Over the past ten and a half has there been revolution across the globe. The 2008 financial problems and its consequences, the Covid-19 crisis and big local wars in Sudan, the Middle East, Ukraine and abroad have left remaining confusion. Added to this is a angry, growing rivalry between the US and its perceived critics, especially China.
In response to these unsettling days, commentators have often reached for the quick comparison of the post-1945 time to discuss geopolitics. The planet is, we are told regularly, entering a “new Cold War”.
These links to a fight that pitted the West against the Soviet Union and its allies and the effects the Cold War had had on other countries are inaccurate as a writer of the US’s place in the world. The universe appears to have changed more than the ruthless collapse of world attempt that occurred during the 1930s, according to a critical eye.
The “low selfish generation”
In 1939, the writer W H Auden referred to the past 10 years as the “low rude generation” – a moment that bred confusion and fight.
From the perspective of nearly a century of reality, the time from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the beginnings of World War II may be distorted by filled words like “isolationism” or “appeasement”. The decade is depicted as a morality play about the rise of famous people like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and appeased by simple tales of agress.
But the era was much more complicated. Powerful forces in the 1930s reshaped economies, societies and political beliefs. Understanding these dynamics can help to explain the muddled recent events.
Greater and lesser depressions
The 1930s were defined by the Great Depression throughout the world. It was not, as it is often remembered, simply the stock market crash of 1929. That was merely a rehash of a lengthy, painfully long global economic collapse.
Persistent economic problems impacted economies and individuals from Minneapolis to Mumbai, India, and wrought profound cultural, social and, ultimately, political changes. The laissez-faire approach to economics and the liberal capitalist states that supported it were discredited by the length of the Great Depression and its resistance to standard solutions, such as letting market forces “purge the rot” of a massive crisis.
The” Lesser Depression” that followed the 2008 financial crisis caused something similar: it shook the world’s and domestic economies, caused billions to become insecure, and discredited a liberal globalization that had ruled since the 1990s.
In both the greater and lesser depressions, people around the world had their lives upended and, finding established ideas, elites and institutions wanting, turned to more radical and extreme voices.
It was n’t just Wall Street that crashed, for many, the crisis undercut the ideology driving the US and many parts of the world: liberalism. In the 1930s, this skepticism bred questions of whether democracy and capitalism, already beset with contradictions in the form of discrimination, racism and empire, were suited for the demands of the modern world. Over the past decade, we have similarly seen voters turn to authoritarian-leaning populists in countries around the world.
American essayist Edmund Wilson lamented in 1931 that” we have lost… not just our way in the economic labyrinth but our conviction of the value of what we are doing.” ” Why liberalism is bankrupt” was a claim made by writers in major magazines.
Figures on the left and right can today concur with the viewpoint presented in the conservative political scientist Patrick Deneen’s book,” Why Liberalism Failed.”
Ill winds
The ideology of liberalism, which is largely based on the individual freedoms and the rule of law as well as a belief in private property and the free market, was praised by its supporters as a means of promoting democratization and economic prosperity in the world. But recently, liberal “globalization” has hit the skids.
Similar effects were experienced by the Great Depression. The optimism of the 1920s – a period some called the” first wave” of democratization – collapsed as countries from Japan to Poland established populist, authoritarian governments.
The rise today of figures like Hungary’s Victor Orban, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and China’s Xi Jinping remind historians of the continuing appeal of authoritarianism in moments of uncertainty.
Both eras have their own growing fragmentations in the global economy, where nations like the US attempted to stop economic bleeding by imposing tariff increases to protect domestic industries.
Economic nationalism, although hotly debated and opposed, became a dominant force globally in the 1930s. This is reflected in recent appeals for protectionist measures in many nations, including the US.
A world of grievance
While the Great Depression sparked a” New Deal” in the US, where the government assumed new responsibilities in the economy and society, elsewhere saw the rise of regimes that shifted enormous power from the hands of the central government.
The appeal of China’s model of authoritarian economic growth and the strongman embodied by Orban, Putin, and others in parts of the” Global South” as well as parts of the West, echo the 1930s.
The Depression intensified a set of what were called” totalitarian” ideologies: fascism in Italy, communism in Russia, militarism in Japan and, above all, Nazism in Germany.
Importantly, it gave these systems a sense of legitimacy in the eyes of many people all over the world, especially when compared to liberal, doddering governments that appeared unable to provide solutions to the crises.
Some of these totalitarian regimes had preexisting conflicts with the world that emerged following World War One. And they set out to reshape it on their own terms after the demise of a global order founded on liberal principles that provided stability.
The prospect of a large-scale war and the challenge it presents to global stability may be felt by observers today. However, it bears a striking similarity to the depression years.
Countries like Japan began to forcefully reform the world system in the 1930s, which is why they were known as “revisionists.” Slicing off pieces of China, specifically Manchuria in 1931, was met — not unlike Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 — with little more than nonrecognition from the Western democracies.
As the decade progressed, open military aggression spread. China gained international support for its anti-imperial war against Japan, which haltingly led to its bellwether. This analogy may be well understood by modern Ukrainians.
Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and eventually Poland became targets for “revisionist” states using military aggression, or the threat of it, to reshape the international order in their own image.
Ironically, by the end of the 1930s, many living through those crisis years saw their own” cold war” against the regimes and methods of states like Nazi Germany. They used those very words to describe the breakdown of normal international affairs into a scrum of constant, sometimes violent, competition. French observers described a period of” no peace, no war” or a “demi guerre”.
Figures from the time made it clear that the event was more of a crucible for new relationships and norms. Their words are in line with those who see the creation of a new multipolar world and the rise of regional powers seeking to expand their own local influence today.
Taking the reins
Comparing our current situation to a previous one with a global war as its terminus is sobering.
Historical parallels are never perfect, but they do invite us to reconsider our present. Our future should not be a repeat of the “hot war” that ended the 1930s or the subsequent Cold War.
One is reminded that historical actors evolve and change as a result of the rising power and capabilities of nations like Brazil, India, and other regional powers. However, acknowledging that our own era, like the 1930s, is a complicated multipolar period, buffeted by serious crises, allows us to see that tectonic forces are again reshaping many basic relationships.
Comprehending this gives us a chance to rein in forces that once caused catastrophe.
David Ekbladh is professor of history, Tufts University
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