Given the extraordinarily favorable economic and strategical po tion which the United States thus occupied, its posl 1945 outward thrust could come as no surprise to those familiar with the history international politics With the Great Powers fading away it steadily moved into the which their going creat having become number one, it could no longer contain itself within its own even own To be sure, the war itself had been the primary cause of this projection outward of American power and of it, 1945 it had sixty-nine divisions influence; because for example, in in Europe, twenty-six in Asia and the Pacific, and none in the continen. tal United States." Simply because it was politically committed to the reordering of Japan and Germany (and Austria), was there"; and because it had campaigned via island groups in the Pacific, and into North Africa, Italy, and western Europe, it had forces in those territories also. There were, however, many Americans (especially among the troops) who expected that they would all be home within a short period of time, returning U.S. armed forces deployments to their pre-1941 position. But while that idea alarmed the likes of Churchill and attracted isolationist Republicans, it proved impossible turn the clock back Like the British after 1815, the Americans in their found their informal influence in various lands hardening into something more formal-and more entangling; like the British, too, they found "new frontiers of insecurity" whenever they wanted to J draw the line. The "Pax Americana" had come of age.40