HANS MORGENTHAU
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the United States included, was preceded by the decline of the
traditional nation-states ofWestern Europe, ofwhich the-United States
was the main beneficiary.
The first spectacular demonstration of that shift was the decisive
intervention of the United States in the First World War, temporarily
obscured by the American isolationism of the inter-war period and the
French military predominance in Europe during the twenties. The
United States emerged from the First World War as the potentially
most powerful nation on earth; but from the collapse of Wilson's
foreign policy to the outbreak of the Second World War it acted as
though it still were a power of the second rank.
It
was neither design
nor choice but the ineluctable force of its circumstances that in the
aftermath of the Second World War made the United States the most
powerful nation on earth. On the one hand, the traditional great
powers ofEurope , having suffered the death of 7 million of their most
vigorous men in the First World War, became in the Second the victims
of occupation, mass bombings, and genocide. Within a decade after
the end of the hostilities, they had lost the bulk of their colonial
possessions either voluntarily or in consequence of defeat in colonial
wars.
On the other hand, the outcome of the Second World War was
decided by nations either completely or largely outside Europe. The
material productivity and technical ingenuity of the United States,
undamaged-:-in contrast to all the other productive systems-but
greatly stimulated by the war, was a decisive factor in victory and
reconstruction. Thus, the conjunction of the absolute decline of the
traditional nation-states of the West and the absolute ascendancy
of the United States-both in consequence of two world wars–
accounts for the rise of the United States in the context of the West's
decline.
A similar shift from the traditional nation-states of the West to
the United States can be observed on the moral plane. The First World
War brought to the fore two challenges to the traditional moral order:
Communism and Fascism. Faced with the choice, the ruling elites
chose Fascism as protection against Communism or even radical
reform. They chose Fascism even
if
it meant opening the gates to the
enemy of the nation. "Rather Hitler than Blum" became the slogan of
the French right, and the Vichy regime became the political manifes–
tation of that moral preference.
