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The more reckless and belligerent America becomes, the more incentive they have to try - and in greater alliance, with BRIC country partners, may have a greater chance for success.
Introduction
Post-WW II, on the pretext of national security, America pursued "world power....and economic advantage as perceived by American strategists quite apart from the profit motive of private investors."
After WW I, it achieved world creditor status from its "unprecedented terms (in extending) armaments and reconstruction loans to its wartime allies." In 1917, it entered the war late when it felt staying out would "entail at least an interim economic collapse (the result of) American bankers and exporters (getting) stuck with uncollectible loans to Britain and allies." So it joined the Triple Entente as an associate, not a full partner, to protect its $12 billion investment.
Post-war, America was the world's major creditor - but one "to foreign governments with which it felt little brotherhood" and no obligation to stabilize world finance and trade. Unlike its post-WW II policy, it didn't extend loans to foreign countries so they could finance their US-owed debt. Nor did it open its markets to foreign imports. It wanted Europe's empires dissolved, their military spending cut, their wealth "to flow out and their prices to fall" - the idea being in this way to re-establish world payments equilibrium, a very unrealistic notion, but many leading Europeans embraced it. It didn't work and made repayment of foreign debts impossible.
The "world economy emerged from World War I shackled with debts far beyond its ability to pay," except by "borrow(ing) funds from private lenders in the creditor nation to pay the creditor-nation government."
A more enlightened policy would have turned "other countries into (US) economic satellites." But America eschewed European imports, and US investors preferred its own outperforming stock market. On trade and finance, US policies "impelled European countries to withdraw from the world economy and turn within."
America's isolationism prevented it from collecting its foreign debts. "Its status as world creditor proved ultimately worthless as the world broke into nationalist units," and sought independence from foreign trade and payments.
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