Suppose the abandon the idea that history is the story of heroic leaders fighting for their people against the enemy, and just think of it as aggressive guys breaking things.
I started thinking about this upon reading Kissinger in his On China. I skipped to the end and he’s writing about the Brit Foreign Office official Eyre Crowe in 1907. Crowe noted the German naval building program and decided that it was unacceptable. So the Brits set out to break Germany. In 1914 with WWI, with the punitive peace treaty in 1919, and again, in WWII. And you gotta say, the Germans have never been the same.
Still, it took two world wars and a Carthaginian peace to break the Germans: a tough nut to crack.
The Romans were pretty good at this, breaking Carthage in 146 BC. Carthago delenda est. North Africa has never been the same since.
Of course, the Brits broke France in he Napoleonic Wars, and France has never been the same since.
Then, of course, back in 1688, the Dutch invaded Britain and broke the British monarchy, and the Brit monarchy has never been the same since, has it, King Chuck.
And then, you could say, the educated class came up with its Marxism and the larger religious doctrine of The Victim is Always Right. I’d say this European ideology broke Russia, thanks to the work of the Marxist Vlad Lenin, and broke China, thanks to the work of the Marxist Mao Zedong.
And let’s not forget the US that broke Japan in 1941-45. And the Japanese have never…
And the US broke Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia in our glorious effort to stop the Commies.
Then the US broke Iraq and Afghanistan. In their own best interest of course.
What I wonder is whether the gathering storm of BRICS, the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, will end up breaking the US.
Of course, someone or something will break the US in the end; that is the way of the world.
But it would be humiliating if BRICS, or China and Russia together, ended up breaking the US without breaking a sweat.