Architects of Globalism: Building a New World Order during WWII

by Patrick J. Hearden

Architects of Globalism provides the first comprehensive analysis of American Blueprints for the reconstruction of the world after the defeat of Hitler and his allies. Working closely with Roosevelt and Truman, State Department officials assumed primary responsibility for drafting these plans. Hearden shows that bitter rivalries frequently divided these officials, but that there was remarkable agreement among them on fundamental principles. These architects of globalism sought to create a liberal capitalist world system, in which foreign markets would absorb the surplus products of American farms and factories so that the United States would be able to maintain high levels of employment without further government intervention in the economy. Hearden shows these men contending with the vital issues of the decolonization and the dismantling of empires, relations with the Soviet Union, the formation of the United Nations, the economic reconstruction of war-torn countries, the forging of new relations with Germany and Japan, the twin problems of Palestine and petroleum. Based on extensive new research in primary sources ― from policymakers' private letters and personal diaries to official correspondence ― this exciting book documents the formation of the postwar world.

418 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna]

Journal of Cold War Studies

The thesis of Patrick Hearden's book is right in the title. His impressively researched, well-written study attempts to demonstrate how during and even before the United States entered World War II U.S. State Department officials—the "architects"—planned and implemented their economic and geopolitical vision for the postwar world.

This "new world order" was to be shaped by free trade and capital movements around the globe, averting a return to the depression at home by creating markets abroad for surplus American goods.

This liberal "open door" would also prevent both social revolution overseas and the reemergence of the type of authoritarian, economically autarkic regimes that these planners believed had caused World War II.

In detailed, well-organized chapters, Hearden reveals how U.S. officials wrestled with enormously complicated questions as they planned to realize their globalist vision. Should Germany be destroyed and permanently deindustrialized, or should it be rebuilt and peacefully reintegrated into a democratic, market-oriented Europe?

What should be done in the turbulent Middle East, where valuable oil reserves were complicating the already messy dynamic of post-Ottoman religious and political turmoil?

Could East Asia be stabilized so that Japan and China coexisted while opening their valuable markets to U.S. trade and investment?

Could the United States successfully build international organizations that would ensure security and guarantee a liberal world trading order?

What would be the relationship between the big three—the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain—after the conflict ended?

Hearden is at his best when detailing the well-known battles both within the State Department and between the department and the rest of the U.S. government to move postwar planning in a globalist direction. He has exhaustively mined a wide range of both private and governmental papers in the United States to tell how these planners set out to build their market-oriented new world order to America's economic advantage.

His narrative is full of useful information, but his arguments and methodology are not without flaws.

First, there are obvious limits to what planning can tell us, and Hearden often conflates the architects' vision with what actually happened. Important as postwar planning was, we know that Franklin D. Roosevelt time and time again made winning the war a higher priority.

When postwar planning threatened to weaken America's wartime alliance with Great Britain (i.e., on matters relating to decolonization or postwar trade policy) or with the Soviet Union (i.e., the political status of Poland), Roosevelt almost always chose the route that ensured the quickest defeat of Germany and Japan, regardless of the consequences for "building a new world order."

This guaranteed that regardless of what State Department officials hoped to bring about, most of the actual policies would not be decided until after the war was won.

Second, by focusing solely on the American side of planning, Hearden provides only a small and distorted part of the story. What were Soviet and British leaders thinking about the postwar world?

What were politicians in India, Egypt, and China planning? How would the defeated powers respond?

How would the dramatic changes in each country's domestic political and social order affect U.S. officials' attempt to enforce their "new world order"?

Did U.S. policymakers even begin to understand these changes and to adapt their plans accordingly?

A more international and comparative approach to these questions would have made the book much stronger.

A more fundamental problem arises with Hearden's argument that U.S. planners saw World War II as an opportunity to reshape the globe to reflect American values and interests, especially in the economic realm.

Hearden builds on the old revisionist claim that U.S. policy was driven by the desire to create a liberal capitalist world system. The United States certainly cared about the shape of the global economic order after the war.

But Hearden takes this argument to an extreme. "If Germany won a quick victory........

[Dj]

I am so glad I read this book. Depending on why and how one reads history, this book will either be an essential and exciting read or one of what would need to be several if not many others to understand the non-military affairs before and after WWII. I read history because of how it helps bring me understanding to the times, both then and now, as well as enjoying the interactivity between people influencing events and the events that influence the times.

Hearden’s book is well-written balancing the writer’s need to deliver large amounts of information to get the reader inside the work and deliberations that created the policies and actions, while being highly economical and readable. This book assumes some understanding of pre-WWII and WWII, but stands on its own and may not require any. Key areas reward a reader of this book that sits between highly readable popular histories and a textbook.
- The underpinning positive action by so many people to define and achieve war aims.
- The ways they went about this.
- The ideologies, personalities, and circumstances around creating a post war world, while knowing the war’s outcome was far from certain.
- The focus on the US officials, diplomats, and leaders while including the other governments and leaders of the times.

You should read this book if you are interested in The who’s, why’s, and how’s of history; would like a deeper understanding of where the current, possibly now former, global system came from; as well as insights into methods of organization, policy making, and diplomacy applicable today.