In the 4th essay in this series, which was entitled The New World Order Part I, we learned about FDR’s long term plan to keep the American economy strong by helping allies and former adversaries rebuild their economies and then encouraging free trade among all nations that were willing to follow the rules (ie GATT and WTO.) . FDR believed that capitalism and free enterprise would ultimately prevail over government planned economies. We have the advantage of hindsight to see that he was right. The two main proponents of communism/planned economies were the Soviet Union and Red China. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. China choose to significantly revise its economic system and agreed to follow our rules such that they were admitted to the WTO in 2001. My point here is that all those fears that Domino Theory was going to result in much of the world becoming “Communist” and therefore we had to fight wars to prevent this, was totally wrong. All we needed to do was just be the leader of the free world and in time the economics would have resulted in countries in Asia and Eastern and Central Europe eventually abandoning their systems and joining ours.
As for the wars, what if subsequent presidents had chosen to commit our military only to “legal wars”? By that I mean, we only engaged in wars that were approved by the UN Security Council. That would have limited us to participating in just three wars – Korean, the First Gulf War, and the first phase of our attack on Afghanistan following 911. That would mean, we would not have fought in the Vietnam War, the 2nd Iraq War, there would not have been a full-scale nation building war in Afghanistan. We would not have helped take out Khaddafi and turned Libya into an anarchial basket case. It would also mean that we would not have used the CIA to topple Mohammed Mosaddegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953, and install our stooge, the dictatorial Shah of Iran. It was that act and our subsequent helping the Shah subjugate his people that has earned the US the title of “The Great Satan” in Iran and our implacable enemy.
And actually, had we not cheated and stacked the deck on the Security Council by recognizing Taiwan rather than Red China as the permanent member of the Security Council, the Korean War would not have been approved. China would not have been brought directly into the Korean War and it is highly likely that there would be only one Korea today and it would be a free non-nuclear nation.
The 1st Gulf War would have been our only major war since WW II.
This was a “good war” and a resounding success for the US. It was a clear case of one nation (Iraq) invading another nation (Kuwait) to take by force territory and resources which was a direct violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. The UN Security Council, which had 15 members (5 permanent and 10 rotating members) approved UN Resolution 678 with 12 voting for, 2 against (Cuba & Yemen) and the Peoples Republic of China abstaining. Resolution 678 mandated that Iraq withdraw its forces from Kuwait by a specific date and if it failed so, a coalition of the willing, led by the US, could use “all possible means” to expel the Iraqi forces. (Of note, Saudi Arabia paid the Soviet Union $1 billion to vote for it.)
A total of 36 countries joined the United States with military forces to defeat Iraq. Other countries provided financial support. The United States was reimbursed for the cost of its military forces such that we made a small profit off the war. And we won the goodwill of nearly the planet for ensuring that no nation could conquer another nation with impunity.
That was at the core of the role that FDR envisioned the US playing in the future.
How much better the United States and world would be had we just trusted that freedom and capitalism would prevail over communism, and we should only commit to “legal wars”, to wars where we are attacked or to those where an ally that is attacked and we are bound by treat to defend them (as in NATO).
Up next, I will finally get to NATO.