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| VDH -- History Never Quite Ends |
| 2012-03-02 |
| Victor Hanson Davis reminds us --- The European Union and the United Nations, as well as globalization and advanced technology, were all supposed to trump age-old cultural, geographical and national differences and bring people together. But for all the high-tech veneer of the 21st century, the world still looks a lot like it did during the last hundred years and well before that. For centuries, Christianity often fought Islam in the mountainous, war-torn crossroads of the Balkans. And from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to the ethnic cleansing campaign of Slobodan Milosevic, the Balkans remain Europe's powder keg. Now with rioting and unrest in Athens, a financial earthquake that started in tiny Balkan Greece is shaking up some 500 million people in the European Union. America is not exempt from such stereotyping. Every so often Americans reluctantly get involved abroad, grandly seek to remake the world in our image, become frustrated that we cannot, then start to disengage and disarm, retreat home and promise to stay there -- before starting the cycle over. Here is history by the master -- at his best --- After World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and, more recently, our wars in the Middle East, we said "never again" -- only to lecture others and, in schizophrenic fashion, intervene once more. At times, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush all thought they could make the world safe for democracy. Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama assumed we had neither the money nor the virtue to try. After the Greek financial meltdown and the emergence of German financial dominance, Europe once more obsesses over the so-called German problem. Should Europeans admire the industry of the German people, or fear that such competency and drive -- as in 1870, 1914 and 1939 -- will eventually translate into German political and military supremacy? The division of Germany, the common Soviet threat, the NATO alliance, the European Union and German war guilt for the last half-century all repressed German singularity. Examine the violence of the world today more than a decade after 9/11. Much of it is still in the Middle East in general, and concerns Islam in particular. The protests of the Arab Spring may well turn into the repression of the Arab Autumn. Syria is aflame. Bombs go off almost daily in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Rockets are poised in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran either threatens to get a bomb or to use it once they get it. Fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Islamism and various dictators come and go. But the tribal nature of the Middle East and the unease of Islam with other religions, with a modernizing world and with a rival West somehow seem to remain the same -- whether at Lepanto in the 16th century or at the Strait of Hormuz in the 21st century. After World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and, more recently, our wars in the Middle East, we said "never again" -- only to lecture others and, in schizophrenic fashion, intervene once more. At times, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush all thought they could make the world safe for democracy. Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama assumed we had neither the money nor the virtue to try. New cure-all ideologies and organizations likewise have come and gone. Fascism, communism, socialism and the Keynesian redistributive state all promised a sort of new, better man. But mostly they ended up bringing neither peace nor prosperity. In response to all this depressing predictability, technocratic elites still dream up international solutions. The League of Nations was a noble idea that proved to be an irrelevant hothouse. No one still believes the pretentious United Nations is much more than a collective debating society. The non-democratic European Union is going the way of the past megalomaniac and failed dreams of Charlemagne, Napoleon and Hitler of one united European continent, one system, one ideology. What, then, are we left with? Only the humility that human nature does not change much. That unpleasant fact means that about all we can do is to keep muddling through, stay vigilant, and hope for the best while preparing for the worst. For all the problems of national pride, democracy, free markets, alliances and military preparedness, the alternatives seem far worse. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #7 Lots of us agreed with nation building, Ebbavitle Unaith6504, whether because they thought the society could've been changed after the defeat, or because they saw it as an excuse to keep armed troops where the killing needed to happen. Mr. Hanson is a tenured history professor, which makes him a historian. His area of expertise is the Classical Period of Greece and Rome, with a concentration in the wars of the period. However, whether he is a self-important gasbag is legitimately a matter of opinion. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-03-02 22:37 |
| #6 Didn't VDH cheerlead GWB's nation-building follies? The afghan terror entity should have looked like the Moon after 9-11. Color VDH with jihad-subsidy. He's a self-important gas-bag posing as a historian. |
| Posted by: Ebbavitle Unaith6504 2012-03-02 19:51 |
| #5 Sometimes I marvel at the wisdom and insight shown here, and the depth of understanding of macro-trends and principles, as evidence here by Dr. Hanson and the comments above. Thank you Rantburgers for what you offer. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2012-03-02 13:37 |
| #4 It's the idiotic conceit based on no understanding of economics. Those technologies are only the coefficient of productivity, real productivity (wealth creation) only comes about from comparative advantage, and that requires a reciprocal culture. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2012-03-02 07:08 |
| #3 Amen, Besoeker. We live in an age where armchair philosophers are tripping over themselves to put forth proclamations of their own ability to do what no human ever has. Fukuyama's "end of history". Jared Diamond's "geographic determinism" and the idea that now that Western technologies are widespread we'll all be exactly the same despite cultural difference, so no more war. Most recently, Pinker's preposterous claims that due to socialism and technology humans have become inherently less violent and that time tried observations about tension building and releasing (WWII? Aab Spring?) over the decades and generations are simply not true. Wrong, each one of them. Human nature doesn't turn on a dime and forces of politics don't simply stop, no matter how much we wish it is so. Culture, not ease of food acquisition or lack of need to obtain necessities for a few decades, determines how a group of people will behave and how their interactions wth other nations will succeed or fail, absent some black swan event. Even regimes that believed otherwise and had mass quantities of military force couldn't make these work for more than a couple generations. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2012-03-02 06:16 |
| #2 "I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them--none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way." Dickens |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-03-02 02:29 |
| #1 America is worth sticking for, just make sure that it does not get stabby. |
| Posted by: newc 2012-03-02 01:53 |