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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE endlessly about the causes for what is known as the cold war, but it is clear that the contention between these two great powers often threatened the peace of the world. We may argue that American production of an atomic bomb in 1945 and Russian production of one four years later resulted in a balance of power which would insure that neither side would ever use these weapons. We may also argue that continuous development and refinement of nuclear arsenals, not only in the United States and the Soviet Union, but also elsewhere in the world, simply magnified an unprecedented threat to all of humanity, one which somehow and sometime would have to be ended. At no time during the forty-year period covered by this chapter was that threat absent from any serious discussion of the world and its future. The deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union led this country in 1948 to embark upon programs of economic and later of military aid designed to bolster the rest of the so-called free world (which soon came to include both West Germany and Japan, the recent enemies) as a balance to growing Soviet power. The amounts of money which the United States committed to these programs ran to tens of billions of dollars and dwarfed any previous American undertaking, excepting only World War II itself. Since many of these funds were spent in this country to provide goods and services for those receiving aid, they were long an important factor in insuring continuing American prosperity. One of the results of these programs was to expand greatly American involvement in the affairs of nations in all parts of the world and to create at least the impression that the United States had come closer than any previous state to being a universal imperial power. Growing American dependence on others for certain vital raw materials, no longer in abundant supply here, also had the effect of increasing American involvement in the rest of the world. One of the significant sequels to World War II was the breaking up of a number of European and other empires, some of which had existed for hundreds of years. No period in history has come close to matching the years between 1945 and 1985 in the formation of new nation-states in almost every part of the world. Areas which long counted but little in the international balance of power became forces to be reckoned with, not only because of their valuable natural resources, but also because of the danger to peace which their frequent political instability could, and did, create. In a work first published in 1979, William E. Leuchtenburg described the American experience after 1945 as "a troubled feast." As far as goods and services were concerned, Americans had never been so well off. As far as standing in the world was concerned, they had never been so powerful. Nevertheless, especially beginning in 74