Crossing the Pond: Geopolitics, Atlanticism, and the Emergence of American Global Power

This presentation consider the practical and intellectual process by which the United States embraced a new global role after 1945. Although the potential practical contours had been emerging since the turn of the 20^th Century, it is in the first two decades after the Second World War that both US leaders and US allies articulated, recognized (more or less), and embraced (more or less) American primacy within the new international system. This system’s original focus was transatlantic, and that will be a central aspect of the presentation, though we will also consider global implications of American power. The presentation will also explore how many contemporary challenges facing the US and its allies were anticipated in this initial postwar conversation.