The Three Greatest Consequences of World War II: The Rise of the American Superpower, The Birth of the United Nations and the Grand Partitioning of Europe

Much in the collective memory of World War II has reinvented the war as a variety of things that it is not. Nevertheless, it is certain that the war heralded the birth of the United States as a global superpower, the birth of the United Nations as a replacement for the League of Nations and a series of geopolitical conditions that have resulted in the wholesale partitioning of Europe. These formative changes to our geopolitical infrastructure were generated by World War II, but not necessarily for the better. In birthing these new systems of order and hierarchies of power, World War II’s destructive consequences continue to manifest today by and through a variety of socio-political complications that threaten to undermine Western Civilization as we know it. Though they were, at the time, perceived as engines of change and progress, the manner in which these three factors have evolved to the detriment of the geopolitical landscape make clear that only bad will come of them from here on out, at least until certain socio-political realities are comprehended by the actors with the potential to make good on the promises housed within the infrastructures guaranteed by these three factors.

In an effort to create a narrative palatable for the future of American identity, the implications of World War II have been generally oversimplified for the American Public. Americans today perceive themselves as having been the guarantors of liberty and political freedom on a global scale due to the courageousness demonstrated by the generation that won World War II. Of course, as many a scholar has made clear, World War II was won with Russian blood as it was the Russians who held the Nazi Army at bay for so long, preventing Hitler from advancing further into Europe than he already had (Stoler, 2001). To be sure, American GIs did their part to bring a successful outcome to the war, but their leaders were by no means dedicated to the cause until well after the British, Russians and even French had deployed troops. Yet another example of this historical selective memory is the glowing image of Rosie the Riveter and the manner in which this image may (or may not) have influenced the rise of the American Superpower.

Most today associate the Rosie the Riveter image with war-time unity and the sacrifices made by women during World War II in particular. Americans expected that life would return to what it had previously been as soon as the war concluded. Almost unnoticed has gone the manner in which American women have been funneled into the workplace since World War II. Indeed, without this, it is difficult to imagine how the United States would have risen to the status of a world superpower. In reality, the image of Rosie the Riveter did very little to rally the energy of American women during wartime (Kimble and Olson, 2006). This myth was cultivated in order to distract from the reality of the American Woman’s fate in the aftermath of World War II: women were compelled to remain in the workplace after the war’s conclusion in order to capitalize on the opportunity for the United States to get the most out of World War II, despite having contributed the least of any allied power.

In order to ensure this formula, President Harry Truman employed the newly developed atomic bomb so as to bring the war to a swift conclusion. In so doing, Truman signaled to the world that the United States wished to take advantage of its enviable position—because it contributed relatively few resources to the war effort, the U.S. could now emerge as an industrial global superpower of the highest order (Stoler, 2006). However, in order to achieve this, the workforce required as many contributors as possible, which included women. Accordingly, the idealization of Rosie the Riveter as a historical relic of a bygone past in which women were compelled to enter the workplace could not be further from reality; in the aftermath of World War II, women were asked to alter their socio-cultural positions indefinitely. If the U.S. was to capitalize on its good fortune, more manpower was required, even if this manpower came from a more feminine source. As such, Rosie the Riveter serves only to obfuscate the reality that American women continue to make the same sacrifices today as they did for the brief period during which their men were deployed in the field. Nevertheless, for reasons further discussed below, we are no longer putting the labor of women toward the geopolitical ends that we might achieve if we did. In other words, while woman may not have known it at the time and may not be comprehending it now, they are in the workplace for the long-term, for better or for worse, though we would be wise to all remember this lest the origins of women in the workplace are lost to history and, as a practical matter, lost upon us politically.

In so exploiting women’s workplace contributions, the United States inadvertently spawned a superpower counterpart: the Soviet Union, which was grown by Joseph Stalin through expansion of Communist apparatus to distant satellite republics, which amounted to factories dedicated to industrializing the U.S.S.R. Having lost so many during the war, the Russians felt compelled to not only absorb more able-bodied citizens within their borders for purposes of generating growth but also to arrange Europe with an eye towards their own interests (Kimball, 1985). This was made possible by the troubled state of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who “was only partially conscious of his surroundings” and “not the kind of representative America needed to confront the far more experienced and subtle Churchill and Stalin in the disposition of world affairs” that occurred at the Yalta Conference of 1945 (Tompkins, 1965). Indeed, unable to muster the physical and mental energy of his would-be partner Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin was given free-reign to expand the Soviet Empire. The results were not unpredictable, but their ramifications could have been better considered.

