10. The USA: War is Good for Business¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 10: The USA: War is Good for Business¶
The Great European War proved an unparalleled boon for American capitalism. Already a formidable industrial power, the United States transformed into the chief usurer and quartermaster to the belligerent empires. US exports soared to two-and-a-half times pre-war levels, shifting decisively from agricultural to manufactured goods. Industrial production surged by thirty-two per cent and GNP by almost twenty per cent between 1914 and 1917. Bethlehem Steel, previously facing ruin, became the third-largest manufacturing company in the US by churning out vast quantities of armaments. The House of Morgan and other financial institutions extended ever-larger loans to Britain and France, cementing the fusion of big business and the bourgeois state.
America’s ‘pacifism’ until 1917 was dictated by naked self-interest, not morality. The Preparedness movement, bankrolled by industrialists and financiers, conditioned public opinion for war. The sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmermann Telegram provided convenient pretexts. Only when Germany threatened outright victory did the US intervene in 1917 as an ‘associated power’, aiming to prevent German domination of Europe while keeping its own hands free to displace Britain and France as global masters. The war permanently ended US isolationism.
This imperial logic was not confined to Europe. The US invaded Haiti in 1915 under President Wilson, ostensibly to prevent anarchy, but in reality to protect business assets and forestall a possible German takeover. The 1915 Haitian-American Treaty created a gendarmerie under US Marine control, gave Washington complete control over Haitian finances, and the right to intervene at will, effectively abolishing Haitian independence. Brutal policies—racial segregation, press censorship, forced labour—sparked a peasant rebellion (1919–20) and later strikes, forcing US withdrawal by 1934, though influence was retained through dictators.
By war’s end, the US had transformed the global division of labour. Britain’s share of world shipping tonnage fell from over half to 35%, while the US rose from 5% to 30%. The US dominated the coal market. Europe owed the US $18 billion; the US held nearly half the world’s gold reserves. The Monroe Doctrine (“America for the Americans”) was supplanted by “The Whole World for the Americans.” Wilson’s “self-determination” slogan was used to break up old European empires into weak vassal states—Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia—dominated by French and British capital, creating endless friction. The League of Nations served as cover for US ambitions, but Britain retained naval supremacy, and Wilson abandoned it. The war had permanently ended US isolationism.