🌐 Present at the Re-creation

In 1945, the world lacked a world order.

The previous one had been upheld by European great powers, but after six years of war it lay in ruins, just as much as the countries themselves.

In this geopolitical power vacuum, the United States — a nation historically marked by deep suspicion of foreign alliances — was forced to fundamentally reassess its global role and finally take up the mantle as leader of the free world.

By the early 1950s, a new world order was in place.

The UN as a global forum to prevent new world wars through collective security and peaceful conflict resolution. The Bretton Woods system tied the dollar to gold and other currencies to the dollar, and created the IMF and the World Bank as economic pillars. The Marshall Plan provided American aid to Western Europe for reconstruction, political stability and to slow the appeal of communism. The Truman Doctrine became the United States’ policy for using economic and military means to stop communist expansion. After aggressive Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe, NATO was formed, the first peacetime alliance in U.S. history.

One person who was deeply involved in all of this was Dean Acheson. Wearing a mustache and tweed jackets, he became, first as assistant secretary of state under President Roosevelt and later as secretary of state under President Truman, one of the architects of the new world order.

In every part of this construction, Acheson played a key role, from formulating the basic idea behind the Marshall Plan and negotiating the NATO Treaty to helping drive the steps that led to the Truman Doctrine.

He gave his own view of these years in the nearly 800-page epic Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department, published in the late 1960s. The book became a bestseller, and Acheson won the Pulitzer Prize for it.

I finished reading it last week and was struck by a sentence in the final chapter:

"All who served in those years had an opportunity to give more than a sample of their best."

They were ordinary people working through extraordinary times. Those years were not easy; quite the opposite. They were difficult, dangerous, full of failures, crises and shattered hopes.

But also of successes and progress of enormous significance.

Precisely for that reason, everyone who took part then had the opportunity to use so much more of their ability than they would under normal circumstances. They gave all their energy, knowledge, intelligence, ingenuity, creativity and endurance.

Despite all the setbacks during those years, Acheson and others involved could look back on them with pride.

Extraordinary times require extraordinary efforts from ordinary people.

Present at the re-creation

Around us now, the world order that was largely established during the Acheson years is being torn down.

At such a time, it is easy to lose hope.

But this is our time.

We are the ordinary people of our time who will now get the chance to give more than a sample of our best.

Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist