I wonder if the spread of English is because it's like a barycenter pulled by multiple languages, so not too far afield if coming from any of those languages.
I think it has a lot more to do with the global British Empire pre-WWI followed by American dominance post WWII. Perhaps there's an argument that the success of both had at least a small contribution from the characteristics of the language.
My thoughts are that any language that can embed other languages in it has the capacity to be a global lingua franca. English was firstest with the mostest.
