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The Journal of Military History 67.3 (2003) 974-975



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Architects of Globalism: Building a New World Order during World War II. By Patrick J. Hearden. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55728-730-9. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 418. $39.95.

This instructive, impressively researched, but not entirely persuasive study recasts World War II into an instrument employed by shrewd American policymakers to insure "the creation of a liberal capitalist world system" (p. xi). Even before Pearl Harbor, according to Patrick Hearden, well-placed postwar planners, housed chiefly but not exclusively in the Department of State, had come to view the conflagration already underway in Europe as an opportunity. By playing its cards right, Washington could seize that opportunity to establish the ideological hegemony of democratic capitalism and usher into existence a liberal international economic order. Indeed, it was essential to do so. Only by creating an "open world" operating in accordance with liberal norms could the United States—then just crawling out of a decade-long economic crisis—guarantee its own prosperity and, by extension, preserve its existing domestic order.

Moreover, officials entertaining these views had the ear of President Franklin Roosevelt. As a result, according to the author, an associate professor [End Page 974] of history at Purdue University, these postwar planners played a hitherto unappreciated role in determining basic U.S. policy throughout the war.

Viewed in this light, the chief aim of the American war effort was not to forge a Grand Alliance to bring about the military defeat of Germany and Japan. Rather, it was "to prevent the Axis powers from dividing the globe into exclusive spheres of economic influence" (p. 38) while simultaneously pressing our wartime partners, starting with the British Empire, to dismantle their own exclusionary arrangements. Moreover, as depicted by Hearden, this effort was all-encompassing, shaping U.S. policies not only in the principal wartime theaters but also toward peripheral regions like Africa and the Middle East. Indeed, the quest for an open world decisively influenced Washington's approach to issues such as the creation of the United Nations, postwar military planning, and the control of nuclear weapons.

There is no question that economic considerations and a belief in the imperative of commercial openness influenced U.S. wartime strategy as well as American thinking about the postwar order. On that score, Hearden's case is irrefutable.

The question is whether such considerations trumped all others. In that regard, the evidence offered here falls well short of being conclusive. Indeed, Hearden provides abundant evidence to the contrary. He points out, for example, that when FDR committed the United States to lend-lease he did so "without obtaining any assurances that Great Britain would adopt a liberal postwar commercial policy" (p. 46). Furthermore, he made that commitment "without bothering to consult the State Department," suggesting that on matters critical to the ongoing war effort State's postwar planners may not have wielded all that much clout (p. 47) .

Waging a global war required Roosevelt and his key advisers to juggle a host of competing priorities. Creating the conditions for a postwar order conducive to America's economic well-being was one such priority. But even after reading Architects of Globalism, this reader at least is left with the impression that FDR tended more often than not to come down in favor of whatever action would win the war, as expeditiously and cheaply as possible. Efforts to maneuver others into accepting the American vision of an open world could wait, or at least were tempered by the requirements of victory.

 



Andrew J. Bacevich
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts

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