Think the World Resembles 1938? It Might Actually Look More Like 1618.

Dan Goure

Security,

A scary thought. 

Devotees of the Guardians of the Galaxy series of books might remember the line “History doesn’t repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes.”  A popular meme in the works of defense and foreign policy experts for the past several years is the degree to which the current international security environment echoes that of the late 1930s. Among the parallels that commentators cite are the explosion in commercial and military technologies, the rise of ideologies, the assertion of nationalist aspirations by ethnic and religious groups large and small, the shift in the balance of economic and military power from status quo nations to those intent on rewriting the rules of international relations, the increased power of non-traditional/non-state actors and a rise in new forms of warfare. The usual purpose for such discussions is to suggest that these factors were central to the slide into World War Two and that unless – or perhaps, even if – serious measures are taken, the world could once again be slouching towards Armageddon.

Historical analogies are never quite accurate, but they can be useful in teasing out how the interaction of environmental forces and policy decisions can result in unanticipated and even counterintuitive outcomes. With this caveat in mind and in light of yesterday’s vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union, I would like to suggest that perhaps historians and analysts have been overly focused on modern history in their attempts to line up recent events with historical precedents.