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EXTENT TO WHICH AMERICA RETURNS TO ITS STABILITY IN THE FINAL
DECADE OF 20TH CENTURY
world war II caused vast changes in virtually every aspect of American life in the United States.
Millions of men and women entered military service and saw parts of the world they would
likely never have seen otherwise. The labour demands of war industries coursed millions more
Americans to move largely to the pacific, Atlantic and gulf coasts where defense plants were
located. United states were in better economic condition when World War II ended than any
other country in the world.
Building on the economic base left after the war, American society became more affluent in the
post war years. Public policy like the so-called GI Bill of right passed in 1994 which provided
money for veterans to attend colleges, purchase homes and to buy farms. The impact of such
public policies certainly aided returning veterans to better themselves and to begin forming
families and having children. The image and reality of overall economic prosperity and the
upward mobility provided for many white Americans was not lost both before and after war.
The post world war also presented Americans with several problems and issues. Most American
initially viewed their place in the post war world with optimism and confidence. Within two
years of the end of the war, new challenges and perceived threats had arisen to erode that
confidence. By 1948, a new form of international tension had emerged that is cold war between
united states and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. In the next 20 years, cold war
spawned many tensions between two superpowers abroad and fears of communist subversion
gripped domestic politics at home.
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Twenty years after 1945, there was abroad political consensus concerning the cold war and anti-
communism. There was bipartisan support for most US foreign policy initiatives after the United
States intervened military in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, this political consensus began to break
down.
In the middle of the 20th century, a nationwide movement for the equal rights for African
Americans and for the end of racial segregation and exclusion arose across the United States. By
the end of the 1960s the civil rights movement had brought about dramatic changes in the law
and in public practice and had secured legal protection of rights and freedoms for African
Americans that would shape American life for decades to come.
The 2oth century saw a wave of organized activism to secure civil rights and freedom for
lesbianism, gaysm, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ). Individuals had long been
subjected to public hostility and public hostility and legal prosecution.
It is a common place that in the 20th century, scientific and technological innovation increasesd at
an exponential rate. The industrial revolution extended over generations and allowed time for
human and institutional adjustment. Almost everyone agrees that change has been proceeding at
an acceleration rate. It is usually argued that change is greater and more rapid in domestic than in
international affairs. Our everyday lives and societies have been revolutionized by technological
change and economic growth while international politics maintains its basic consistency, in large
part because it remains a system of self-help and anarchy.
United states changed much more in the first half of the 20th century than in the second half
while international politics has seen three rule revolutions in the last fifty years. Until recently
the starndand works on American siplomacy tended to juxtapose the two postwar eras. They saw
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in the isolationism and economic nationalism of the first post war period policies that were
overcome in the second, and they pointed to these policies as causes for the collapse of economic
stability and world peace after 1929. This interpretation paralleled that in the original accounts of
the republic ascendancy at home. These accounts portrayed the 1920s as a reactionary decage
squeezed between two dynamic reform periods and together with the old standard on American
diplomacy.
