Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

Thoughts after Reading The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam; From Jihad to Dhimmitude

At some point after living in the Middle East during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I bought the above named book by Bat Ye’or.

Ye’or’s writings have focused on the history of minorities under Islamic rule, which she calls dhimmitude. She also has written and spoken critically against some Europeans for criticism of Israel, accusing them of anti Semitism. Some accuse Ye’or of fostering Islamophobia.

Regardless, at the time I bought the book, I had experienced Middle Eastern cultures for the first time. Previously, I, a Southern Baptist raised in Tennessee, had known them shallowly if at all. Despite having a college minor in history, I was barely conscious of the great Byzantine Empire.

This empire, based in Constantinople (now Istanbul) endured almost a thousand years after the fall of the western Roman empire. Yet I knew relatively little about it or about the eastern Christian faith communities at the heart of this empire.

On a visit to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, I had first visited museums and churches featuring eastern Christian art. (I fictionalized this experience in Searching for Home.)

I began to ask questions. How had Christians became a minority? In a matter of a few centuries, even their Greek language was overtaken by the new language, Arabic.

No doubt the language change played a part in the gradual turning of Christian majority nations into Islamic majority ones. The newer religion used what became the common language. Greek, language of eastern Christian churches, was spoken less and less.

In reading the history of the Middle East before Islam became predominant, perhaps Christianity, as it came to be practiced then, lost its common touch. It became a state religion, beholden to secular leaders for its survival.

Christianity rapidly lost its influence in the Middle East. It was pushed into the backwaters of a place called Europe, the remnants of the old Roman empire fused with the Germanic elements of its conquerors.

Yet eventually Europe became culturally Christian as the Middle East become culturally Islamic. Christians again were tempted to build Christ’s kingdom through worldly power.

Christians, it seems to me, are most likely to endure when they don’t confuse earthly power with the religion of Jesus Christ.

The Marshal versus the Marshall Plan

America has always included an element of “might makes right.” The marshal in the old West meets the villains and defeats them. Order is restored. The good people are able to get on with their lives.

Typically, however, the good comes more slowly but also more peaceably. Child labor is defeated: perhaps by a combination of ballot box and shame. Corrupt political bosses are voted out of office when a free press shines light on their activities.

Nazi Germany was defeated by military might. Yet the structures which have prevented a return to world wide conflict are of a more peaceable sort.

The Marshall plan directed American aid to countries ravaged by World War II (including our enemies) and helped them rebuild. The U.S. used trade and commerce instead of war.

International bodies set rules about fair trading. Scholarships were given to foreign students for study in American universities so they might return and benefit their countries with new knowledge and skills, as well as spread American influence.

Certainly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, called for a military response in Afghanistan. Yet the war in Iraq drew us into a quagmire more because of our desire for cheap oil than anything else. It was might for our own economic benefit rather than a true desire to rid a small nation of a cruel dictator.

War is expensive in both lives and fortune. The United States is still strong enough to win by bolstering its working and middle classes. It can keep alliances with allies, especially democratic allies. It waited out the Soviet Union by such policies. It can do the same now—if it doesn’t yield to the pre-World War II kind of America First syndrome. That was the slogan of Nazi sympathizers before Pearl Harbor silenced them.

Rush to Judgement

William Burns held a leadership position in the U.S. Department of State when terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. In an article in politico.com (March 13, 2019), he speaks of that time when the country, reeling from shock, was deciding on responses to the attacks.

The title of the article is “How we tried to slow the rush to war in Iraq and why the lessons from my time in the Bush administration are relevant today.” It speaks of Burns’ attempts to come to terms with that time and the wrong decisions made.

Even as Burns watched from his office window at the plumes of smoke from the attacked Pentagon, he wrote in a memo: “We could shape a strategy that would not only hit back hard against terrorists and any states who continued to harbor them, but also lay out an affirmative agenda that might eventually help reduce the hopelessness and anger on which extremists preyed.”

In hindsight, we chose to hit back hard but tended to ignore the need to also craft a positive policy to reduce the factors that led to the attacks.

Burns writes: “In the 18 months that followed—that rare hinge point in history between the trauma of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in early 2003—we took a different and ultimately disastrous course. This is a story of the road not taken, of the initial plan of coercive diplomacy in Iraq, which turned out to be long on coercion and short on diplomacy.”

