Will History Repeat Itself?

Classicist and military historian, Victor Davis Hanson, raises this interesting question in reference to Germany, a nation unified for twenty years and recognized as the economic engine of a struggling European Union. This is where we are today in Hanson's view:

. . . instead of the old deadly inter-European rivalry, for a while a continental culture did indeed emerge. Prosperous Europeans from the Mediterranean to the Baltic embraced socialism, utopianism abroad, childlessness, agnosticism, and a fashionable anti-Americanism, ensuring no more 19^th-century nationalism or 20^th-century wars. At least all that was what we were lectured about for the last twenty years by European chauvinists and dreamy American liberals.

Above, he alludes to a future when the fluffy world of cultural equivalence bumps into economic reality. The outcome may not be very pretty for the world community as it moves away from the super power dominance of the United States. History types will enjoy this post. Those who don't often dwell with the great chains of circumstance may want to take heed.

My thanks to George Moneo at Babalu for the tip.