From time to time when an important global event occurs, I will write a short essay about the event and illustrate how history can be used to inform ourselves about the event. The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just such an event. The question I posed was how can a relatively small military peasant army overcome a mighty nation like the USA? I hope you find the read interesting.

By 1913, America was the richest nation in the world in terms of total and per-capita output. By 1918, she dominated the global financial structures by becoming the world's creditor nation. Her banks had provided the money to fight the war. She was preparing to take over world power; although that had to wait until the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. How had she generated such wealth at incredible speeds? The wealth generated by the USA came out of industrialisation which had begun early in the 19th century. As in Britain, industrialisation had originated out of cotton.

The USA appeared on the world stage with a big bang, if you will pardon the pun. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities which announced her entrance. In 1944, at a meeting with the British at the village of Bretton Woods in the northeastern USA, the leaders of the two nations made a historic agreement on the future global infrastructure: something that had been missing in the interwar years; it would remain intact in most respects until the present day.