Burns writes of how the campaign in Afghanistan morphed into a tragic focus on Iraq and became quicksand from which we are still trying to free ourselves.

In a memo from the time before the decision to invade Iraq, Burns wrote: “we needed ‘to show that we will finish the job [and] restore order, not just move on to the next Moslem state.’”

We did not finish the job in Afghanistan. While the work was unfinished there (and remains to this day) we moved on to Iraq, then Syria, and now Iran.

The hardliners won after 9/11, and they are continuing to win today in our policies on Iran. “The Iraq invasion was the original sin,” Burns writes. Unfortunately, we are still following the path begun then.

American Reckoning

“The American Civil War was a struggle over two competing ideas of the nation-state. This struggle has never ended; it has just moved around.”

So writes Jill Lepore in “A New Americanism; Why a Nation Needs a National Story.” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019)

Prior to the Civil War, two ideas pitted themselves against each other. Stephen Douglas said in 1858 that the United States “was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”

His sparring partner, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Douglas to find a single affirmation in U.S. history that “the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence.”

The Confederates attempted to craft a new country based on ideas like those Douglas held. Though the union defeated them, the battle between competing visions of the nation still continues, according to Lepore.

The victory of the union was eventually overtaken by a kind of schizophrenic nation. One provided a new beginning for immigrants fleeing persecution and oppression and stood in contrast to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Chinese exclusion acts.

Our current conflicts, mirrored in our views toward “the other,” are a continuation of these old battles.

I grew up a child of the South, proud of my heritage. I still cherish the kinship and unique community spirit of my childhood. Much was good. But a tough love of that place requires me to speak out against the malignancy that festered side by side with our native caring.

As a Christian leader, Jim Wallis, has written, slavery was our original sin. Until we repent, not only of the original sin but of all the insidious descendants we have refused to root out since then, I think we will fail as the nation we were meant to be.

Wealth and the Scrooge Syndrome

“The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away unwept, unhonored, and unsung, no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him.”

The words are those of Andrew Carnegie, the man who built up the American steel industry. After amassing great wealth, he retired and became a philanthropist. As a child, I fed my love for reading in a library founded with his wealth. My family would have found it difficult to buy all the books I was able to read free of charge.

Capitalism is a powerful economic machine. It is unrivaled in its ability to produce goods, but it is neither good nor evil in itself.

Some capitalists pay huge sums to politicians favoring policies allowing more and more wealth and political power to accumulate to fewer and fewer wealthy individuals.

Others support worthy cause like scholarships and homeless shelters and health programs.

As capitalism’s wealth accumulates, the capitalist decides whether to be corrupted by it or to share both wealth and power.

More words from Carnegie: “Of such as these the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.”

U.S. Embassy: Venezuela: On the Front Lines Again

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the safety of American diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. The United States has recognized an opposition leader in that country as the legitimate president. Needless to say, Nicolás Maduro, elected president in a sham election, is not pleased and has made various threats against the embassy.

Pompeo replied as his predecessors have replied for decades in similar situations: The safety of its diplomatic personnel is the highest priority of the State Department. Given the number of American diplomats who have been killed in recent decades, concerns are valid.

A long time ago, after the first Gulf war against the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait in 1991, I knew two people affected by the buildup to that war. One was a junior diplomat in Kuwait on his first assignment. The other was the office manager in Baghdad, staying behind with the few remaining diplomats in that embassy.

The U.S. ambassador in besieged Kuwait, now overrun with Iraqi forces, sent greetings to his colleagues back in Washington: “Your colleagues in Embassy Kuwait are pleased to send you our greetings this evening. All things considered, we would prefer to be with you in person, but you will appreciate that this is not possible.”

When the invading Iraqis cut off utility services, the Americans reportedly used water stored in a swimming pool.

I had a more than passing interest in what was happening in those days. I was on my own first assignment to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country bordering Kuwait.

Eventually, diplomats in both Iraq and Kuwait were allowed to evacuate before the war began. Families and friends breathed a sigh of relief.

