Great as it is, American power is limited

ATOM bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, with terrifying flashes of heat in August 1945. Japan surrendered. And so America emerged from that great war with a force to make all tremble. No country could match her. And from that historic summer, it seemed the 20th century as The American Century was at the ready.

But that November, Walter Lippmann wrote the following words in his regular column Tod