Personally I think the reason the US got strong, especially economically, is because of stability, rule of law, global trade and economy of scale due to large enough population. Not because of specific incidents of screwing someone.
Every other country was either recovering from being a colony, or not as far along industrially as US
This is the wrong view. The US got strong because it was able to convert its considerable industrial might to wartime footing within a very short timespan (which was frankly an incredible undertaking), and also because its geographic isolation allowed it to focus almost fully on offense.
(WWII^W) The US has had free reign to screw with dozens of countries since the end of WWII. And they did. But it wasn’t your[1] country so then it doesn’t count. Which is high school clique logic.
[1] Except if you were a politically active left-wing organizer post-WWII. Then the US and government-backed groups in Europe could have screwed with you through Operation Gladio, for example in Italy.[2]
[2] This is just an example. And I’m not terribly educated on the matter. I can’t learn about this by watching the tellie. So it takes more effort than the stupor that a slogan like 100 years of building trust hints at.
The biggest empire in the world paid for the US to re-tool its economy to produce arms for them. Later on the USA provided loans to continue that expansion.
Then Japan entered the war and it got personal.
Sure bretton-woods was a humiliation, but the Marshall plan was there to stop those humiliated allies from going communist.
