It's a difficult tome, but everyone should read Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction, which describes in excruciating detail how, in Nazi Germany, the balance of payments deficit combined with militarism leads to a go for broke strategy of world domination. This is where the German military, industrial, and financial elites decide that it's now or never based upon a calculation that their relative economic power would never improve without military conquest of resources. They recognized that the balance of payments deficit would not be resolved with their economic rivals on the playing field of international commerce because of their commitment to military rearmament. Their military and industrial elites decided that the military must make a play for total domination of the world because they would otherwise be compelled to roll back their military power to accomodate the relative economic decline necessitated by finite resources, international debt and the insurmontable current account deficit.
They gave up on peaceful economic commerce and decided to force their way on the world.
The German military industrial complex's strategy might also have been called a "now or never" strategy with respect to international debt and the choice to go to war. It is a circular argument of course. Once you make the decision to build warplanes and tanks to the detriment of commerce and the standard of living of your people, the downward trends in commerce and international trade, force the recognition that an apex in military power is imminent and the opportunity cost will be a "loss" if it is not exploited with invasions and occupations.
