I'm beginning to suspect the first edition (which is the one I'm reading from) is measurably different than the Third, as my first chapter is actually 36 pages long and entitled "Birth of the Post-Lenin Imperialism" but whatever, I'll post quotes and keep following along as best I can. Anyway, this chapter seemed to chronicle the failed American efforts to subordinate and dominate Europe post-WWI. Of course this failure led directly to WWII. Regardless, it's a perfect example of the Kissinger sentiment that "it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." Some quotes:
The overwhelmingly governmental nature of US international finance capital, which had begun during the war, was further emphasized when the war ended. What was being experienced was the earliest manifestation of what was to evolve in other countries, though in far cruder form, into National Socialism. Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under Franco, each subordinated the individual interests of its separate capitalist groupings to a national political purpose without injuring these interests, but subjecting them to more-or-less effective regulation depending on the character of the regime. Precisely this, but in far more benign fashion, was implicit in the assumption of the role of the nation's and the world's main credit functions by the government of the Untied States. (pg 6)
So Hudson here draws a direct parallel between fascism and US policy around international credit, one which is still clearly on display today with Trump et. al subordinating the international interests of the tech giants and American manufacturing to his policies around tariffs.
The Allies did, indeed, need German funds to pay their armaments debts to the United States; failure of the United States to adjust their debts to the receipt of German reparations bled the Allies as the Allies bled Germany. US Government finance capital would not even make the accommodation to its debtors which commercial creditors are often prepared to make. As soon as the war ended the American government asked its allies to begin paying, with interest, for the arms and related support financed by US Government credits. In the history of warfare no ally had requested such payments for its military support. The provision of arms to allies, by universal custom, had been written off as a war cost. This time the credits were officially kept on the books. The eagle had unsheathed its claws. (pg 13)
Funny how the exact same dynamic is playing out in Ukraine, with Trump asking for "repayment" in the form of mineral rights for US arms. The US has been trying to dismantle and subordinate Europe for a century at this point, using finance as its primary weapon, and it's worked tremendously well for them. Of course this first attempt leads directly into the escalating tension that explodes into WWII. As Hudson writes, "It was a period in which the most extortionate of nationalistic acts were inspired by frustration at an untenable economic situation imposed upon the world by the United States." (pg 15)
United States policy was thus to treat Germany, the recent enemy, as a country in need of protection against the effects of a fall in prices, but to treat England, the recent ally, as a nation to be trodden down if a fall in world prices should occur. The recent enemy was to become a war of the US Government; the recent ally to be punished. Because this ally was the world's great imperial power, and Germany its recent challenger for imperial supremacy, the interpretation is justified that the United States had its eyes set lustfully on the British Empire. To swallow the Empire, the United States must first dislodge it. England must be forbidden the fruits of victory; Germany established again as England's rival. This self-same policy was to recur after World War II. (pg 23)
Obviously very different circumstances, but again we see this dynamic play out with the US reproachment of Ukraine and Russian peace talks. Russia must be uplifted, the EU/Ukraine punished. I don't think this time it's going to work, because Russia already has a "no limits" partnership with China, but I'm sure that's the hope of the US right now. Again emphasizes how ruthless American imperialism can be.
In essence, every American administration, from 1917 through the Roosevelt era, employed the strategy of compelling repayment of the war debts, specifically be England, to so splinter Europe that, politically, the whole of Europe was laid open as a possible province of the United States... [they would have achieved it] had the world not tumbled into universal depression from which the United States was not only not exempt but became, in the event, the principal sufferer from the collapse of its own creating. The first great foray of US governmental finance capital into world power politics had ended in ignominious failure, and ultimately in a war of dimensions vaster than even World War I, a war which the United States had no desire to bring about but no deep feeling that it must prevent. (pg 34)
Of course the US would learn its lesson and course correct post-WWII, with its far more successful gambit.