Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire
wrote at the start of this chapter that World War I did not have to happen. It was, to borrow from the historian Barbara Tuchman, an act of folly. World War II could not have been more different. Germany and Japan embraced values and objectives that could not be accommodated within the existing order. Both had become hostages to political systems t
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, and for the first time in five hundred years no European country was a global power. The end of this five-hundred-year-long geopolitical cycle left the United States as the world’s dominant and only global power.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
World War II sounded the death knell of European empires. A process of European colonization that began in the early 1500s rapidly unraveled after 1945. The European powers were exhausted by war, heavily indebted, and without the legitimacy in the colonies to maintain their rule. Local independence movements either convinced the imperial power to w
... See moreJeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
