Amateur Empire Building

In Confessions of an Economic Hitman, author John Perkins lays out some very smart tactics on the exploitation of small countries.
Here is the short version:

1. Find a poor country with tasty natural resources.
2. Sell them on industrialization as means of rapid economic development.
3. Loan them the money to industrialize.
4. The scheme fails because you exaggerated the benefits of industrialization! They don't have the money to pay you back.
5. Take their natural resources as payment.

There are lots of neat tricks to finesse even more profit out of this situation. For example: require funds be spent only on US construction firms. Most of these are advanced tactics which we can discuss after the basics are established.

So how does one without the money to loan take advantage of these teachings?
Basically you are getting someone to make a promise that they can't keep, and then collecting something else you wanted in return.

Stay tuned for a couple of examples from my own life in the world of Small-Business USA.