The quest for a unipolar world order

Ted Grimsrud—November 4, 2025

The several years following World War II emphatically stamped the United States as an imperial power, not one that would seek to further the ideals of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech of 1941 (such as self-determination and freedom from war everywhere on earth). As articulated in Harry Truman’s 1947 “Truman Doctrine” speech, instead the US would commit itself to be ready to intervene militarily everywhere on earth in order to defeat its enemies. Though the practices of the American Empire in the quarter century after World War II contradicted the ideals of the Four Freedoms, most Americans embraced an uncritical nationalism that prevented them from a clear-eyed view of their country’s actual way of being in the world.

From the colonial era through World War II, the North American colonies and the US pursued a domination agenda. From the start, the colonies utilized the superior firepower of European weapons to displace indigenous peoples and created an economic system that required coerced unpaid enslaved labor. While the American Empire could have made choices that moved in more humane directions, the odds for such humane choices always remained small. At the end of World War II, American leaders faced perhaps the greatest (and last?) opportunity to choose for the more humane. The US could have actually committed to the ideals of the World War II purpose statements that reflected the long-stated democratic hopes in the American tradition.

A choice of paths

American leaders in late 1945 faced two basic options. One, the US could have pursued a multipolar world order. Such had been hoped for (but not achieved) with the League of Nations after World War I. Then, during World War II, many leaders expressed the hope that this time the great powers might do it right. They hoped for structures that would allow for many different power locations that would find ways to cooperate. These hopes led to the creation of the United Nations. This time, unlike with the League of Nations, the United States embraced its role as a world leader. In fact, this time the world leadership organization would be located in the US.

Or, in contrast, the world order could be based on the dominant power of a single nation and its close allies. World opinion at the end of the War did not allow for an open affirmation of such an approach. The two powers (Germany and Japan) whose open quest for world domination had been so devastating lost the War. No other power would dare advocate such an approach. However, the War ended with a single nation having achieved a dominant global stature that had never before existed. The US could seek dominance without openly claiming to.  

The US found option two to be irresistible and embarked on a 50-year effort to establish and sustain a unipolar world order. However, the US “victory” in the Cold War did not result in American “full spectrum dominance,” an achieved unipolar world order. Rather, the years since the end of the Cold War have seen a steady diminishment of American power. Can the American Empire give up its quest for dominance and affirm the emerging multipolarity?

The key fork in the road: What to do about nukes?

The US destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons in early August 1945. The claim that the US would lose up to a million soldiers if they did not use nukes only arose several years after the war. At the time, the military formally estimated possible casualties to be 40,000, but it did not release this estimate publicly. In 1946, the military concluded: “Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and probably prior to 1 November, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated” [quoted in Garry Wills, Bomb Power].

So, why were Americans so anxious to use their ultimate weapons? The leaders desired to see these weapons’ effect. They chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets because those cities had not suffered much previous damage. They offered the best laboratories to observe the effects of nuclear bombs in “real life.” In order to perform this gruesome “science experiment,” the Americans had to be sure to drop the bombs before the Japanese took the final step to surrender.

Even more importantly, American leaders anticipated resistance to their dominant world stature in the world order from others, especially the Soviet Union. The Americans wanted to establish a point of dominance over the Soviets based on their nuclear weapons monopoly. Such dominance would strengthen the American place at the top of a new unipolar world order. Tragically, though, the American monopoly on nuclear technology turned out to have exactly the opposite impact of what they intended. Rather than establishing a position of dominance, the Americans spurred the Soviets on to their own development of a comparable capability.

Henry Stimson’s fated effort for peace

Henry Stimson, Roosevelt’s secretary of war who remained in office during the first months of Truman’s presidency, recognized that it would not be in the best interests of the US for an arms race to emerge from the War. He sought to limit the spread of nuclear weaponry by having American leaders accept being part of a multipolar world order. Stimson proposed that the US pledge to “stop work on any further improvement in, or manufacture of, the bomb as a military weapon, provided the Russians and the British would do likewise.” With the agreement, Americans would “impound what bombs we now have in the United States provided the Russians and the British would agree with us that in no event will they or we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless all three governments agree to that use” [quoted in James Carroll, House of War]. Stimson made a radical suggestion here: Americans voluntarily surrendering their monopoly on nuclear weaponry and their exclusive control of their existing bombs.

Stimson argued: “Unless the Soviets are invited into the partnership upon a basis of trust and cooperation, we … will almost certainly stimulate feverish activity on the part of the Soviets toward the development of this bomb in what will in effect be a secret armament race of a rather desperate character” [quoted in Carroll]. Events proved Stimson remarkably prescient. As it turned out, Truman took Stimson’s proposal seriously enough to present it to his cabinet. Several cabinet members supported the proposal, but those who advocated that the US take advantage of its monopoly on nuclear weapons prevailed. Thus, Truman in the end rejected the proposal.

