they didn’t accidentally fall into this gravy train, the same sort of imperial violence/coercion that the united states inflicts on the global south was also perpetrated on the western europeans; especially the italians.
most don’t take note of it because the western euro gov’ts were in such a vulnerable state immediately after ww2 that they caved faster than the global south did.
All that trauma led to the Marshall plan and is why American currency is the world reserve currency.
Our top tax rate was 90% until the mid 60’s to pay for that and the cost of the world war we initially wanted to avoid entering.
Like it or not, the reason the U.S. system dominates now is that we built it at great cost (investment) to connect and support the developed world after massive devastation initiated on Europeans by Europeans.
The goal was to connect everybody in mutual benefit in order to avoid another such war.
We are all culpable for current conditions and faults. Sure, we benefitted from that aid to Europe, but not at the expense of the other participants and not without sacrifice.
We learned from the aftermath of the first world war, when we collectively punished Germany to the point of their desperation and enabled the rise of Nazism as a response to crualty.
Yes, the victors’ revenge and punishment brought forth hatred, cruelty, and unfathomable horror.
Now those Germans are the backbone of European wealth generation and upstanding members of the world community. I’d say that’s a rather good outcome of post_war policy. Similar is true of Japan and Italy.
Europe profited from american imperialism for decades so please get of your high horse and do not pretend that your country is innocent.
they didn’t accidentally fall into this gravy train, the same sort of imperial violence/coercion that the united states inflicts on the global south was also perpetrated on the western europeans; especially the italians.
most don’t take note of it because the western euro gov’ts were in such a vulnerable state immediately after ww2 that they caved faster than the global south did.
All that trauma led to the Marshall plan and is why American currency is the world reserve currency.
Our top tax rate was 90% until the mid 60’s to pay for that and the cost of the world war we initially wanted to avoid entering.
Like it or not, the reason the U.S. system dominates now is that we built it at great cost (investment) to connect and support the developed world after massive devastation initiated on Europeans by Europeans.
The goal was to connect everybody in mutual benefit in order to avoid another such war.
We are all culpable for current conditions and faults. Sure, we benefitted from that aid to Europe, but not at the expense of the other participants and not without sacrifice.
We learned from the aftermath of the first world war, when we collectively punished Germany to the point of their desperation and enabled the rise of Nazism as a response to crualty.
Yes, the victors’ revenge and punishment brought forth hatred, cruelty, and unfathomable horror.
Now those Germans are the backbone of European wealth generation and upstanding members of the world community. I’d say that’s a rather good outcome of post_war policy. Similar is true of Japan and Italy.