It's not the 1930s.
Victor Davis Hanson is concerned:
But if America abrogates the preeminent leadership position it has held for the last 65 years, wouldnâ??t the world look a lot like it did in the pre-American days of the 1930s? Then, a Depression-era United States was just one of many powers, and was reluctant to assert leadership abroad.In other words, the post-American world could look a lot like the rather terrifying pre-American version of seven decades past. Why in the world would we wish to return to it?
The trouble with these kinds of formulations is that they're hopelessly vague - what, in specific terms, does it mean to "abrogate the preeminent leadership position" and why is this something we're concerned with at the moment? Then there's this:
The so-called international community cared as much in the 1930s about rising, aggressive totalitarian states in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia as it does today about ascendant China or Iran.This essentially refutes Hanson's premise about a "terrifying" post-American world right there. It is absurd to compare Iran to any of those rising powers in the 1930s and while China has the potential to shake things up globally, the idea that their rise is going unnoticed, or unchecked, is simply erroneous. In the 1930s, the U.S. had no military presence in Europe to contain Germany. In 2011, the U.S. has defense treaties with two of China's immediate neighbors and has military bases surrounding the country.
Obviously, things can go very badly abroad without having to rise to the level of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but it behooves us to keep some perspective.
