The US totally blew it in Afghanistan and its well-documented how most of the initiatives there failed due to corruption and mismanagement.

That could explain the success of rebuilding Germany, as it shared a lot culturally with the US, but what about Japan? Japan was, and to a large extent still is, a very alien culture, and yet the US rebuilt it extremely effectively.

> Germany was behind the UK even before WW2.

Yep. -- I noticed that the first link of my comment is somehow not working. Here is another reference for those who want some numbers. It is a German publication ("Deutschland in Daten", PDF) but the relevant tables should be understandable anyway:

https://www.bpb.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/deutschland_in_...

For GDP per capita in "International dollar"/"Geary-Khamis-Dollar" for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, USA in the period 1850-2019, see p. 312 and 313.

According to this publication, 1930, 1940 and 1950 the German GDP per capita was about 75% of that of Great Britain. However, there was a big dip right after 1945 shown in the second table.

The German "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder") of the 1950s and 1960s was in essence not an outperformance of other western countries in absolute terms, but a catching-up process with them. The same holds for Japan. The process lost momentum, when parity with most of the other major economies was reached.

However, the USA have always been considerably ahead since WW2. -- So much to the slogan "Make America great again". It seems to be based on a very distorted self-image of having a backward economy, for which I have no sound explanation as an outside observer. And even if it were not about the general economic situation, but about a growing disparity inside the country, then a solution to better the situation, when the country is already so much ahead economically, cannot come from outside, but must be domestic.

Mau Mau, Malaya, Kenya

Yes, I am not downplaying the role of the British and hoped no one would take it that way. The British were the first on alert as far as I know, and without them it would have been a whole lot worse.

USA swoops in towards the end (a large cost as well, but not as much of it and not on their doorstep) and takes a big role in creating the new world.

If we're going by those numbers, Germany was defeated by the USSR, and the British were the friends who helped.

Reassuring to hear that the british consider soviets their friends. Not joking.

I'm not saying they didn't. But Britain didn't defeat Germany alone, and certainly didn't get the entire share of control after Germany was defeated. And after that the further decline of the UK showed that the power was shifting into the hands of those with wealth anyway, and here we are.

Since around Nixon (maybe?) there has been a gradual post-WW2 deregulation that really accelerated under Reagan and now with Trump its accelerating again. More and more keeps shifting into the hands of unelected, wealthy individuals who see that their power keeps growing and growing and as far as I can tell, won't stop until they have it all. It doesn't make any sense to me why that looks like a stable world to them, but the one thing that is certain is that there is no 2nd amendment that will stop the billionaire club.

Give us your truth on it then I genuinely interested.

History disagrees with your bold statement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan