World Wars of the Twentieth Century^361immediate postwar months. But American hopes for really effective
peace-keeping machinery and for a liberal economic order in inter
national trade were destined to disappointment. Instead, within no
more than two years of the end of hostilities, both the United States
and the Soviet Union reverted to transnational economic and military
organization of the sort that had proved its effectiveness so tellingly
during World War II. An arms race revived in 1950, after the Russians
exploded an atomic bomb in 1949. The Korean War, 1950–53, gave
further impetus. The world has lived ever since in the shadow of the
mushroom cloud. The resulting dilemmas of our age require a final
chapter.