[luckylion]

You shouldn't put words into my mouth. A military intervention is always on the table - what pretense you use is a different question. That the US has been very liberal with the pretenses in the recent decades is well documented.

The fact of the matter is that military strength is what -internationally- decides who holds the cards.

[zazagura]

Not in matters of debt.

Just look at how EU was forced to erase more than 50% of Greece's debt.

Or look at how US hedge funds are still fighting Argentina (in court) to recoup some of the money. According to your logic US should have threatened Argentina by now.

[luckylion]

> Just look at how EU was forced to erase more than 50% of Greece's debt.

Greece is a member of the EU.

> Or look at how US hedge funds are still fighting Argentina (in court) to recoup some of the money.

Private interests aren't the nation's interests, until they are large enough or invest enough money into PR, see United Fruit Company.

It also doesn't mean that any and all questions of international diplomacy will be handled by the military. But if push comes to shove, and the country with the far superior military isn't happy with the conditions of the default (or nationalization, or annexation, or... anything, really), they tend to come down not to international contracts, the UN, or ethics, but to military strength. Consider the situation in Ukraine for a well-documented example that certainly would have played out very differently, were Ukraine and Russia similar in military strength (that is in this case: if Ukraine still was a nuclear power).

[zazagura]

The Ukraine situation has nothing to do with debt.

Show me an after WW2 example were one country used the military against another because of unpaid debt.

[oblio]

You could consider Iran a case. Iran decided that it wanted to "default" on "buying" BP & co.'s assets.