The presence of the bomb profoundly subverted American democracy. The US invented the atomic bomb through a process that validated the forces of official secrecy and military supremacy. The president started the process and authorized secret funding to make it possible. This process became the model for further hidden projects and other secretive behavior. What began in the context of a wartime “emergency” became the institutional status quo.

Undercover imperialism

A major bureaucratic victory for unipolar dominance advocates occurred when they stopped Truman’s effort to end the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) after the War. Instead, the OSS was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In January 1946, Truman appointed a “director of central intelligence” with no congressional involvement. By the next year, the establishment of the CIA was part of the 1947 National Security Act.

The limitations on CIA actions included in the founding Act—that the CIA would never act in ways that would violate the Constitution and would be accountable to Congress—never had a major role in CIA operational philosophy. The CIA rarely distinguished itself in its intelligence work. It misread virtually every global crisis. It failed to foresee the Soviet atomic bomb, and it offered little help in the conflict that became the Korean War. The CIA soon helped overthrow democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala. It also sought, less successfully, to overthrow Indonesia’s government. All three actions had disastrous long-term effects on those nations. The CIA also led the early engagement in what became a disaster in Vietnam. Such covert operations subverted self-determination and militarized conflicts over and over.

The fateful Truman Doctrine

The key point that ended hope of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets was a speech by Truman on March 12, 1947. His “Truman Doctrine” governed American foreign policy for the coming decades. The speech served as a watershed in several ways. (1) Truman made clear that he identified the Soviets no longer as the ally of World War II, but an enemy to be resisted at a high cost. (2) Beyond simply stating the enmity, Truman committed American military support to this conflict. The US would not return to prewar reluctance to involve itself militarily in other country’s conflicts. (3) Truman’s basic principle set the tone for the American side of the Cold War: “America must oppose any Communist threat to freedom anywhere in the world.”

Truman’s words fanned the flames of fear to push people to accept this move back into war footing. The US would now involve itself militarily virtually anywhere in the world. The Truman Doctrine included a fundamental logic that made ongoing American intervention around the world almost inevitable. Each manifestation of alleged Communist influence around the world by definition threatened the US. The focus on “communism” led the US to misrepresent local efforts at self-determination as part of a Soviet effort to establish world domination. Thus followed tragic American misrepresenting of social dynamics in nations such as Cuba, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Such distortions led to millions of deaths in the years following Truman’s speech.

The US embarked on regular mostly covert military excursions. Few, if any, of these excursions would have been acceptable to the American people or even to Congress prior to World War II. That war transformed the way Americans thought about American military force being used around the world. A huge factor as well may be seen in how profitable the increased military presence around the world proved to be for corporate America.

The nation rapidly established military bases of various sizes and levels of permanence around the world. The government never publicly offered an accounting of all the outposts. Early in the 21^st century, the Pentagon reported that it owned or rented 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries. Counting numerous secret outposts, the US military empire exceeded 1,000 bases around the world. This explosion of military bases makes clear the imperialistic character of the American place in the world.

The road not taken: Failed hopes with the United Nations

Many non-imperialist Americans envisioned an international structure that would make peaceful relationships possible. They believed that the formation of the United Nations would be a silver lining to emerge out of the dark clouds of total war. When the war ended, many hoped it might ultimately serve democratic ends should a powerful, effective and participatory UN emerge. Many of the foundational statements at the forming the UN seemed to support those hopes. The UN vision pointed toward a multipolar world order made up of the diverse nations of the world, some much more powerful than others, where cooperation and mutuality would characterize international relations. The UN would provide the structure to enable cooperative dynamics and also empower international peacekeeping efforts when conflicts did arise.

The US did play a decisive role in the UN’s formation and its powerful articulation of human rights ideals in the monumental Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. However, from the very beginning of the UN, the US power elite and their international allies undermined its vision. They centered on sustaining their power more than genuinely sharing power. The dominant powers structured the UN to protect their interests. The UN for many years reinforced American power. In the early years, the US had enough international support, so it made a show of seeking a global consensus through the UN for its policies. As more countries developed a sense of distance from US practices, the General Assembly voted more and more against US interests. As this happened, the Americans voiced more skepticism about the UN and paid less heed to UN decisions. As a consequence, the UN has fallen far short of the original hope that it could coordinate a genuinely multipolar world.

[This is the 19^th of a long series of blog posts, “A Christian pacifist in the American Empire” (this link takes you to the series homepage). The18^th post in the series, “The war that changed everything,” may be found by clicking on this link. The 20^th post, “The sorrows of empire” may be found by clicking on this link.]