The USA would protect her vassals so long as they accepted her world leadership role. This latter included allowing USA military bases on their land, joining the military alliance, NATO, led by the USA; and following the financial leadership of the USA in terms of the dollar standard, and rules laid out in the United Nations, World Trade Organisation, and other global financial organisations. The Americans asserted their world power, and the vassals agreed voluntarily to follow behind.

Anti-Semitism had a long history in the 19th century. There had been discussions among a small minority of Jewish peoples of finding land for a nation-state for the Jewish people. Many different options were considered. This long-felt need was given expression in 1917 just at the point in the 1914-18 war when both sides knew they might lose. The Balfour Declaration was one final consequence of the 1914 war which we need to examine here. It has had a lasting effect and led 30 years later to the creation of the state of Israel.