The United States was not yet a mature enough democracy, Tooze argues, to assume her responsibilities. Congress did not ratify the Peace Treaty Washington did not join the League. Yet, when it came to assuming the role of world leader, America pulled back. By 1918 the US president, Woodrow Wilson, was in a position to dictate peace to the world with, as its centrepiece, his idealistic plan for a League of Nations. Wall Street paid for the battle of the Somme, and the US government bankrolled Passchendaele. It wasn't simply that in 1916 America became the world's largest economy, she was also the war's banker. Yet, of all the changes brought by the first world war, Adam Tooze argues in this bold and ambitious book, by far the most important was the arrival of the United States in a position of unparalleled economic, political and moral ascendancy.
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