Sublime

While technology is by far the most important factor today, and apparently growing more so, all four major megapolitical factors have played a role in determining the scale at which power could be exercised in the past. Together, these factors determine whether the returns to violence continue to rise as violence is employed on a larger scale. This

During the Korean War, Harry Truman went to war without any authorization of Congress. The Cuban missile crisis was a purely presidential decision, as was the 1998 intervention in Kosovo. The congressional role in authorizing war was at least diminished and sometimes omitted.

the Marshall Plan, announced by Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947. The focus was on Europe’s recovery; the aid ($150 billion in today’s dollars) was extensive but transitional, with the goal of getting Europe to the point where its economic growth would be self-sustaining.

With that in mind, I want us to consider three great issues for our time as we use our backward gaze at history to gain insights for the future. First, can the world choose a path of shared prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability in this seventh age of globalization? We can call this the challenge of sustainable development.

Kiras, James D. Special Operations and Strategy: From World War II to the War on Terrorism. London: Routledge, 2006.

Europe, for the opening decades of the post–Cold War era, appeared to be another successful region of the world: at peace, democratic, and economically developed. The European Union not only expanded (from a dozen members when the Cold War ended to more than twice that number over subsequent decades) but also introduced a shared currency (the euro)

Europe’s expansion amounted in part to a deliberate assault on the modernizing ventures of other peoples and states. Perhaps it was not Europe’s modernity that triumphed, but its superior capacity for organized violence.