Congratulations you found out what Americans have known for decades, after we won WWII we turned to the next threat and utilized what we could to face it. Now that you know this, you can enjoy some of the jokes in the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Now you can drop the part about the US encouraging, initiating or sponsoring a thing. The US used assets that is all, in Japan's politics the US certainly had a hand, and it was to create a pacifist and democratic nation. Which we quite plainly succeeded at doing.