We were very lucky to come out of WWII relatively unscathed (in terms of our territorial integrity, and factory production was actually stengthened) and to have barely been scratched by WWI. That gave us a tremendous, huge, formidable, advantage. Europe lay in disarray, a generation of men lost in WWI, and many of it's cities bombed in WWII, and another generation of men lost and wounded. England was besieged and bombed, it's former colonial status forever shattered, and it's colonies drained by it's struggle to survive. Japan was rubble. Germany was demoralized and divided, with the Ruhr factories bombed, and just look at how much the USSR suffered, and China! I mean, it would have been amazing if the US couldn't take advantage of the fact that almost everywhere else on Earth had been subject to a huge catastrophe.
WWI, and WWII made the US what it is today, imo. But WWII was a long time ago, and we have been resting on those laurels for a long time. That is why, imo, we are in decline now. We are not super just because we are the US, we were "super" partly because of lucky accidents of history. Future accidents may favor other countries- and I have learned from history that one unusually robust way to shake the dice of history, is to start wars whose outcome is anyone's guess. |
