[CamperBob2]

Europe in general, after the World Wars. Ditto Japan.

The thing is, though, they had help recovering, and help stepping back from the brink. Help won't be coming this time. Just as there are no George Marshalls in today's Republican party, and no room for any, there is no one outside the US who will come to our own rescue.

[userulluipeste]

The Marshall Plan merely accelerated the recovery, serving as seed money for a lot of investment (among other goals). Even without such help, the conditions for recovery were there. (I also like to think that the same conditions are still present nowadays, and the help you mention won't not play an essential role for anything. But, in case I'm wrong, i.e. if the conditions may not be there any more, then I very much doubt that financial help will count for anything.)

[red-iron-pine]

yeah the seeds were there for sure -- they countries that were rebuilt were already the major empires.

you're not creating a new society from whole cloth, you're taking already battered Big Dogs and getting them back to being Big again (minus the, you know, Nazis and bad actors).

but they were already societies that had cutting edge tech and made serious end-runs at taking over the world.

South Korea would be the only real example of where you took the poor agrarian area and eventually grew it into an asian tiger.