{"id":6268,"date":"2013-07-25T10:41:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T17:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6268"},"modified":"2013-07-25T10:41:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T17:41:17","slug":"back-to-our-20th-century-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/back-to-our-20th-century-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to our 20th-century future"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media Services<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

We may be in the era of\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and fracking. But 2013 is still beginning to look a lot like the cataclysmic century we just left behind.<\/p>\n

More people probably died from the wars of the 20th century than from the battles of the prior 2,500 years combined. The bloodiest century saw the rise of fascism, Nazism, communism and jihadism.<\/p>\n

Capitalism almost collapsed during the Great Depression. What followed was a Big Government antidote not unlike our own experience after the panic of 2008.<\/p>\n

The end of most colonialism and imperialism was also a 20th-century development. So was the rise of modernist and postmodernist culture, along with civil rights, feminism and nationalism.<\/p>\n

No wonder that despite the promise of the 21st century, we keep trying to make sense of the last 13 years by looking back through the lenses of the last action-packed 100.<\/p>\n

Take the present chaos abroad. The rise and new assertiveness of China is eerily like that of\u00a0Japan\u00a0in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Japan\u00a0also once tried to adopt Western-style industrial capitalism without consensual government. For a time, that nation grew rapidly.<\/p>\n

The rising sun of\u00a0Japan\u00a0felt slighted by the supposedly weak and corrupt twilight Western powers after World War I. America and its European allies were not willing to grant\u00a0Japan\u00a0regional influence commensurate with its rising global power. What followed was a decade-long Japanese war in\u00a0Asia.<\/p>\n

Does the same depressing lesson now apply to China? Can\u00a0Beijing\u00a0square the circle of capitalism without democracy? Can it have much of the world’s cash without the world’s largest military?<\/p>\n

Will China, like 1930s\u00a0Japan, resent established Western powers to the point of another war in the Pacific?<\/p>\n

The situation in\u00a0Syria\u00a0seems a lot like the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Almost every regional power and world superpower is flooding\u00a0Syria\u00a0with either weapons, troops or both —\u00a0Iran,\u00a0Hezbollah, the Gulf sheikdoms,\u00a0Russia,\u00a0Europeand\u00a0the United States.<\/p>\n

Syrian President\u00a0Bashar al-Assad\u00a0is a sort of Franco-type thug, propping up his fascist effort with foreign arms and troops. If\u00a0Syria\u00a0follows the Spanish blueprint for a wider war, what follows will be even worse.<\/p>\n

Talking loudly while carrying a small stick became infamous last century, after the British capitulation to Hitler at\u00a0Munich\u00a0in 1938. The same sort of “peace for our time” complacency characterizes Western sanctions in response to Iranian nuclear proliferation.<\/p>\n

It is eerie how most responsible nations loudly condemn\u00a0Iran’s\u00a0race to get a bomb, but they are just as reluctant to face down\u00a0Iran\u00a0as the early 20th-century democracies were to confront Hitler before he became too powerful and confident. Once again we are understandably unsure whether the bad choice of using force now is preferable to the nightmare of using even greater force later.<\/p>\n

The wobbly\u00a0European Union\u00a0was based on the same 20th-century idealism that once launched the\u00a0League of Nations\u00a0and\u00a0the United Nations. And\u00a0Europeseems to be following the same tired script of the 1930s. Weak democracies are once again offering moral lectures to rising powers while disarming.<\/p>\n

The 20th century’s “German problem” was supposed to be a distant memory. But a reformed and democratic\u00a0Germany\u00a0nevertheless is once again earning both the envy and fear of its weaker neighbors.<\/p>\n

Like 1938 Britain, most of the\u00a0European Union\u00a0has no clue how to prevent German economic dynamism from eventually leading to military and political dominance. In early-20th-century fashion, the volatile European street is swinging from hard left to hard right.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin’s\u00a0Russia\u00a0is as authoritarian as ever. As in the last century,\u00a0Israeland the Palestinians still have no peace.\u00a0Brazil\u00a0still has unlimited but never-realized potential.\u00a0Argentina\u00a0remains the same self-destructive mess. The Arab Spring ended in the same old\u00a0Middle East\u00a0chaos.<\/p>\n

The 21st-century\u00a0United States\u00a0is in a 20th-century fit of depression — with the decline of America the same cultural motif.<\/p>\n

In the 1930s, fascism was purported to be more efficient than American democracy. Then Nazism was said to create more idealistic and disciplined citizens.<\/p>\n

After World War II, the new communist man was announced as the wave of the future.<\/p>\n

Then came the superior 20th-century model of postwar “Japan, Inc.”<\/p>\n

Next was the all-powerful\u00a0European Union.<\/p>\n

The ruthlessly efficient Chinese juggernaut followed and seemed destined to outpace 20th-century America — which was suffering everything from stagflation to a shortage of oil.<\/p>\n

But once more, 21st-century America is confounding its critics by reinventing itself as it did last century.<\/p>\n

The U.S. may soon become the world’s largest gas and oil producer. Food exports are booming as never before. American brands from iPhones andStarbucks\u00a0to\u00a0Google\u00a0and Twitter flood the world.<\/p>\n

To find answers for this chaotic young century, just look back at the past one.<\/p>\n

(Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0is a classicist and historian at the\u00a0Hoover Institution,Stanford University. His new book, “The Savior Generals,” has just been released by\u00a0Bloomsbury Press. You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n(C) 2013 Tribune Content Agency, LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media Services We may be in the era of\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and fracking. But 2013 is still beginning to look a lot like the cataclysmic century we just left behind. More people probably died from the wars of the 20th century than from the battles of the prior 2,500 years combined. The bloodiest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[247,194],"tags":[1063,1049,323,1028,213,1041,424],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1D6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4118,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-american-21st-century\/","url_meta":{"origin":6268,"position":0},"title":"The American 21st Century","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The current debt, recession, wars, and political infighting have depressed Americans into thinking their country soon will be overtaken by more vigorous rivals abroad. 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Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious, and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Europe"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7812,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-hazy-sense-of-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":6268,"position":3},"title":"Obama\u2019s Hazy Sense of History","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For the president, belief in historical predetermination substitutes for action. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online President Obama doesn\u2019t know much about history. \u00a0In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved. He exaggerated Muslim contributions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Win McNamee\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/pic_giant_082714_SM_Barack-Obama-Marine-One-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12336,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-virus-is-a-violent-teacher\/","url_meta":{"origin":6268,"position":4},"title":"Our Virus Is a Violent Teacher","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Before this virus has passed, those of the New York Symphony, like the defeated Redcoats at proverbial Yorktown, will be playing the real \u201cThe World Turned Upside Down\u201d: And then strange motions will abound.Yet let\u2019s be content, and the times lament,you see the world\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12738,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-rural-way-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6268,"position":5},"title":"The Rural Way","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Almost\u00a0every national Election Night reveals the same old red\/blue map. The country geographically is a sea of red. The coasts and small areas along the southern border and around the Great Lakes remain blue atolls. 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