By Brenna Sullivan
“True, history does not exactly repeat itself. But it sometimes rhymes.”-David Cahan and David Forsythe, “Local View: Is the world repeating the mistakes that led to World War I?”
In their piece featured in the Lincoln Journal Star, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, authors and professors David Cahan and David Forsythe make claims of parallels between the state of modern international diplomacy and its’ state prior to the beginnings of the First World War. The three parallels drawn were that of rampant nationalism, the claiming of a weapons issue rather than a leadership issue- particularly today in Syria, and finally, a disregard for potential escalation, especially when it comes to nuclear strikes.
However, I think the most critical piece the authors hit on was that many countries and their leaders acted out of fear. In 1914, we saw fears of decline, naval superiority, and a multi-fronted war. Today, we see a Trumpian “fear” of America’s decline that calls to make our country “great again.” This happens to work alongside a fear of other humans strictly based on their religion and/or ethnicity, as we shun entire populations from our country. However, in my opinion, the thing that we should fear most is a total loss of diplomacy and potential international cooperation from our international leaders.
The blustery rhetoric utilized by our world leaders does not reflect the sentiment of the average citizen, the people who will feel the greatest effects of disaster when all is said and done. If the people supposedly guiding our countries continue to act offensively in order to preserve one’s own power and ego rather than acting out of collaboration, it is quite possible that we see another world war on our horizons. This is the fear of an aware, average citizen. These are fears we should be preventing rather than exploiting.
We can see an alternative to the nationalistic trends alive on both sides of the Atlantic in the opposition to Trumpism and other similar trends in democratic countries. Hopefully, the democratic and anti-authoritarian trends will prevail, for the sake of our own democratic-republic, other democratic republics, and peace and security in the world.
