title: Chapter 4 “Present at the Creation”: Constituting the New American Empire 1945–1950
abstract: In a sense the postwar years were a period of creation.(Dean Acheson, 1969) T he dapper and witty Honorable Dean Acheson, a gentleman's gentle- man and President Harry Truman's secretary of state (1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953), held the highest positions in US diplomacy during and after World War II.The postwar years he refers to in the quotation above are roughly the fi ve years following the end of the war in 1945.They "were a period of creation," of fi nding the parts and fi tting them togeth
journal: Berghahn Books