Why the United States No Longer Fears a World War

Complete silence. This was America’s response to Donald Trump’s extremely curious statement. The president called both world wars “beautiful,” and he is undoubtedly correct, at least from the point of view of the U.S. However, the question remains: Will a third world war be as “beautiful” for the country as the preceding two?

Trump has once again gotten himself into a scandal. While opposing the possible renaming of several American military bases (named after Confederate generals) he stated in an interview with his favorite news channel, Fox News, that these bases helped the U.S. “We won two World Wars, two World Wars, beautiful World Wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg,” he said. 

What Is ‘War’?

These words were met with international indignation. In Russia, for example. Representative of the Russian State Duma Elena Strokova, a member of the Committee of International Affairs, said, “No sane person, not a single country, which participated in the Second World War, has yet characterized this event as ‘beautiful’. World wars could seem ‘beautiful’ only to a person with distorted moral values or to a disinterested bystander.'”

However, no one in the United States has spoken out against the words of a president with such distorted moral values. In fact, despite their passion for critiquing Trump for every little matter, American news media, experts and journalists have paid no attention to this particular statement.

Russians might be surprised by such a situation. Any Russian politician who would have said something similar to what Trump said would soon cease to be a politician. Citizens from other countries —France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc. — share this point of view.

However, the lack of American reaction is not really surprising. Americans are silent not because they lack sanity or moral values, but because they have a completely different understanding of the two world wars. In their worldview, these two global conflicts could indeed be called “beautiful.”

The world wars caused minimal damage to the United States. In World War I, the U.S. suffered just 117,000 casualties, a scant 2% of the total Allied casualties. In World War II, the country suffered approximately 419,000 casualties (of which only 12,000 were civiliansj). For comparison, the Red Army had more casualties during the Battle of Stalingrad alone.

Furthermore, both world wars took place far from American soil. Thus, the infrastructure of the continental U.S. was untouched. Toward the end of the war, Japan sent 9,000 balloons with bombs toward America, and of these, only a few hundred actually reached their target and killed several people. Now, can this be counted as a real threat?

Civilian casualties numbered approximately 750 in World War I, and 12,000 in World War II (one-hundredth of a percentage point of those tens of millions civilians killed between 1939 and 1945 due to military action). For Americans, these wars were not about survival. In fact, it has been more than 200 years since the U.S. actually fought a war where its existence and sovereignty (or the survival of the American people) were actually at stake.

Business

Yet the benefits of these wars were enormous for the U.S. After World War I, the United States ceased to be in debt and no longer had a negative trade balance. Instead, the country became one of the largest creditors in the world. In addition to improving its economy, America officially and irreversibly became a world power. This was noted at the Washington Naval Conference (1921-1922), which determined the size of the navies of different countries. The U.S. was allowed to have a fleet the same size as Great Britain, which was once known as the greatest naval power in the world. The size of the navy was measured by displacement tonnage.

Beginning in 1889, Great Britain had acted according to the “two-power standard,” which provided that the country’s navy had to be larger than the world’s second and third largest navies combined. However, after World War I, the British were forced to accept a new status quo. Great Britain owed the U.S. $4.5 billion (almost as much as the United States had owed before the war) and resigned itself to the new situation. However, Japan was indignant. According to the Washington Naval Conference, its navy was allowed to be only three-fifths the size of the American navy. The U.S. response to Japanese protests was simple: It would build two ships for every ship the Japanese built, and Japan decided not to push it.

Thanks to World War II, the U.S. was transformed from a naval power into a global power. Having undergone complete destruction for the second time in 30 years, Europe gave itself up to American corporations. The Marshall Plan financed the reconstruction of Europe through the purchase of American goods with American money. This not only allowed for the growth of the American economy, but made European markets completely dependent on it.

The beginning of the Cold War allowed the U.S. to become Europe’s “shield” and the political leader of the West. This “shield” is no longer necessary, but the Old World maintains it through continued political and economical ties and loyalties.

These ties have always manifested themselves as opportunities for the U.S. to acquire new territory (for example, during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848), remove a competitor from the Western hemisphere (the Spanish-American War in 1898) or extend its global influence and leadership. With this in mind, both world wars have indeed been “beautiful” for the United States.

The problem is that the United States’ perception of war as “beautiful” endangers the whole world, which has become even more globalized since World War I. (Just take a look at what a virus, originating from a market in China, has done to us). Countries develop different, diametrically opposed military tactics, capable of destroying the economies of other countries with a single blow (i.e., cyberterrorism and nuclear warfare).

The world is in danger of plunging into a third world war caused by a series of interrelated regional conflicts. The several reasons behind this are the misunderstanding of possible repercussions of a destructive war, the overwhelming monetization of warfare in general, and the United States’ constant and precarious balancing on the brink of war over the course of several crises (in Iran, the Ukraine, Korea, etc.) If a third world war begins, it might not be “beautiful,” even for the U.S.