7 - Who Paid for America’s War?

Summary

The slow dissolution of America's postwar hegemony probably is the most popular analytic device for explaining the history of European-American relations from the 1950s through the 1970s. Bestsellers such as Paul M. Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers popularized the image of superpower USA, which, due to its supreme economic, military, and moral resources, reigned after World War II with hegemonic benevolence over a large system of economic and military alliances until, in the 1960s and 1970s, it succumbed to the imperial burden and went into decline. The two events cited most frequently to support this idea of hegemonic decline are the Vietnam War and the breakdown of the U.S.-dominated postwar monetary system in the early 1970s. The question of whether those two processes were linked, and if so how, has not yet been tackled by researchers in any systematic way. What role did the war play in the collapse of the monetary system, and how did the monetary crisis influence the United States' Vietnam policy?

This question leads me directly into the story of mutual disenchantment between the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. The Europeans suspected that Vietnam was diverting America's interest from Europe. This feeling was intensified by economic conflicts, particularly on international monetary issues. Vietnam became a central argument for European critics of American monetary policy in the 1960s and 1970s.