After the end of the war, another colleague, whom I knew in Jeddah during the war, was assigned to accompany the victorious Americans returning to the embassy in Kuwait. I was jealous. I have pictures of her as she and her colleagues watched while the U.S. flag was raised again over the embassy.

Here’s to hoping the situation in Venezuela is resolved peacefully and in the interests of the Venezuelan people.

Cold War Joke

A joke from decades ago–during the Cold War, a golden age as far as the American worker was concerned.

An American businessman visited a factory in the Soviet Union. He was shown around the place. “Who owns this factory?” the American asked.

“The workers,” his guide said.

Leaving the factory, the American noticed three cars in the factory’s parking lot and asked who they belonged to. He was told the cars belonged to a couple of the factory’s managers and a government inspector.

Later, a Russian factory manager visited a Ford plant in Michigan. He was shown around the plant.“Who owns this factory?” the Russian visitor asked.

“Mr. Ford,” his guide told him.

On leaving the factory, the visitor noticed the large parking lot full of vehicles. “Who owns those cars?” the visitor asked.

“The workers,” his guide replied.

The anecdote was intended to show the actual results of capitalism versus communism. It was intended to illustrate how workers under a capitalist system are better off than those under a communist system.

At the time, according to what I have read, Mr. Ford believed his workers would perform better if they were paid adequate wages and had benefits like health insurance.

I don’t know about the Ford family today, but it seems many employers have forgotten that they depend on their employees to produce the products their wealth depends on.

Jobs change. What the products are and what procedures are needed to produce them have changed—whether it’s a physical product, a software program, or support services like janitorial work.

What hasn’t changed is the need for workers to find pride in what they do and to be adequately compensated for it.

Inadequate care of the working class will cost all of society—in alcohol and drug problems, in costs for sickness not treated early, in workers untrained for the jobs of today.

Capitalism is indeed a most efficient economic system—as long as the system itself is not placed ahead of the workers who operate it.

A Post-Religious Society?

A couple of years ago, an article in The Economist emphasized the decline of religion in Britain. (“This sceptic isle,” August 13, 2016)

Churches are being sold. The percent of those describing themselves as “religious” has declined from 80 percent for those born before 1980 to 40 percent for those born after.

In the United States, the article pointed out, the nonreligious portion of the population rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014.

Who, the article asked, is going to take over the functions previously performed by religious institutions? Jobs like feeding the poor and counseling the grief stricken?

Of course, in the two millennia since the birth of Christianity, it has risen and fallen a number of times.

Byzantium, bastion of might and Eastern Orthodoxy, endured for over a thousand years before its military defeat by the Ottoman Empire.

But Ottomans failed twice to conquer Vienna and the rest of Europe. The European Renaissance and then the Reformation unfolded, movements both secular and religious.

After Christendom lost its way and became embroiled in barbarous wars, it declined, and the Age of Reason followed. However, Christianity eventually revived. Missionaries carried it to Africa and Asia. Other Christians were active in social issues, including the movement to abolish slavery. In the twentieth century, Christians took leadership roles in the civil rights movement.

Though the Christian faith now is going through a bad patch in Western countries, it is growing in Asia and Africa.

Somehow, one or way or another, resurrection seems to happen.

Family Reckonings

At the request of a relative, I began looking through old family genealogical records collected by my mother.

Both sides of my family, it appears, have been in North America since before the American Revolution. I read with interest the records of one ancestor when, as an old man, he applied for a pension for his service with the Continental army. He joined in 1777, took part in various battles as a “wagoner,” was captured at one point, but managed to escape, then rejoined American forces.

That’s the sort of ancestor you brag about.

Then I found another record. This Civil War ancestor “died of acute Laryngitis at Rock Island, Illinois, barracks as a prisoner of war. He is buried in grave 11170. Captured Oct, 1863 at Pinewood Factory, Company “A”, 24th Tennessee Sharpshooters.”

As I recall, rations for Confederate prisoners were decreased at Rock Island in retaliation for the inhuman conditions in Andersonville, Georgia, a prison managed by Confederates for captured Union soldiers.

According to family lore, the branch that produced my Confederate ancestor consisted of fairly well off Tennessee landowners. Probably my ancestor owned a few slaves. Perhaps he joined the Confederates to protect his property and his “right” to own slaves. Mostly likely he held racist views.

