destruction (Bentley 31). The end of World War I created an incredible influx in colonialism, with areas of Germany and the Ottoman Empire becoming redistributed to other countries. The founding of the League of Nations was performed to redistribute those countries' colonies to other nations, allowing them to benefit from the spoils of war.
Of course, after the victories of World War I, the capitalist system that led to the military technology which secured that same Allied victory proved disastrous on the home front. A decade after World War I, America suffered a devastating financial breakdown in the Great Depression. Black Tuesday, which occurred on October 29, 1929, was an enormous collapse of the American stock market, leading to extreme poverty and substantially decreased unemployment. People of all social classes felt the crunch, and so homelessness and starvation was rampant (Bentley, 31). This required a massive change in the level of government intervention allowed in people's lives, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated the New Deal, a series of initiatives meant to stimulate economic recovery. A great number of agencies were created to provide financial security and create opportunities to recover from the Depression, and reform the existing financial system. There were two waves of New Deals, each dealing with their own distinct problems – the First New Deal handled transportation, banking and other programs, while the Second New Deal focused on social security and labor unions, among other things (Bentley, 31). To that end, America, a financial world leader crushed by its own dedication to capitalism, moved toward slightly more socialist policies to rescue its failing economy, changing its ideology somewhat to focus more on government interaction within the private sector as opposed to relying on the free market.
Despite all these initiatives, one of the most helpful things for America (and by extension the rest of the world) to help them recover was their entry into World War II, leading to increasing changes to military technology and a newfound sense of nationalism. After eight years of war, including a powerful attack on northern France on D-Day (June 6, 1944), American forces, along with the rest of the Allies, managed to defeat the Axis forces. Japan surrendered after the American deployment of two nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while numerous invasions along Western Germany and Berlin by the Soviets and Allies led to the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich (Sulzberger, 1986). This move introduced the atomic bomb, one of the greatest game-changes in military technology - no longer was warfare restricted to singular battles; a single weapon could wipe out huge swaths of people, depersonalizing warfare even further (Bentley, 33). In this moment, military control over the atomic bomb became the hallmark for wielding supreme power over the rest of the world, a privilege America in particular enjoyed, bringing democracy and capitalism even further into the world's mainstream.
The ideological and colonial effects of World War II were not lost on the rest of the world; decolonization began to occur as nations started to value their independence and worked to break away from their parent nations. Europe began to decolonize heavily, due at least partially to the unsustainable nature of these colonies in the wake of the expensive and costly Second World War. However, many of these nations were still controlled in much more subtle ways, leading to a marked increase in instances of neocolonialism. Those European countries that maintained control of their colonies (Ghana, Cuba, etc.) encountered enormous social resistance from political leaders and the people being colonized. Instead of, for instance, the British Empire actually having legitimate governmental control over a colony, this colony has a tacit dependence on more developed countries, on whom they depend for cultural and economic capital. This new way of maintaining control over a country was and continues to be met with massive resistance by figures like Che Guevara, who fought against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in his own country (Bentley, 32).
Following World War II, America was an economic and military superpower. The development of a significant military force and all manner of military technology (including the atomic bomb) led to America’s cementing of its superiority over the majority of the nations of the world. However, the conflicting ideologies presented by the two remaining superpowers – America and the Soviet Union – led to a cold war that would last for decades. There was no formal declaration of war, but espionage and political relations between the two nations would remain confrontational and hostile for the next half century. American paranoia at Soviet and Communist spies led to the McCarthy era of suspicion and blacklisting, where anyone suspected of being a Communist was put on trial, regardless of the validity of the charges (Bentley, 34).
Another important event in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the Vietnam War, an offensive taken by the United States in Vietnam in order to oust the North Vietnamese government, and defeat the Communist-controlled Viet Cong. This war introduced the universal presence of media in conflict, showing people at home the horrors of a war that the American military was not suited to fight. It introduced the effectiveness of guerilla warfare and sneak attacks to the American military, as that was the primary means of offensive for the Viet Cong (Bentley, 34). On the home front, the institution of the draft and the rise of a hippie, free love counterculture led to significant resistance and disapproval of the war, with many not wanting to go, and seeing the American military’s significant losses as a sign that they should pull out of Vietnam (Bentley, 34). The Case-Church Amendment of 1973 ended the military involvement in Vietnam, finalizing what many see as the first and most prominent American military defeat in a conflict to date (Walker, 1995).
In the 1970s and 1980s, up to the 1990s, industrial and manufacturing technology began to improve, to the level where the economy and social politics were becoming increasingly globalized. America maintained a significant economic foothold, becoming the center of computer technology due to the presence of Silicon Valley, an area of California known for high tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple (Brown, 2003). The 1990s saw the advent of the Internet, which allowed people from all around the world to connect to each other in powerful and significant ways through their computer. Increased networking has since permitted America and other countries to easily communicate and have an immediate impact on economics and politics from the other end of the world (Bentley, 35). From this point forward, military might and economic strength was not the determinant of a nation's power, but information; people could now have access to greater and more wide-reaching information than ever before, significantly diminishing borders to social and economic interdependence.
The previously-enviable American ideology of capitalism and democracy was (and continues to be) actively opposed by interests in the Middle East, and conflict began to shift from fighting against nations to fighting against non-governmental organizations such as terrorist cells, who represented ideologies rather than nations. On September 11, 2001, the most devastating foreign attack on American soil was carried out by members of al-Qaida, who hijacked four airplanes and crashed two into the World Trade Center in New York, causing both towers to collapse and killing almost three thousand people. This landmark event in American history led to a decidedly different atmosphere and a shifting in priorities towards a War on Terror. The average American began to see themselves as much less secure than they felt they were, since this devastating attack still occurred despite their relative military strength. Seeking to remove the Al-Qaida threat, Americans staged military interventions in Middle Eastern countries – 2001 saw the invasion of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban government, and in 2003, the American government, claiming to have found weapons of mass destruction, engaged in a military occupation of Iraq (Langley, 2006). This ushered in an increased dependence on military might and information in the face of conflicting ideologies, this time from a much more mobile, shadowy source than opposing nations: terrorism.
This continuation of America as the world's police indicates a shift into a vastly globalized, and in many ways neocolonial, global ideology that sees America taking dramatic action to protect its own interests, sometimes at the expense of others. At the beginning of this century, traditional warfare and economies were still holding onto their power, and empires were able to maintain colonies with direct control over their operations. With the growing advancement of technology, especially military technology that allows for mutually assured destruction, new ideologies have come forward to challenge the established way in which the world is run. Colonial empires now become neocolonial superpowers, and increasing globalization keeps many countries interdependent on each other. The establishment of said superpowers, and the outcome of the Cold War, has also increased the reach and the power of capitalism.
Works Cited
Bentley, J.H., Zingler, H.F., and Streets, H.E. Traditions and Encounters: A Brief
Global
History Volume II: From 1500 to the Present. McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Brown, D. C. Globalization and America since 1945. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Langley, A. September 11: attack on America. Compass Point Books, 2006.
Sulzberger, C. L. World War II. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986.
Walker, M. The Cold War: a history. Macmillan, 1995.
