From the military invasions of the Soviet Union immediately following war's end in 1918, western spokesmen, led by President Wilson, did their utmost to subsidize counter-revolution inside the Soviet Union, to send American and other armed forces into the country, to villify, denounce, boycott and handicap the Soviet Government. Sixteen years passed (1917-1933) before Washington extended diplomatic recognition to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. President Wilson did his best to keep the Soviet Union and Mexico, both under the control of revolutionary governments, out of the League of Nations.
After the 1936-1945 war Washington played the same role with regard to China, refusing for twenty-two years to recognize Socialist China diplomatically, leading the drive in the United Nations to exclude China from membership, although the United Nations Charter specified that China should be one of the permanent members of the Security Council. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles justified the policy of blacklisting and boycotting China by declaring that there was no such nation as China on the Asian mainland, only 650 million slaves, and that Chiang Kai Shek's rump government on the island of Formosa was the "China" specified in the U.N. Charter.
Under the Truman Doctrine announced immediately after war's end in 1945, the United States refused to tolerate any extension of socialism, whether by revolution from within or by invasion from without any country. This doctrine was applied to Greece, to Iran, to Guatemala, to Santo Domingo, to Chile. During the Korean War, which began in June, 1950, one of President Truman's first directives ordered the United States Seventh (Pacific) Fleet to occupy the waters about Taiwan (Formosa), which was historically part of China.
In order to implement this anti-communist policy, Washington used a newly created international secret service, the Central Intelligence Agency or C.I.A., gave it an initial appropriation of $100,000,000 and turned it loose to spy, corrupt, undermine and overthrow governments that refused to accept or follow Washington's leadership.
Between 1815 and 1914 the planet enjoyed a measure of peace and order. In the three decades between 1914 and 1945, two general wars, a plague of lesser wars, a general economic depression and a hurricane of revolutions scourged the planet. Meanwhile, the revolution in science and technology and its products penetrated almost every crack and cranny of human society.
Had the changes incidental to these rapid transformations been carefully planned and supervised, the disturbances in the ecology and the shocks to human society would have been less disturbing and upsetting. In the absence of any planet-wide authority, there could be neither general planning nor general supervision. There were warnings aplenty from liberals and radicals who were attempting to keep the situation in perspective, but such utterances failed to reach the great bulk of mankind.
Disturbing and upsetting products of the revolution in science and technology—the harnessing of steam, the internal combustion engine, the air plane, electronics, plastics, and the release of atomic energy—were used to mutilate, destroy and kill. During the half century that began in 1910, tens of millions were mobilized, fed, taught, armed, and led to the slaughter fields by the masters of western civilization in two long orgies of wholesale destruction and mass murder—1914-18 and 1936-1945. Energies and techniques that might have brought peace and plenty to the human family were used to set fire storms that incinerated property while it degraded humanity to the horrors of mass suicide.
In a very real sense these ghoulish results were the logical outcome of competitive nationalism armed and equipped with the technology produced during the two centuries of the great revolution. War is the most carefully planned, most elaborate and most intensive form of competition—the decisive climax of a life and death struggle for survival.
The great revolution had put into human hands almost infinite possibilities for utilizing nature and improving the social environment. With foresight, careful planning and skillful manipulation of forces and trends the cultivatable portions of the planetary land mass might have been turned into a garden of unending plenty dotted with marvelous city centers of light and learning.
In order to achieve such results it would have been necessary for the human family to coordinate its efforts around an agreed division of labor, share the goods and services produced and move from one level of affluence to a level of abundance.