While Churchill urged his old ally Roosevelt to join him in strong-arming Stalin in an effort to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism through Eastern Europe, Roosevelt lacked the energy and insight necessary to join Churchill in this effort. Largely as a result of their inability to work together, owing largely to Roosevelt’s ill health, Churchill and Roosevelt failed to reign in Stalin, of whom Churchill was wary. In the end, Stalin was essentially permitted free reign of Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, in addition to much of pre-war Poland and, of course, the countries today know as Kazakhstan, Kaliningrad, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Latvia, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia (Tompkins, 1965). This acquiescence allowed for the partitioning of Europe to Stalin’s favor, essentially creating the conditions necessary for a half-century worth of Cold War (Kimball, 1985). As such, the rise of American superpower status contributed directly to the rise of Soviet superpower status, as gained through the partitioning of Europe.

Before Roosevelt became too ill to function in any diplomatic capacity, thereby allowing Stalin’s communist regime to flourish, he proposed the United Nations as a means of formally allying the 26 organized nations against the Axis powers. This seemingly unifying event has spawned years of socio-cultural and political conflict as the U.N. has evolved into something that its proponents could not possibly have imagined. Much can be learned from both the United States’ involvement in the Rwandan genocide relative to its lack of involvement in the Nazi genocide. Much of this elucidates the inefficient infrastructure of the United Nations and the impractical means by which it purports to function (Power, 2001). In engaging in this analysis, it becomes clear that the U.N. continues to manifest as one of World War II’s most destructive by-products. Far from functioning as it was intended to function, the U.N. is today an organization wholly lacking in purpose, vision and utility, serving only to exacerbate the very conflicts that it was designed to avoid.

This exacerbation of sensitive geopolitical conditions is the context into which the United Nations was birthed. By 1939, aerial intelligence confirmed for the American Government that concentration camp and munitions factories were being operated by the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, the U.S. determined to delay entry into World War II (Steinhouse, 2007). Today, this culture of forbearance and arbitrary entry into or distancing from various global political conflicts has marked not only U.S. foreign policy, but also the foreign policy initiatives of all those nations who might be willing to stem the tide of global genocide but for the posturing of the United Nations. When violence between the Hutu and Tutsi erupted in the early 1990s, the American political infrastructure and military apparatus did not immediately react. Relying on U.N. “Peacekeepers” to scale down the violent encounter, the U.S. chose not to intervene until far too much human damage had already been done (Power, 2001). This trend of ambivalence on our geo-political landscape has continued to evolve. Much of this ambivalence is a direct result of the United Nations' inaction to certain travesties and, in other cases, United Nations confusion with regard to the execution of its duties.

Had action by American forces been authorized by the United Nations, American forces would have intervened in the Rwandan Genocide, just as they did five years later during the cleansing of ethnic Albanians in the Balkan region. However, the United Nation’s Security Council infrastructure precludes unilateral activity of almost any kind, thereby inhibiting the extent to which good might be done by any one nation, in particular. As such, the forbearance of Roosevelt in failing to timely enter World War II today finds its expression in the failure of the United States to timely attend to all manner of diplomatic and geo-political conditions in need of attention. Far from unifying some allied league of nations against forces of evil, the United Nations has today emerged as the vehicle by which those who would do evil commit it, relying on the inefficient functioning of the U.N. in order to perpetuate all manner of atrocities. Indeed, one need only look at the crisis that is the Middle East in order to recognize the manner in which the U.N. has served to complicate matters beyond repair. Through its handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.N. has been exposed for what it is: a barrier to the meaningful and enduring resolution of the conflict, it having created the conflict through insensitivity and ignorance that its founders could not have envisioned.

After allowing Great Britain to remove itself from the land trust that it was to administer under the League of Nations, the U.N. partitioned the region then known as “Palestine,” granting a substantial portion of it to what is today known as Israel. Wrong or right, the U.N. then proceeded to announce that after being attacked and fighting back invading Arab nations, Israel would be required to withdraw from “territories of conflict,” as opposed to residing in them as conquered lands, as is the nature of armed conflict (D’Amato, 2007). For the sake of its own national security, Israel continues to occupy these lands, though the U.N. refuses to recognize its role in creating this national security threat and nevertheless continue to press Israel to simply withdraw forces from strategic territory such as the Golan Heights. In other words, a more confused state of affairs has rarely been seen since the dawn of modern history and the U.N. is responsible for it, as it continues to complicate matters of geo-political import to the point of irreparability.

