How was WWI the beginning of the US becoming a military superpower?

World War I helped put the United States on the road to being the world’s only superpower in two main ways.  First, it forced the US to start getting more involved in world affairs. Second, it destroyed the Russian Empire and created the Soviet Union.

Before WWI, the United States had not been a very important world power.  It had been involved in imperialism in Latin America and in Asia, but it was certainly not as important of a country as the UK, France, or Germany.  With WWI, this began to change.  The US, for the first time, had to fight in a major foreign war.  This changed the way it thought about its military needs.  WWI also made the US think more about the world order.  It made the US want to do more to shape international affairs than it previously had.  This led to the US becoming much more involved in world affairs after WWI.  In these ways, WWI led the US to be more engaged in world affairs and to think about what it needed militarily to project power farther around the globe.

WWI also led indirectly to US power.  The Russian Empire was destroyed by the war.  The war put so much stress on the Tsarist regime that rebels were able to overthrow it.  This led to the creation of the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union, after World War II, provided the West with a menace it had to defend against.  This forced the US to take the lead and to build itself into a superpower. If the USSR had not existed, the US might not have been so interested in building all the military infrastructure that made it into “the world military superpower.”

Thus, WWI helped create situations that led the US to dominate the world as its only superpower.