And I thought about the folly of slavery, growing in this country even as William Wilberforce and others in Great Britain were beginning the campaign to end the slave ships. That country was the enemy against whom my other ancestor fought.

The United States took an immoral turning in allowing slavery. And the war that brought those men to miserable deaths in fetid prisons was just as misguided.

Sure Way to Corrupt Religion? Join It to the State

Absent persecution, religion separated from the power of the state may flourish. Sometimes it triumphs even over persecution. Joined to the state, however, it tends to be corrupted.

During the European Middle Ages, kings used the church to increase their power. Religious leaders began allying with kings. The religious hierarchy become corrupted. Christianity itself split into warring factions.

Many lost faith in religion, and Christendom gave way to the Age of Reason.

Meanwhile, in newer settlements in North America, government began to separate itself from religion. Amazingly, religion flourished and gained influence.

Religion works best as leaven within a society. Join it with political power, and corruption sets in.

A Sorting of People

In his book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, former President Jimmy Carter pinpoints the first time he was aware of racial prejudice.

Growing up as the son of a white landowning family in a mostly black community, he played with the black neighborhood children. For him, they were simply playmates.

Then one day he and his friends were going through a farm gate. His black friends fell back, allowing him to enter first. He thought they had set up some kind of childish trick—something in the path, perhaps, that he was meant to stumble on. Then he realized that they were giving precedence to him because he was white.

A thousand thoughts must have clicked in his mind. That was his first understanding of a system that favored one group of people above another because of skin color.

His pilgrimage toward understanding the absurdity of racial prejudice mirrors the journey of many Southern whites. Some of us who struggled on that journey are now amazed at the strength of prejudice in this day and age.

Today’s Town Crier

In the days before widespread literacy, some governments announced public proclamations by a town crier.

As time passed, literacy became more important for commerce and making a living. Public school systems increased.

However, news, other than local, was not yet an important part of ordinary life. In the novel by Paulette Jiles, News of the World, Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd makes a living by traveling to small Texas towns and charging money to read newspapers to audiences.

It took radio and the advent of world wide wars to make news a staple of the average American household. Television brought the horror of the Vietnam conflict into the living room.

From earliest colonial times, courts decreed that truth was the deciding factor in what could be printed as news. Even if a news story was derogatory to public officials, it must be allowed if it was true. If it was not true, the source of the falsehood could be sued for libel.

Today, we have fewer “gatekeepers,” that is, editors and investigators, to test stories for the truth before they are “printed.” Today, because of the internet, truth and lies can unsettle whole populations before stories can be unraveled.

Whether this glut of words—news, opinion, knowledge, entertainment, lies, gems of wisdom, personal data, and a hundred other kinds of reportage—is good or bad is an open question. The outcome depends on how responsible we literate beings are in what we choose to read.

What Overcomes Allegiance to Our Political Tribe?

Early Christians were the first to place religious convictions above tribal loyalty, wrote Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

“For the first time in human history, individuals claimed the liberty to define the limits of their political loyalty, and to test that loyalty by spiritual and ethical standards.” (Rowan Williams, “The Two Ways,” Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2017).

In answering accusations against them, one early group responded. They were not rebels against the state and had no wish to overthrow it, they said. They would pay taxes to it. They would not, however, worship the emperor. “They would not grant the state their absolute allegiance.”

Throughout history, states and empires have come and gone. Some have established centers of civilizing influence. All demanded some form of loyalty to the state apparatus.

The early Jesus followers called for a loyalty higher than the tribe, higher than whatever state was in existence at the time. They proclaimed their allegiance to his teachings and said those teachings took precedence over any other authority.

A question for us today, the religious and the non-religious alike, is whether we worship some political cause or, instead, give allegiance to greater causes like justice, mercy, and serving the widows and orphans.

The Possibility of Something Better

Democracy’s track record has fallen in recent years, due to its failure in many developing countries. Why has the United States endured, even though challenged in the past and certainly challenged today?

The country’s founding document, the U.S. Constitution, and the deference given it over the years, has provided stability. The Constitution is imperfect, given that it is a human document. Most of us, if we could travel back to influence its creation in the late 18th century, would have attempted to alter some of its provisions. The evidence that even its creators thought it imperfect is the provision for amending it.

