With the explosive advances made by science, technology, productivity, income and wealth accumulation, other countries were moving to the fore.  Even though Britain maintained her actual levels of economic output and potential diplomatic presence she was one among several relatively equal European states and world empires.  At the same time her natural resources were being depleted and with the growing importance of cotton, rubber and petroleum, all of which Britain must import, her economic ascendancy was progressively undermined.  During the wars of 1914-18 and 1936-45 Britain entered an era of decreasing relative importance.  Her empire was largely intact, but her economic and political strength was stretched to the breaking point.

Throughout its history, until the wars of 1914-45, western civilization had its headquarters in central and west Europe, with branch offices elsewhere on the planet.  At no time after 1870 did any one European power occupy a position of easy superiority over its rivals.  If Great Britain was top dog, France, the long established continental power was snapping at her heels.  Germany was an expanding power of major consequence.  To the North and East lay Russia, with its vast territories and its persistent pressures into East Europe and Far Asia.  By any standard of political measurement Europe was in no sense a universal state.  Literally it was a potential battle field.  War fortunes and misfortunes revolutionized the Europe of 1870-1910.  They also realigned the planetary power structure.  Heavy war losses down-graded all of the erstwhile European powers.  Central and West Europe ceased to be the planetary hub.  At the same time America and Asia shouldered their way toward the center of the world stage.  From London, Paris, Berlin and other European vantage points the 1870-1945 era could be described as a period of world revolution.

For half a century United States money and arms were used to stabilize capitalism.  For many years Washington through its control of all Latin American states (except Cuba after 1960) had been able to dominate United Nations policy, exclude socialist nations, notably China, and hem in socialism.  Through this period Washington subsidized and armed counter revolution.  Its anti-socialist-communist doctrine had been accepted and largely followed by the West.

Washington’s drive to cripple and stamp out socialism-communism was accepted and followed particularly by the states with fascist leanings.  Since many western states had large and influential socialist minorities and since several of them had been governed by coalitions in which socialists-communists played a substantial role, acceptance of Washington’s anti-socialist program never won wholehearted support in Europe.  Atlantic alliance countries voted against the admission of People’s China to the United Nations during the Dulles Era.  The stalemated outcome of the Korean War (1950-3) called Washington anti-socialist policies into serious question.  The stupidities, mendacities and wanton cruelties of the United States’ undeclared Vietnam War, even before the advent of Johnson and Nixon, had so weakened Washington leadership that no major power would associate itself with the adventure.  The “Allies” in Vietnam were the U.S.A. and two or three vassal Asian states.