Yellow Magic , not Yellowcake , marked the shift from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana

I argue that Pax Britannica lingered on into the end of WWII , but as soft culturally-economic power, not hard military- economic power.

The British brand had a lot of strength against the America brand - it still had a lot of moral capital.

Not the least because Britain had stood all alone defending the world's Four Freedoms while isolationist America had yawned like a bored bystander watching a schoolyard bully beat up a pre-schooler.

Winston Churchill had led that fight but in the Fall of 1942 - unknown to most - his party, the Tories, had thrown away most of the global good will , all in an instant.

Which PAX AMERICANA : 1945 America's moral descent AND ascent

At the very beginning of WWII, America's leadership wwas convinced that, morally, only the Norden Precision Bombsight would allow it to win at war with minimum civilian casualties for the other side.

But by 1945, America's leadership had decided that its new chief weapon was to be a weapon of mass terror and mass destruction, The Bomb.

Its only truly unique capability was its ability to burn alive all the residents of a large city at one go.

And with only America possessing it, America could become God's terrifying Avenging Angel over the whole world .

From plan A's Norden precision killing to plan B's Yellowcake mass killing, it is easy to see a steep moral fall in America's moral leadership.

Yellowcake (and Yellow Magic) Diplomacy : Plan B of a Plan B

It never was supposed to end up like the way it all did in 1945.

The original Plan A for America, from 1938 to late-1942, was to rely on the Norden Bombsight and the Sulfa Drugs to see America safely through any dangerous faint echoes from a possible European war.

Both inventions failed to work out anywhere as well in the field as they had been touted they would work by their starry-eyed promoters.

So, from late-1942 to mid-1943, there was an improvised Plan B.

The Jekyll and Hyde Manhattan Projects : Yellowcake or Yellow Magic ? (Pax Americana 1945)

Many US cities are much better than New York at symbolizing various facets of America but none is capable of symbolizing, all by itself , what the rest of the world sees as both the best and the worst aspects of America.

It truly is Janus Manhattan ; truly is Jekyll and Hyde Manhattan.

Equally part Gordon Gekko and part Emma Lazarus.