Yeah Germany came very close twice to winning both world wars. The Soviets won the lion's share of the territorial spoils of WW2 despite emphatically not being

Yeah Germany came very close twice to winning both world wars. The Soviets won the lion's share of the territorial spoils of WW2 despite emphatically not being a free trade power. The Union won the Civil War despite almost alienating Great Britain and coming within a hair of war with the Brits multiple times. The Confederates were the free trade power supported by Europe throughout the entire war. As Ulysses Grant said during the final days before the Confederate surrender, "The British mark was on every battlefield of the war." Didn't work out for the free-trading Rebs the way that they hoped, but them's the breaks. It's not actually the 'own' that people think it is. Free trade is not a cheat code for permanent global domination. It's effective but it has limitations and weaknesses. The type of arrogance that leads to the belief that it grants an aura of invincibility is just hubris. The nations that use autarkic measures are not just stupid morons who are and were doomed to lose ahead of time: that's just believing our own Atlanticist war propaganda too much. Make no mistake, the modern sea powers have come very close to defeat and humiliation many times over the last couple centuries, and one of them was effectively annihilated (the British) in part due to the tidal wave of Asian nationalism.