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Because the requirements of modern technology are so vast, only the U.S., untouched among the large, powerful nations by the ravages of war and nurtured on a freewheeling capitalism, had the resources to lead the technological advance. By the very nature of the advance, other nations had to follow, adopting the techniques and products that had been developed. This fundamental fact of modern technology, as much as anything else, is what has galled Charles de Gaulle and spurred him to insist that France develop, for example, her own atomic force de frappe. The Common Market, too, is Europe's attempt to create a huge mass market like the U.S.'s own and a pool of resources capable of meeting the huge needs of technology. While pioneering the technological revolution, on the other hand, the U.S. was not a bit shy about using techniques developed elsewhere, from France's pasteurization to Austria's basic oxygen process for steel. The British invented the jet engine —but U.S. jets practically monopolize the world's long-range routes today. The U.S. opened its arms to European scientists, who gave it, among other things, The Bomb.
Much of the world got a good look at what the Americans had accomplished when they arrived as conquerors in 1945. To Asia, the Americans brought the Jeep, the candy bar, K rations, portable laundries, health units and toilet paper—but they also planted in Asians an awareness of and a desire for much more. To Europe, they brought $46 billion in aid, food and clothes and massive Marshall Plan reconstruction loans. The presence of hundreds of thousands of obviously prosperous, obviously confident American soldiers in Germany alone unconsciously created an image that was far more lasting and effective than the conscious efforts of the Nazi re-education process. Since the war, of course, wave upon wave of American tourists and students have further entrenched American attitudes and products in Europe, though in the doing they have sometimes marred the American image. And almost everywhere there have been U.S. businessmen eager to cash in on the aspirations of others to reach the American level of prosperity. In. fact, one major reason for the prevalence abroad of many things American is that U.S. business sees the world as a huge market and has consciously set out to conquer it with the American wealth of research and development, distribution and sales genius and powerful advertising.
Derivative Wares
It is little wonder, then, that many of the trappings of American life—and some of its altitudes—have spread around the globe. Still, Ho Chi Minh certainly does not smoke American cigarettes because they are American ("He didn't change to a French cigarette, did he?" crowed a State Department aide); like millions of others who have made U.S. cigarettes the most universally preferred, he smokes them simply because they are better than most of what is available. Coca-Cola is the universal symbol of Americanization, but it was the distribution, merchandising and advertising techniques of the American company—not the fact that the drink made one feel American or implied admiration for the U.S.—that made it so. It is hardly a triumph of culture that an American can get a dry martini on request practically anywhere in the world; it is just good business in a day when so many Americans travel.