Yet it enshrines for us certain basic values that have defined us. Our laws are judged by it.

Influencing our history, whether many of us think about it or not, is the idea that we were created as a nation of principles and not of privilege.

We certainly fail at times to live up to this high calling. Nevertheless, privilege—of class, money, gender, race, religion, or other—has constantly been challenged.

It necessarily means that we start with reality—our imperfection. We may, and often do, fall short, but the possibility of movement toward something better is always there.

You Can’t Return to the Past, Except Maybe in a Book

As a newbie U.S. Foreign Service officer in the early 1990’s, I remember my first assignment in Saudi Arabia as a marvelous adventure. It was as exciting as the stories I used to read in my childhood.

I visited exotic market places with new friends, walked through ancient ruins, and fell in love with Middle Eastern food. Once in a while I took leave to visit Europe, exploring countries I had only read about.

My career began before terrorism led to intrusive pre flight searches in airports. I traveled before airplanes became boxcars of pressed humanity.

In the course of my job, I learned to respect those who saw the world through a different cultural lens. I visited prison wardens, assistants to emirs, and foreigners with custody of American children.

I can’t go back to those days again. By the end of my second tour in Saudi Arabia in the early 2000’s, I had to live by new restrictions on travel. We learned to be alert to the possibilities of terrorism, and not only in the Middle East. From the U.S. consulate in Dhahran, we watched on television as the twin towers fell on September 11, 2001.

Fortunately, I can conjure in novels the lessons I gained during the earlier days. The novels dredge up insights, before so much fire and fury, that I am only beginning to understand.

August 7, 1998

Unless you were directly affected by it because of your profession or your family ties, you probably don’t know the significance of that date, twenty years ago.

Bombs detonated simultaneously at U.S. embassies in East Africa: Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. That day, 213 were killed in Nairobi. Around 5,000 were injured. Most of the dead and injured were Kenyans, either working at the embassy or in nearby buildings. Twelve Americans were killed.

In Dar es Salaam, eleven Tanzanians were killed. Eighty-five Tanzanians and Americans were wounded.

The July/August 2018 issue of The Foreign Service Journal is dedicated to the “remembrance, reflection and resilience” of the American, Kenyan, and Tanzanian survivors.

Among the personal stories:

The information systems manager in the Nairobi embassy, a Kenyan, almost buried under debris, realized he was still alive and crawled out to rescue others. A picture shows him on one side of a bloodied survivor helping him walk to safety.

One American remembers planning to meet his wife for lunch at the embassy, then, at the end of that day, having to tell his daughters that their mother had been killed.

Another remembers leaving for a meeting in a part of the embassy that was less damaged, then returning to his office, moments after the blast, to find all his colleagues dead.

The survivors remind us: no one ever gets over this kind of experience.

They dealt with grief and with post traumatic stress.. Some struggled with getting their minds around the utter evil of an act which devastated the lives of so many innocent people.

They learned the vital importance of community. Many mentioned an overwhelming realization of love for their family that influenced them the rest of their lives.

Over and over, survivors stressed how grateful they were for the leadership of the ambassador, Prudence Bushnell. She strived to bring the community together to get through the horrible nightmare.

In her recounting, Bushnell said, “I discovered a depth of sadness and breadth of anger I did not know I had. I also learned I could not take away anyone else’s pain, trauma, anger or sadness, but I could accompany them.”

Another lesson from survivors is the healing many found in turning their experience into service for others. One said, “From that moment on, my life’s purpose has been to promote understanding between people of differing backgrounds.”

Lessons learned: Family, community, and service were priceless weapons in surviving August 7, 1998. They remain so in all the senseless tragedies since then, from September 11, 2001, to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida this year.

A New Game of Dominoes

Remember the domino theory? The United States went into Vietnam because, if Vietnam fell to communism, it would knock others into the communist orbit.

We lost that war, and a domino game indeed plays out—just not the one we envisioned. Instead, Ben Barber writes, “Today’s dominoes are not allies of Beijing or Moscow, nor do they practice central state economic planning. They are crony-capitalist, one-party states. (“Authoritarianism Gains in Southeast Asia,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2018).

