Conservative but not-that-conservative Max Boot remarks on some historical perspective to try to explain current trends:
We now have leaders, such as Trump and the Brexiteers in Britain, who are endangering the hard-won achievements of the post-1945 era by embracing nationalism and calling into question international institutions such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization and NATO. For many politicians, this is a cynical exercise: They are manufacturing grievances to justify their lust for power. But why are so many ordinary people willing to go along?
The military historian Michael Howard provided at least part of the answer in a brief but wise 2000 book, “The Invention of Peace.” “Bourgeois society is boring,” he wrote. “There is something about rational order that will always leave some people, especially the energetic young, deeply and perhaps rightly dissatisfied. . . . Militant nationalist movements or conspiratorial radical ones provide excellent outlets for boredom. In combination, that attraction can prove irresistible.”
Boredom with the long period of post-Napoleonic peace in Europe, along with the rise of virulent nationalism, contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The chief of the German General Staff, Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn, wrote in 1912 that all of the European powers would suffer from a “great European war” and that the chief beneficiaries would be the United States and Japan. But, he added insouciantly, “For me it will be all right. I am most tired and extremely bored by this lazy peacetime life.”
It’s not clear to me how well Howard’s observations apply to today, given that a large part of Trump’s base are older white voters who deeply resent how the United States has changed, and another chunk are the evangelicals, which I have begun to assign a shorthand definition of people resistant to change.
The tone of Boot’s remarks make it seem like the world wars were random choices made by bored people. My understanding, though, is that these were the result, in World War I, of a system of alliances that required reactions to belligerence, so that when a few Serb rebels, perceiving themselves as oppressed, shot and killed Archduke Ferdinand, those alliances went off like clockwork. It was 19th century diplomacy mixed with 20th century weapons.
World War II featured two different motivations. The Germans, suffering from the vindictive reparations demanded by the French (who, it must be said, were badly hurt by the Germans in World War I), had lost their moral foundation as a people, as will happen when mass poverty suddenly and seemingly arbitrarily appears, making them malleable clay for the right madman. The Japanese, on the other hand, had grand delusions of national godhood, and when the Americans put the squeeze on them by denying them the scrap metal they needed to feed their industry (not having much in the way of natural resources in their homeland), it was either give up their delusions or take what they needed to remain god-like.
A discouraging observation thoroughly applicable to today’s Trump-supporting evangelical.
Obviously, not having read Howard’s book, it’s hard to really decide if it’s foolish generalizations or “wise,” as Boot would have it. But from bombing altitude, it doesn’t impress me.
