Between 1941 and 1945 America waged a war of paradoxes. It was the only combatant to wage a global war in the literal sense, yet its mobilization fell far short of the “total” standards established by its allies and enemies. Fighting the war took precedence over focusing on it - and as a consequence the United States developed a “worldview” whose direct and indirect results far exceeded contemporary expectations.

The United States did not wage war in a mere two theaters. It deployed significant forces everywhere in the world, in every theater except the Russian. There it was excluded as a matter of Soviet policy, and being shut out of the theater where total war came closest to being realized might well have nurtured America's detachment from total war's consequences in terms of casualties and destruction. Yet even on the eastern front, lend-lease aid was vital to stabilizing the Soviet economy in 1942-43 and sustaining the Red Army's offensives in 1944-45.

The process of globalization began well before Pearl Harbor. U.S. strategists increasingly considered American security in hemispheric terms, directly incorporating Latin America in contingency planning. The United States not only sustained a significant military presence in the Aleutian Islands - as far away from anywhere as it is possible to get; it also drove a highway from Alaska to the lower forty-eight states.