Explaining the First World Third World Dicotomy through the lens of Bretton Woods.

In my previous article on France sending French Naval vessels to the USA to redeem dollars for gold, I acknowledged the role the Bretton Woods agreement played in setting up the current Global Monetary System as US Dollar based, and it's goal of reconstructing Western Europen after the World War Two.

It's important to acknowledge that Bretton Woods did not create a level playing field for the world after the war. It's goal was to rebuild the USA's Western European Allies, and use the US Dollar to allow the USA to have more power and influence in a world . The USA found itself to be the worlds factory, and it manufactured practically everything the world needed. And this helped it become one of the richest country in the world. Bretton Woods allowed the USA, the worlds Military Super Power at the end of World War Two, to add a weapon it could wield without bloodshed. The Bretton Woods Agreement launched a Global Monetary System literally called Dollar Hedgemony, with the Dollar being the only currency in which to conduct international trade. This agreement gave the worlds preminent Military Super Power massive economic power and it used it to rebuild it's allies countries after the war.

So in summary, Breton Woods created a monetary system whose goal was to rebuild the Allies of United States; the United Kingdom and Western Europe. This system made Western Europe the economic powerhouse it is now. United States and the Monetary System called Dollar Hedgemony literally rebuilt Europes infrastructure and manufacturing bases, along with it's banking and financial system. All of which were destroyed by the war.

But the Bretton Woods agreement ignored the plight of the rest of the world and created the great divide betweem so called First World Nations; the US, and it's Western European Allies, and the Developing or Third World Countries of the world in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middles East.

The world after world war two.

First, World War Two was one of the most destructive wars in the history of the world. It is often referrred to as the Great War, by people unfamiliar with World War One. It was a war which decimated the majority of countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, Asia and large parts of the Pacific.
That sentence pretty much encompasses the whole world.

Second, many of the non-western countries were not indeopendent soveriegn nations. instead they were colonies of the European Colonial powers. When we look at the attendees of the Breton Woods conference 44 countries, 755 attendees. And according to historical records at the end of World War Two, there were roughly 44 independent countries, and an equal number of non-western countries who were not independent nations. They were colonies of the European Colonial powers.

Think about that for a second, as recent as the end of World War Two, at Bretton Woods conference in 1944, European Countries controlled more then 40 countries, they called Colonies. These colonies were in the Middle East, Far East, Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific.

Third, although both sovereign western european countries and colonized non-western countries had suffered great destruction in the war, the ner complete destruction of schools, clinics, hospitals, roads, trains, planes, ships, and financial systems. These sovereign and non-sovereign countries were destroyed equally. The world suffered an immense injury and countries faced tremendous destruction of all societal systems.

Fourth, Bretton Woods was a conference whose goal was to build a Monetary System, which was focused on rebuilding the USA's allies in the war; Western Europe. The second focus, a program called the International Monetary Fund, was a designed to rebuild the colonies of the European nations to the benefit of the European Countries.

This is a statement which must be looked at through the eyes of the time. This was almost 100 years ago, and many countries in Europe controlled countries outside of western europe as their colonies. So the economic development was not meant to develop them as sovereign nations., but to develop them as functioning colonies, to the benefit of their colonial sovereign.

We the citizens of the modern world in 2025 must understand that nearly 100 years ago in 1944 much of the Africa, the Middle East and Asia was still under the control of the Western European Colonial Powers.

It is in this historical understnding of both widespread colonization and widespread destruction of the world, that we understand how Breton Woods picked the winners with the economic plan called Dollar Hedgemony. This decision, the deciion to crete the IMF, and the decision to continue to allow the practice of colonoization. These decisions created much of the economic distress we continue to see in the world and the political unrest which hs gripped the world.

In all fairness, we were not alive to see the widespread destruction of Europe caused by the war, and the hardships it's people faced during and after the war.
But we can travel to both any third world nation or to any Western Europen country and see the outcome of those decisions.

The True Tragedy is that a prominent British Economist Keyes argued against Dollar Hedgemony and argued for a plan called Bancor, which was focused on developing all the world equally and in return for countries agreeing to the Global Monetary System idea, they all agreed to buy a third neutral currency, and use it for all international trade and commerce, not the dollar.

I can only imagine an economic development plan which could have developed all the so called Third World Countries in the 1940's. A financial lifeline which could have saved The nations of Korea, China and Burma from the economic turmoil they sufferred following World War Two, which gave birth to Communist Revolutions in China, Vietnam and Korea, with untold numbers of deaths from war, disease and starvation.

.## ✍️ About the Author & The INLEO Community

🙋‍♂️ Author: Shortsegments

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