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This was part of Luce’s message, too. It was based on lessons he, Roosevelt, and others of their generation had drawn from the years after World War I, when the United States, in the words of one historian, had stuck to a policy of “involvement without commitment” with the problems of the world. This time around, Roosevelt believed, the United States not only should play a part in the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the containment of imperial Japan, it should also lead the postwar world to ensure that American principles thrived everywhere. Even before the formal entry of the United States, Roosevelt had formulated general war aims. In August of 1941, together with British prime minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter, a set of principles envisioning a liberal-democratic postwar world—one in which free trade and self-government were the norms. In the interest of allied cooperation against the aggressor states, certain concerns, such as the future of the European colonial empires, were kept deliberately vague. By that time, Great Britain and the United States were also supporting the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany, which had attacked it in June. In spite of the fact that he had turned his country into a brutal commu- nist dictatorship (and originally, in 1939, made common cause with Hitler), Soviet leader Joseph Stalin declared himself in support of the Atlantic Charter, thus giving Roosevelt hope that cooperation would continue after the war. As the war turned to the Allies’ favor after 1942, discussions over the makeup of the postwar world became more important. With the looming defeat of Germany and Japan and the weakening of the European powers as a result of two world wars, the United States and the Soviet Union would likely decide whether a peaceful and stable world would emerge. Divisions between Allies Emerge Already during the war, significant differences between the two sides were evident, even though in 1944 Stalin

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Henry R. Luce, Publisher of Life Magazine America as the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise, America as the training center of the skillful servants of mankind, America as the Good Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and America as the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice—out of these elements surely can be fashioned a vision of the 20th Century to which we can and will devote ourselves in joy and gladness and vigor and enthusiasm. — From “The American Century,” Life magazine, February 17, 1941.

Henry Luce, with his wife, Claire Booth Luce.

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GOVERNANCE AND THE QUEST FOR SECURITY