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This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 2nd,

2020. I'm Caleb Brown. The shift of the U.S. from a non-interventionist power to one

actively preparing for war occurred in a single year, and it appears it never really shifted

back. Stephen Wirthheim's new book is Tomorrow the World,

the Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

In it, he details how the U.S. began the process of truly becoming the world's police.

How did American leaders understand America's place in sort of the global order in 1940.

It's a very different answer if we start the year out at the beginning and if we end the year.

So what happened?

So when we start it, the answer is, the United States should be engaged in the world.

The United States imagines itself as a

leader but mostly as a kind of inspiration. The United States wants to trade and have

intercourse and cooperation widely, but none of that implies to

American leaders at the outset of 1940 that the United States should station its military across the world and in

...