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The post–World War II transition from a European imperial order to an American world system was not so much a military affair as a financial project. The Truman administration had to rely more on economic than military power to achieve its foreign policy objectives as Congress initiated a precipitous dismantling of the postwar U.S. military machine.1 The trade and monetary agreements reached at Bretton Woods in July  represented an attempt to build a new American world order founded on commerce rather than coercion. The United States set about transforming a regional, informal empire of islands, itself the product of a successful earlier war, the Spanish-American (), into something much more enduring—a global empire of financial and market mechanisms. If colonial is the appropriate adjective to describe the former, then developmental best expresses the new policy agendas that inform the latter. Overseas development assistance (ODA) had its origins in postwar aid premised on the three “R’s” of reparation, reconstruction, and relief. By going back to the basics of development and tracing its manifestations in three discrete geopolitical arenas—Greece, the Philippines, and Japan in the formative years between  and —the dynamics of what began as a practical program for postwar recovery and reconstruction are revealed as a new tool of imperial ambition. The Three “R’s” Postwar recovery, at least for the victors, has historically been premised on reparations imposed on the vanquished: peace treaties are as much about compensation for damages as they are about the cessation of hostilities. Since the nineteenth century, the vanquished have paid a heavy price for defeat that was calibrated in monetary terms. The destruction wrought upon life and property by mechanized warfare and large-scale aerial bombardment both heightened the moral claim to  The“Three R’s”and the Making of a New World Order Reparation, Reconstruction, Relief, and U.S. Policy, – greg bankoff compensation for those affected and made the demands of war indemnities more difficult for the defeated nation to sustain.2 At the conclusion of World War I, the victorious Allies imposed on Germany the requirement to compensate those who had suffered losses through its “aggressions” and established an inter-Allied Reparations Commission to mediate such claims according to the defeated state’s ability to pay. Initial Allied pronouncements during World War II were of a similar ilk, with the Yalta declaration of February  obliging Germany to make reparations in kind of U.S. billion. A similar policy was imposed on Japan under the terms of surrender on September , .3 While matters of retribution were never far from popular consciousness, as early as December  American officials in the State and Treasury Departments were plotting an alternative course.4 Mindful that the peace terms of  had contributed to the major depression, mass unemployment, and social evils of the interwar years, they set about establishing conditions that would give rise to economic recovery and stressed reconstruction more than retribution. Reparations , consequently, would be tempered by the need to rebuild a devastated Europe and revive world trade. Anglo-American negotiators were able to reach a remarkable degree of consensus over what this postwar blueprint should entail: a relatively open world economy but with international supervision of national monetary and trade policies, and a high degree of toleration of state intervention to promote national concerns.5 An example of this shift from retribution toward reconstruction is provided by the Treaty of Peace with Italy signed on February , . The United States sought to ensure that the terms imposed were not so onerous as to retard Italy’s reestablishment of “sound economic conditions” and “healthy relations with other members of the family of nations.” In the words of Walter Surrey, deputy U.S. negotiator of the subsequent economic agreement with Italy, it was widely recognized that “chaos, hunger and desperation, while a barren soil for the birth of a democratic system of government, were admirably suited for the quick growth of a dictatorship, including a communist dictatorship.”6 Accordingly, reparations were only provided to Yugoslavia, Greece, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Albania . The U.S. government waived its own claims and confined its demands to a modest U.S. million to satisfy those of American nationals. A similar policy was followed with respect to claims against the minor Axis powers Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. No reparations at all were exacted from Austria as it was deemed not to have been an independent state during the war.7...

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