Although internationalists staged a debate against a phantom enemy, their nondebate proved to be world-historically productive. It settled what Sumner Welles, a few weeks after the D-Day landings, called “the real question before the American people today.” This was whether, after winning the war, “they wish to make the fullest use of the strength which is theirs.”83 This strength, Welles noted, dwarfed that of any other nation in the world. As the United States helped to set up the institutions of postwar international society in the final years of the war, its political class perceived and
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