Indispensable nation?: the United States in East Asia

At the end of World War II the United States faced three historic tasks: to recreate the conditions that would over time lead to the reconstitution of an open world economic system; to limit, and where possible, defeat the ambitions of those who after 1945 were pressing to push the world in a radically different direction to that favoured by America and its market allies; and finally, to incorporate old enemy states like Germany and Japan into an American-led international order.