W
orld War II, with the global devastation it unleashed on all dimensions of life—psychological, po-
litical, physical, and economic—set the stage for the second half of the 20th century. The dropping
of atomic bombs by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 signaled
a turning point not only in the war but in the geopolitical balance and the nature of international con-
flict as well. For the rest of the century, nuclear war became a very real threat. Indeed, the two nuclear
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, divided the post–World War II world into spheres
of influence, and each regularly intervened politically, economically, and militarily wherever and when-
ever it considered its interests to be at stake.
Persistent conflict throughout the world in the later 20th century resulted in widespread disruption
and dislocation. In 1947 the British left India, dividing the subcontinent into the new, still hostile nations
of India and Pakistan. After a catastrophic war, Communists came to power in China in 1949. North Ko-
rea invaded South Korea in 1950 and fought a grim war with the United States and its allies that ended
in 1953. The Soviet Union brutally suppressed uprisings in its subject nations—East Germany, Poland,
Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The United States intervened in disputes in Central and South America.
Almost as soon as many previously colonized nations of Africa—Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Angola,
Mozambique, the Sudan, Rwanda, and the Congo—won their independence, civil wars devastated them.
In Indonesia civil conflict left more than 100,000 dead. Algeria expelled France in 1962 after the French
waged a prolonged, vicious war with Algeria’s Muslim natives. After 15 years of bitter war in Southeast
Asia, the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam. From 1979 to 1989 the Soviets unsuccessfully tried to
occupy Afghanistan. Arab nations fought wars with Israel in 1967, 1973, and the early 1980s. The Pales-
tinian conflict remains the subject of almost daily newspaper headlines. A revitalized Islam, which in-
spired a fundamentalist religious revolution in Iran, has encouraged “holy war” with the West, using a
new weapon, international terrorism—most dramatically in the attacks on New York City and Washing-
ton, D.C., on September 11, 2001. In response, the United States and allied Western nations launched in-
vasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Conflict and unrest continue to plague large areas of the globe today.36