The problem for the European powers was what level of independent power they could exercise in a world dominated by the United States and the USSR, especially when they relied on the former to provide their security in Europe against the latter. Both Britain and France considered trying to use their empires as a way of remaining world powers but both rejected the option as too expensive. The outcome was that they rapidly lost the influence they had established over the previous centuries to the Americans. The latter had always run the Pacific war as their own private concern and Britain in particular was excluded in all but name from the occupation and peace settlement with Japan. The United States took over from Britain the predominant role in Greece and Turkey in 1947 and then in a wide area of the old Ottoman empire