Sublime

The American-led Order (big O) did more than change the rules of the game; it institutionalized order (little o), which in turn allowed industrialization and urbanization to spread everywhere. That shifted the global demographic from one of lots of children to lots of young and mature workers, generating a sustained consumption and investment boom

What brought the Americans into the war in April 1917 was the German decision to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare, in which Germany used submarines to target ships carrying American supplies to stop them from reaching Britain and France. Americans who were on board these ships lost their lives, and the public outcry in the United States was

The United States is learning how to be an empire, creating enormous pressures on the world and on American institutions and the American public. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the clumsy management of the eighteen-year war against the jihadists.

The federal government’s relation to private life changed in World War II. It was central to winning the war, because World War II was won or lost on the ability to utilize the industrial base.

1. August, 1945. World War II ends.