When Germany was at war with the Soviet Union, its national strength was measured by GDP. The Soviet Union has no advantage at all. It was able to fight against Germany, including wartime will and strategic success. After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States became the biggest beneficiaries. The Soviet Union used war to control a large area of land in Eastern Europe. The United States was not affected by the war, but exported a lot of weapons during the war. 1945 after the war, the GDP of the United States increased to $223 billion, which doubled! The economies of other participating countries have regressed for ten years. There used to be a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau in the United States named Klein. He was not very good at intelligence work, but after retirement, he worked out a Klein equation to measure national strength, which made him famous all over the world. This equation is very simple, that is, national strength (Pp)= critical mass)+economic capacity)+military capacity+national strategy+national will. The formula is not complicated, but the theory is profound. In short, the national strength of a country is equal to hard power multiplied by soft power. No matter how high your hard power is, if your soft power is zero, your national strength is equal to zero. The Qing Dynasty in China is an example. Eight hundred thousand Qing soldiers were defeated by more than twenty thousand Eight-Nation Alliance. On the other hand, if you have strategy and will, you may not succeed. War itself will greatly damage a country's hard power. Britain is one of the painful examples.
Recently, I had dinner with friends and said that the United States is now the global hegemon. Some friends asked if democracy can make a country's national strength so strong. I suggest that Britain and the United States have the same democratic system, and the United States will replace Britain as the global hegemon, not necessarily because of its superior democratic system, but because of its superior geographical conditions. North America is isolated overseas and is not threatened by foreign wars. On the other hand, Britain is located on the European continent. Although it is protected by the narrow English Channel, it reduces the direct military disaster to some extent. However, the two world wars still dealt a heavy blow to British national strength. 19 14 Before World War I, Britain was still a powerful country, the largest overseas investor and the largest creditor in the world. However, Britain suffered heavy losses in World War I and became one of the countries with the most debts after the war. Paying interest alone accounts for 40% of government expenditure. The lessons of World War I made Britain adopt appeasement policy towards Germany before World War II, trying to avoid war with Germany, but it backfired. The Germans bombed London mercilessly, completely blowing up the infrastructure and production facilities in Britain. 1945 After the end of World War II, although Britain became a victorious country, by 1946, Britain was still unable to get rid of famine. The war destroyed the British economy. 1In the autumn of 945, economist Keynes went to the United States for loan assistance on behalf of Britain. He wants a gift of/kloc-0.5 billion pounds and an interest-free loan of 3.5 billion pounds from the United States. As a result, the United States refused to give any gifts to Britain, only willing to lend1750 million pounds, and Britain had to pay 2% interest and repay it in installments in the next 50 years. The United States also imposed harsh conditions on Britain, demanding that the pound be converted into a freely convertible currency within one year. As a result, as soon as the pound was opened for exchange, there was a wave of selling, and the pound depreciated sharply, resulting in a large part of the borrowed pound evaporating. Since then, the pound has lost its dominance in world finance, and the dollar has since become the global hegemon. From the decline of Britain, we can see that Britain has not made too many strategic mistakes, but due to geographical limitations and successive wars in Europe, its resource strength and economic strength have been greatly weakened, and it has been unable to return to heaven since then. There are two lessons here. First of all, on a continent, unification is better than division. The second is to avoid war and confrontation as much as possible, which is an important prerequisite for the successful development of a company and even a country.
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