CHAPTER 1<br >High Finance~High Politics<br >International banking used to be regarded not so long ago as<br >a straightforward commel~clal activity in which tidy sums of<br >money could be earned. Bankers compared opportunities in<br >domestic and foreign markets， totted up the costs and benefits<br >of alternative profit strategies， and allocated their resources<br >accordingly. Even with formal political-risk analysis thrown<br >in， financial decisions were ostensibly divorced from consid-<br >erations of foreign policy. High finance， in principle at least，<br >was kept separate from the "high politics" of international<br >diplomacy.<br > That era is over. International banking has expanded dra-<br >matically in recent decades--and with that "international-<br >ization，" ilm， ~king operations have become inc~aSingly<br >9o~iticized， as involvements with foreign governments have<br >rapidly multiplied in scores of countries from Argentina to<br >Zaire， from Poland to the Philippines， from Libya to South<br >Africa. Bankers today have no choice but to pay more atten-<br >tion to foreign policy issues in the ordinary course of their<br >business， in practice， high finance can no longer be kept sep-<br >arate from hig.h politics. Indeed， in the contemporary era， they<br >are increasingly one and the same.<br > "~gha-t~s， this mean for U.S. foreign policy? That is the<br >question addressed by this book. With the growing interna-<br ><br >