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This paper redefines economic realism under the framework of security and applies this concept at the critical juncture of 1944-45, the period at the end of World War II when Bretton Woods was created, and the beginning of the Cold War in the area of finance. Specifically I examine US postwar loans to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in comparative perspective as exemplifying the type of ?conditionality? that would characterize US financial policy and IMF policy for the next fifty years. I argue that US financial policy toward its World War II allies was rational under assumptions of economic realism , and not as is often proposed the result of benign liberalism nor malign imperialism. This realist conditionality contributed to tensions that triggered the Cold War. In addition it set the tone for sovereign lending that would define postwar finance and IMF conditionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper relies on organizational and IR literatures to discuss the extent to which great powers are vulnerable to violent non-state actors. Hypotheses are tested qualitatively via a comparative case study of Imperial Russia and Great Britain. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]