147
In a meeting of American ambassadors in Paris in the summer of 1949, John J. McCloy, the high commissioner for Germany, argued that perhaps too much emphasis had been given to the increase of Russian power in the world and too little thought to the enormously important factor that is the collapse of the British Empire.”
148
The postwar relations among the Western countries were importantly driven by efforts to solve their common problems and create safety nets in the service of an open and stable order.
Sixth, the goals behindWestern liberal order were partly shaped by the manifold lessons and experiences that stimulated these ideas. It is sometimes argued that what differentiated the successful settlement after 1945 from the unsuccessful settlement after 1919 is that it was based on more realist understandings of power and order. Roosevelt, for example, was sensitive to considerations of power. His notion of the Four Policemen was a self-conscious effort to build a postwar settlement around a greatpower collective security organization.