With the possible exception of Tunisia, the Arab spring attempt to establish democracy in North Africa and the Middle East has been a failure. Autocracies, like Saudi Arabia, says Barber, “kept the lid on and ensured domestic peace, at the cost of stifling the tender shoots of democracy.”

We “liberated” Iraq, but the vacuum created by that liberation led to all sorts of mayhem, including the Islamic State.

We fought proxy wars, which usually failed. By contrast, during the days of the original domino theory, we never fought the Soviet Union directly. Instead, we strengthened our own nation so that, for a time, people who worked hard could buy homes and send their children to college and start businesses of their own. That kind of policy defeated the Soviet Union.

Our war in Southeast Asia lost the lives of thousands of Americans and a million and more lives of civilians. Our reward, says Barber, was crony capitalism in those countries.

Now, one after the other, more nations are choosing capitalism—the worst kind. They are choosing capitalism without the laws and the oversight of democracy.

They Didn’t Listen to Each Other

Michael Massing’s book Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, chronicles the religious and political conflicts of the 1500’s. It highlights the writings and lives of two of the most important players in the conflict, the Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, and the German reformist, Martin Luther.

An era of corruption cried out for reform. The newly invented printing press gave dissidents a means of appealing to the masses, similar to the power unleashed today by the internet.

Too often, however, those with different views failed to listen to each other.

The author comments on Erasmus in the year 1514, as European conflicts descended into savage bloodletting: “He wondered what it was ‘that drives the whole human race, not merely Christians, to such a pitch of frenzy that they will undergo such effort, expense, and danger for the sake of mutual destruction.’”

The young Holy Roman Emperor at this time, Charles V, “had inherited the idea of the church as a universal and absolutist institution that could not tolerate the tainting presence of Jews or Muslims . . . ”

When Martin Luther first set out his famous theses in Wittenberg, he intended only to call attention to certain church abuses. He wanted to reform the church, not rebel against it. For this and other writings, he was labeled a heretic and left the church.

His writings became more incendiary. His approval of the crushing of the peasant uprisings, as well as his anti Semitism, are horrifying.

Today, we grow increasingly shrill in cursing and labeling each other. Accusations are magnified by the ubiquitous internet. To what end?

Fatal Discourse provides a cautionary history.

By the Waters of Babylon

Sometime in high school, we read the post apocalyptic short story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét.

It was first published in 1937. Benét and his readers no doubt remembered the horror of World War I. Many already feared another war as the Nazi era began in Germany.

For us during the Cold War, it was a sober reminder of our nuclear war fears. We were the first people to know a time when human folly could destroy the planet or at least make huge parts of it unhabitable.

As we teenagers read Benét’s story, we realized, with horror, that the wasted world the young man was traveling through was ours. The city he visited was a silent, destroyed New York City.

The story has stayed with me, given me reason to rejoice when finally, in the 1990’s, it looked like the world might give up its nuclear weapons.

Now the horror of that first reading sobers us. We thought the beast was slain, but it has returned.

Who Writes Rules for the World Now?

Western nations began writing the world’s rules in 1492, when Columbus bumped into an island off the coast of North America in his search for a faster route to the riches of the East.

Spain and Portugal, France and England, the Netherlands and other nations conquered native populations all over the world. Even Denmark laid claim to several islands in the Carribean and imported African slaves to work sugar plantations there.

Some conquests were more brutal than others, but the aim always was the use of the conquered populations for the economic and often military benefit of the conquerors.

As European nations fought each other for power, these conflicts became the world wars of the 1900’s, touching far flung possessions. Finally, exhausted by war, the ruling countries began freeing their conquered populations.

The United States, not devastated by war like Europe, became the chief guardian of international order. During this time of relative peace and growing global connections, the United States benefitted from increasing world trade. As the most powerful nation, the United States oversaw the world’s rules.

However, it was inevitable that Asia, with its massive populations, would play a greater role in the world. China is the most populous nation on earth, with India a close second. The United States is third. China, especially after it had recovered from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, grew and thrived economically.

Economic power brings political clout, as the United States knows. How does the United States deal with this new giant on the scene, economically strong with different ideas of political governing?

Will a new trade war, brought about by tariff increases on certain products, threaten this world order, until now weighted in America’s favor?