> McCarthyism was the pinnacle of the anti-communism movement. How did that turn out, again?

It worked out fine?

> I'm pretty sure Germany invading other countries was the cause of World War 2. I don't see how you can lump "dang commies were spreading, so we had to go fight 'em" in as a justification, when there was only a non-aggression pact between Germany and the former-USSR. "Those dang commies were spreading without shooting a single bullet, so we had to stop 'em! Yeehaw!"

Many communists were armed and had guns, aiming to take over every country on Earth. The US, Japan and Germany were fighting back against them in China, Spain and Germany.

> How do you figure? If they weren't/aren't as deadly, why did the US waste the billions to research and produce them? The technology of the time had no qualitative equal.

I figure objectively. Far more Japanese were killed by fire bombings, which could be done extensively, at scale, with impunity. Nukes were important and consequential, but if the goal was simply to kill Japanese or destroy strategic targets then we already had that problem well solved.

Japan had thoroughly spread propaganda of racial superiority and being divinely chosen. One of the benefits of dropping a nuke compared to fire bombing, is that it immediately leaves a humbling impression.

> Where are you getting this revision of history from? The Western Union was created, first, by European countries and it became NATO a few years later. The US didn't form anything, it came to an already existing table.

The US created the League of Nations, which was the first known collective security organization like that to prevent a repeat of World War 1. Ironically, the idea came from a German. World War 2 demonstrated that Europeans weren't prepared to defend each other.

The Western Union was mostly an attempt to demonstrate to the US that European countries were now ready to defend each other, rather than failing. This is relevant right now, because there are concerns that Putin wants to test NATO to see if their resolve collapses the same way it did during World War 2 under the League of Nations. In order for NATO to be formed, the US had to be convinced that European countries could be active participants rather than passive consumers of defense guarantees, which is also again relevant since we've been pushing harder for European countries to meet their defense spending commitments.

> Isn't actually the inverse? It's preventing all of it's former close allies from just dumping the bonds because Dorito wants to antagonise all of your allies? Didn't the 2008 crash demonstrate it can destabilise in a major shock, just as well?

People actually traded in other currencies for USD rather than ditching it after 2008.