In postwar Europe, the United States subsidized economic cooperation in order to support the political center and undermine the extremes and thus, in the long run, create a stable market for its exports. This recognition that markets required a social basis was of a piece with American domestic policy: in the three postwar decades, the gap between rich and poor in the United States was narrowed. In the 1960s, the vote was extended to African Americans, reducing the imperial character of American politics. Although the Soviet Union and its east European satellites refused American aid after the
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