He brought two great wars fought on opposite sides of the earth to almost simultaneous victories at a cost in American lives of less than 2 percent of the total for all the participants in those wars.106 His country emerged from them with half the world’s manufacturing capability, two-thirds of its gold reserves, three-fourths of its invested capital, its largest navy and air force, and its first atomic bombs.107 There were, to be sure, pacts with devils in all of these: strategies, like politics, are never pure. But as historians Hal Brands and Patrick Porter have pointed out, “If this wasn’t
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