funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers, llp. (upbeat music) - [narrator] there was a time when the us was a reluctant world power. foreign policy was run by the state department and the us treasury, and largely focused on advancing american commercial interests overseas. - we had american statecraft that largely relied on diplomacy and economic policy. we had secretaries of state that everybody knew their names, we had secretaries of war that nobody had ever heard of. the second world war changed all that. it really brought to the fore a unified department of defense. - policy makers talked in terms of us foreign policy, and defense policy. since world war ii and down to the present moment, policy makers tend to talk in terms of national security policy. national security policy tends to privilege, or to place particular emphasis on the role of the military in advancing us interests. - [narrator] after world war ii, george kennon, a top american diplomat in moscow, sounded the alarm over the existential threat he saw in the sovi

funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers llp. (soft music) - [narrator] chinese history for the past 30 years has been a story of economic growth. - there's never really be an economic revolution quite like china's. the most populous country in the world also enjoying the most rapid economic growth in history. an industrial revolution is far more rapid than in britain or america, for example. - we've never seen so many people come out of poverty so quickly. we've never seen so many people go from the rural countryside into the city so quickly. what had took europe 150 years to do in the industrial revolution, china has done in 30 years. - [narrator] in 1979, chinese leader deng xiaoping called on the country to combine socialist ideology with elements of a pragmatic market economy, under the banner of socialism with chinese characteristics, reportedly telling the chinese people, to get rich is glorious. - after mao died and deng xiaoping rose to power, that was one of the great events, i think, of the 20th century. what he did wa