5. Wolfie

A man sits in the Pentagon terrified. The building is shaking. He thinks it’s an Earthquake. In fact it’s 9/11 and this man senses an opportunity. To drag America out of its post Vietnam stupor and re-assert itself on the world stage.

The man’s name is Paul Wolfowitz. He’s an academic and political advisor. And he is obsessed with one idea. One idea he thinks will help America become great again. Invading Iraq.

This is the story of how in the early 2000s America re-established itself as the leader of the free world and the decision to fight a war that did more than anything else to burn that image to the ground.

David Dimbleby tells the story of how, in the middle of the 20th century, one country - America - became a superpower and shaped the world around it.

It began with a vision. A vision born out of the ashes of World War Two. A vision of a world shaped not by war but by peace. This vision of America at the head of the free world came to be the defining idea at the center of the past 80 years of world politics. And yet now it is under threat.

So how did we get here? How did America become the leader of the free world and why did it go wrong? It’s a story shaped by people. People you have probably never heard of.

In the 20th Century, these ‘invisible hands’ wrote the story America came to believe about itself. A story of moral leadership leading to prosperity and peace. But is it a story that has run out of steam?

Presenter: David Dimbleby

Producer: Redzi Bernard

Sound Design: Jeff Emtman

Executive Producers: Joe Sykes and Dasha Lisitsina

Story Editor: Joe Sykes, Dasha Lisitsina, and Peggy Sutton

Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Samizdat Audio production for BBC Radio 4