The Big Picture........Ch-21, Ch-22

As I read chapter 21 in Strayer's book about the collapse and recovery of Europe between 1914 and the early 1970's, I am reminded of an article I read a few days ago in the German newspaper, Spiegel on-line.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,772517,00.html

The article describes the political instability rising from a feeling of "nationalism" growing throughout several E.U. countries like Denmark, France and Italy. This attempt by Europe, to unify and coalesce into a common economic entity, is going through it's growing pains, as it struggles to find political unity while maintaining their individual, cultural identity.

Two of it's hallmarks are under scrutiny. One is maintaining the use of the "euro". It's  Europe's single currency used to replace 25 different kinds of money, like the franc, lire or Deutschmark for example. The other feature was the elimination of restrictions for border crossings which required a myriad of passports to travel about Europe.

Can you imagine us here in the U.S. driving to Boston, on a camping trip, and waiting at the local AAA for maps, and several passports that would be needed to drive through Nevada, Texas or Michigan? 

However, in light of the economic bailout of Ireland earlier this year, and the current economic crisis in Greece, many of the E.U. countries don't want the financial burden of bailing out smaller economies.

Additionally, with the successes of the "Arab Spring" in North Africa and the Middle East, thousands of refugees fleeing the uncertainty of these fledgling democracies, find themselves on the doorsteps of European countries already reeling from the world wide recession. A feeling of "nationalism" and a "me first" attitude has led to some countries like Denmark, wanting to close it's borders, and a new kind of nationalistic sentiment is gaining political ground in several countries. Is History repeating itself?

Strayer highlights this common feature for the beginnings of W.W.1 and W.W.11. The initial, "nationalistic" grumblings of a discontented and unemployed population led in part to countries aligning themselves with one another in an effort to find a common enemy and mutual interest. For example, in WW1 you had the "Triple Alliance" of Germany, Austria and Italy vs. the "Triple Entente" of Russia, France and Britain.

In WW11, we see the grotesque extreme of nationalism, expressed by Hitler and his Nazi party, which believed their Aryan Superiority gave them the moral position to slaughter millions of Jews.

In Asia, Japan's leadership also felt compelled to counter, what it perceived, as European racism and Japan's imposed, marginal role on the world's geopolitical stage.
With China's own growing nationalism, along with it's growing feeling of global isolation, Japan invaded Manchuria. This prompted it's withdrawal from the "league of nations", Japan's ally, and aligning with Germany and Italy. Bad move for Japan, ala Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As a result of these two horrendous conflagrations, and the almost, unimaginable loss of millions of soldiers and civilians; in addition to the utter devastation of the geography of Europe, the geopolitical center of gravity shifted away from Europe, and across the Atlantic Ocean, to Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The United States was now the lone superpower, with it's cities untouched by the bombs of war and the only country in possession of the "atom bomb".





The Rise and Fall of World Communism 

In post-war Europe and Asia, Strayer tells us in the book that global communism's appeal was largely due to a "promise of liberation from inequality, oppression, exploitation and backwardness". Masses of people left homeless and disillusioned by the cumulative effect of two world wars, were eager for the rhetoric of Lenin, then Stalin in Russia and Mao Zedong, in China.


The Marxist ideology was a response to, and rejection of, western capitalistic culture, as well as a criticism of the inequality, and wealth imbalance of the elite and average Joe/Jane.


Stalin's hypocrisy, and blood soaked legacy, disillusioned many communist's. To them, Communism seemed just as corrupt as capitalism. Reformist, Mikael Gorbachev eventually steered the ship that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, symbolizing the end of global communism.

In China, the other Communist power, saw itself being transformed, and invented it's own hybrid of a capitalist style economy, with a central, authoritarian political hierarchy. It's own call for democracy by students and young people, was brutally crushed by Premier Deng in Tiananmen Sq., while the West was dancing to "funk" music. Today in 2011, the full privileges of a democratic society still elude the average Chinese citizen.


In retrospect, communism championed the injustices of workers, women and peasants of their societies. However, Communist's were also responsible for crimes against humanity; they murdered millions, mismanaged food resources causing famine, and violated human rights on a grand scale in Stalin's Gulags.


Is Capitalism the answer?

What will students say, in 2311, taking a World history class, about the American Empire's zenith. Will it be the same way we examine, in 2011, the rise and fall of, say, Colonial Europe or Ancient Mesopotamia?