Suddenly the prospect of surrendering yourself to American custody meant maybe getting tortured to death and maybe getting sexually humiliated as part of the process; everyone saw it was better to die fighting. In days the entire tide of that conflict in that whole region changed; there was no recovering from it.

We're looking at the long unwinding of that story here today, everywhere. Nobody can or will believe in Americans, or even the idea of America, again. That's over now.

I think the only real question right now is how the rest of the world manages the unwinding of dying empires. What does America make, these days? Obsolete cars, "innovative" financial instruments, rented software, GPUs, guns and corn. Did I miss anything?

I sometimes wonder what Britain minus London looks like on a spreadsheet. What's the all-money side of the "only then will you realize that you can't eat money" coin?

@mhoye what strikes me about your comment is that after wwii the usa was very keen to unwind the old european empires, and the conditions on their loans to the uk did a lot to break the economic basis of the british empire

the rising power takes the place of the empire that bestrides the world mostly due to taking its place as the manufacturing “workshop of the world”

that could apply to usa/britain or china/usa

but what will be the financial flip this time? iran forces oil to switch from the dollar to the yuan?