Tracing the Roots of the Conflict

After World War II, the United States led the world in economic power and technology. The United States experienced boom conditions with only brief recessions through the 1960s, but in hindsight, we can discern trends that interacted to create stresses. These trends include suburbanization, with decline of public transportation systems in favor of the automobile; the growth of a new science paradigm, in which research scientists replaced engineers as leaders in national science management; the fragmentation and selective neglect of societal management and infrastructure; the rise of the modern offshore oil industry; the civil rights movement; a new environmental movement sparked by Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring; and countercultural and antibusiness movements of the 1960s, aggravated by the Vietnam War.