The same evolutionary misfortune that has befallen the U.N. has also befallen the other two great consequences of World War II, as discussed here. Today, a crucial “mis-remembering,” so to say, of history provokes Americans into such outrageous demonstrations of geopolitical ignorance as to render them something less than genuine citizens of the world. Once again, this was plain for all to see when American News Media outlet CNN poked fun at a Belarusian World War II memorial, failing to comprehend that the Russian people detest American lack of appreciation for Russian sacrifices made during World War II (Associated Press 1). Just as the U.S. continues to fail at any kind of diplomatic efforts to stem the tide of Vladimir Putin’s autocratic regime, so too has the U.S. begun to cede its status as a global superpower in favor of mediocrity. This is so true that even a once-great friend of the U.S., Polish leader Lech Walesa, has announced his harsh criticisms of the Obama Administration; criticisms that bear on the continued state of civility that now characterizes the geopolitical status quo.

Former Polish President and anti-communist leader Lech Walesa shocked many when he took the time to reflect upon the manner in which American superpower status has been placed in jeopardy. As per Walesa, “When [Obama] was elected, everyone hoped and expected that he would reform not only the United States but also the rest of the world. But he failed to implement any constructive reforms…Perhaps he doesn't even care if America is still perceived as the superpower it once was" (Bachman and Meyers 2). Given all this, Walesa, a former Nobel Peace Prize recipient, speaks to the disastrous consequences that would ensue if the U.S. were to cede its status as a global superpower, thereby leaving a power vacuum that would be left unfilled, at least until a force far more sinister than the U.S. chooses to fill it. Given the manner in which the United Nations has failed to attend to sinister forces in the world, allowing a less upright government to fill a power vacuum is not outside the realm of possibility and would certainly lead to devastating consequences on a global scale.

Given all this, it certainly seems as though the three most crucial things to result from World War II have spawned their own outcomes, which continue to detrimentally impact the world today. American superpower status was founded upon a female work ethic that continues to endure, though we seem less and less inclined to continue operating as a superpower. This further complicates and even exacerbates the conditions set in motion by our president’s failure to participate meaningfully in the post-war partitioning of Europe, though Roosevelt did manage to create yet another apparatus of geopolitical harm in advocating strongly for the United Nations, whose continued lack of efficiency on the socio-political landscape continues to wreak havoc across all manner of regions. Perhaps then there is a cure to what ails our geopolitical order; a kind of solution that kills these three birds with just one stone. This would require a wholesale reformation of the United Nations to allow for curing of the ills created by the pseudo-legitimate partitioning of Europe and global socio-political strife wrought of previous United Nations errors and general mismanagement of circumstances that could easily have been managed more appropriately.

To this end, President Obama must consider as perhaps his final act an effort to reform the United Nations in such a way as allows for the United States of America to regain some foothold in global leadership, while also stemming the tide of those pseudo-democracies that if left unchecked, threaten our future. Indeed, even Lech Walesa suggested a route such as this one in making clear that President Obama must take the lead in realigning the geopolitical stars (Ibid.). In order to cure the geopolitical ills created by the manner in which the infrastructures created in the aftermath of World War II have evolved, a solution of this kind must at least be investigated, if not aggressively pursued. Otherwise, all that was thought to have been gained through these three World War II outcomes will have been lost to history and ceded to memory.

References

The Associated Press (2014). “How Russia hits back at slights over WWII victory.” In the NY Times. 10 Feb. 2014.

Bachman, John & Meyers, Jim. “Lech Walesa: Obama doesn’t care if US remains world superpower.” Newsmax. 19 Feb. 2014. Print.

D’Amato, Anthony. (2007). “Israel’s borders under international law.” Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 06-34, January 2007.

Kimball, Warren F. (1985). “Naked reverse right: Roosevelt, Churchill, and eastern Europe from Tolstoy to Yalta-and a little beyond.” Diplomatic History, 9.1, 1985.

Kimble, James J., and Olson, Lester B. (2006). “Visual rhetoric representing Rosie the Riveter: myth and misconception in J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It!" Poster.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs. 9.6, 2006.

Power, Samantha. “Bystanders to genocide,” The Atlantic, 24 Sep. 2001.

Steinhouse, C.L. (2007). Barred: The Shameful Refusal of FDR's State Department to Save Tens of Thousands of Europe's Jews from Extermination. United Kingdom: AuthorHouse, 2007.

Stoler, M.A. (2001). “The Second World War in U.S. history and memory.” Diplomatic History. Vol. 25(3), 2001.

Tompkins, David C. (1962). “FDR: Sick man at Yalta.” Michigan Quarterly Review, 1.3, 1962.