The Ghost at the Feast

choi

Paul Kennedy, Minding Their Business. Even before the two world wars, the US economy was the largest among major powers. The nation/s refusal to play a commensurate role in international politics baffled Europe. Wall Street Journal, Dec 31, 2022, at page C7/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the ... -itself-11672420870
(book review on Robert Kagan, The Ghost at the Feast; America and the collapse of world order, 1900-1941. Knopf, 2022)

My comment: Maybe at the time, no nation or person know US had the largest economy, which surpassed UK (not the larger British Empire) around 1911. See gross domestic product
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product
("The modern concept of GDP was first developed by [Russian-American] Simon Kuznets for a 1934 US Congress report")