The Top 10 for the 20th Century: International Affairs - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1999 by Llewellyn D. Howell

The critical international events of the 20th century all can be seen as outcomes of conflict and struggle--with other human beings, nature, and social and economic structures. The defining events of the century that come to mind first are the wars, which seem cataclysmic because of the centrality of human-generated violence. But other creative events have been responses to challenges that are even greater than dictators and exploitative systems. And even armed conflicts have their elements of creativity and post-war benefits. The unordered top 10:

World War I (1914-18). This began as a local European engagement and eventually encompassed 32 nations, resulting in 47,500,000 fatalities. The aggregate direct costs of all the belligerents amounted to about $186,000,000,000, a tremendous amount in early-20th-century dollars. The nature of warfare was dramatically and forever changed with the introduction of the use of gas, trench warfare, and the inclusion of tanks, submarines, and aircraft. A critical by-product was the defeat of Russian czarist forces and the consequent rise of the Bolsheviks as the governing force in one of the world's largest countries.

World War II (1939-45). More encompassing than World War I, it eventually involved 61 nations with 1,700,000,000 people. Roughly 110,000,000 people were mobilized for military service. It is estimated that 60,000,000 died, of which 25,000,000 were in military services and 35,000,000 were civilians, including more than 5,000,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust. The methods of fighting advanced and atomic bombs and rockets were added. A significant casualty of this war was the international balance of power. England, France, Germany, and Japan were no longer great powers in the traditional sense, leaving only the U.S. and the Soviet Union in a bipolar structure that lasted until 1989.

The discovery of penicillin and antibiotics. During the 1918 influenza epidemic, about 30,000,000 died worldwide. The ability of Penicillium to control such threats was first observed in 1928 by British bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming. American bacteriologist Rene Dubos first used an antibiotic, tyrothricin, successfully in the treatment of human disease in 1939. The lives saved in World War II and beyond resulted in both a rapid growth in the world's population and change in human thinking about length of life, the nature of labor, the uses of the planet's resources, and the global balance of power.

The rise and fall of communism (and the end of the Cold War). Beginning with the Russian Revolution in 1917, communism advanced rapidly as the only working response to the contagion of imperialism and colonialism that had gripped the developing world in the 19th century. Its advance submerged the world in a struggle that has involved and affected more of the globe's population than even World War II. The fall of the communist movement--mostly from its own weight--has resulted in both a new international power structure and a shift to a global reign of democracy and capitalism.

America loses the Vietnam War. The war was seen by many as a loss by a superpower. Both respect for and fear of America were altered globally and in the U.S. itself. This could be seen as the real end of the colonial period. It also can be claimed that the U.S. "won" this war and only lost the battle of Vietnam. During the period of fighting (1965-75), Southeast Asia blossomed and communist nationalism began to lose its foothold among many revolutionary contenders in the developing world.

Pres. John F. Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Kennedy's youth and political doctrine had come to symbolize a new America in his brief tenure as president. In an instant, the view of America was altered and the image of hope that had come to characterize U.S. relations with much of the world was diminished.

The unleashing of nuclear energy--power and bombs. Albert Einstein warned Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 of the possibility and potential of atomic explosions. The U.S. launched the Manhattan Project in order to be the first to create this devastating weapon. Two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 not only caused tremendous destruction, but resulted in an arms race that still has the capability of destroying the planet. But nuclear power also has been used effectively to generate electricity for cities and ships and can be utilized as a substitute for fossil fuels.

Airplane flight to walks on the moon. On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first successful flight of a piloted, heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle. The nature of aircraft advanced throughout the century, moving from propeller-driven to jet-propelled. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 heralded a new stage in flight, to be followed by Yuri Gagarin's first human flight into space and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, where he pronounced one of the most famous quotes of the 20th century: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."