Smith has a definite thesis for this book that ends (a book written in 1991)with an eerie last word:Iraq. Covering a half century of history, largely devoted to the conflict between China and Japan, ending with Roosevelt declaring war, Smith's thesis is that Roosevelt did not have to take the US into war. His belief stated at the end of the book was that the collapse of the American financial stability led to other parts of the world taking financial position that would lead to local wars and that the world in 1940 was embattled everywhere, except the continental United States and other countries in the hemisphere. Smith believed that Roosevelt was not concerned with either oppressed peoplss as the Chinese or Jews or concerned with democracy as such as he willingly worked with dictators across the world. His goal was for the US to dominate the world society, set the rules, the conditions. Smith's last sentence is predictive in ways he could not know in 1991, when the US was prevailing in Iraq.

"Roosevelt and those around him wanted to return to the world before the great Depression..before the Russian Revolution. only with America in Russia's place."

"As the Japanese were learning in CHina one extension of power leads to another"

"The United States found itself with forces across the globe.......lfrom the Baltic to the Sea of Japan...an other points...Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq" ( )