The World Wars & the Postwar Order
มหาอำนาจหลังสงครามโลกครั้งที่ 2: จากจักรวรรดิเก่าสู่ขั้วอำนาจใหม่: จีน จากอ่อนแอสู่มหาอำนาจโลก
Summary
The talk works country by country through how the great powers changed after the Second World War.
The United States and the Soviet Union rose into a bipolar order, while Britain, France and Germany fell back.
Japan recovered on terms set by the victors, and China travelled from the weakest position to great-power status.
Key points
Winning the war and winning the peace are different
Britain was on the winning side and lost its position, which shows military victory and lasting power are separate.
The terms of recovery were set by others
Japan and Germany both recovered, inside frameworks their occupiers had drawn.
China is the case that took longest
The road from 1949 to now spans three generations, a scale ordinary politics cannot see.
The order built in 1945 is still operating
The UN, the IMF and the World Bank all come from that moment and remain the arena everyone uses.