Both NATO and the gradual decline of European major powers post-war was a result of that.
NATO coming to existence, and its initial strength was in many reasons due to Western European power fears that US may turn back on them too eventually.
The timidity of Western Europe on the global stage in that time period was also a result of them ceding primacy on the world stage to US.
A lot of them resumed their colonial ambitions, and small time squabbles within few years after the war, but they never resumed them in a way they did before WWII, and never tried to challenge US primacy.
They were very conscious of American reservations. Back in the early cold war, NATO was coming with a lot more of strings attached from US, with former great powers toning down their ambitions being one of them.
Yalta was about rebuilding a world system. Right now we have to be careful about existing systems falling apart.
No. The inter-war period was just a lull, as Germany was not occupied and did not feel defeated. The onerous reparations actually incentived Germany to re-ignite WW1 into WW2.
Britain and France might as well have asked for it.
> A lot of people think that the system is not working for them anymore.
Rulers don't care about people, especially Trump. Study the de Vos appointment to understand how profoundly an oligarch he is.
The world moved faster, and that brought good and bad things. That’s what worries me... our institutions haven’t caught up with the internet.
People keep comparing today to 1920's and 1930's and worried about another Hitler or WWII, but the world isn't like the 1920s or 1930s the world today is like the 1890s and the 1900s that led up to WWI.
After WWII we had pretty much every nation broken and crippled economically and militarily, there was no major power left, Hitler's conquest of Europe had much less to do with Nazism and populism and much more to do with the fact that no one wanted to pick a fight because they remembered the horrors of WWI and were anxious to avoid it. It was a leaderless world the eventually turned into a bipolar world, with a world culture that was still advancing but not as quickly as it had been 20 or 30 years ago, breakthroughs were still being made but engineering wasn't advancing like it was during the height of the industrial revolution, most everyone was much less concerned with international politics and much more interested in national politics and solving immediate problems like food and shelter, ideas of equality and social justice held much less sway than ideas about how to get people back to work.
Compare that with the days leading up to WWI. In the world at this time you had the rise of multiple powers, a multi-polar world, England, France, Germany, the Ottomans, Russia, etc. The world had changed drastically from the last major conflict, and military thinking was entirely unequipped to handle it. The world was linked by huge networks of trade agreements and multinational corporations, and Nationalism was on the rise across all the major players. Every country believed that it was big enough to really play with the big boys. In addition tensions were heightened because every country was trying desperately to outpace it's neighbors in military invention resulting in widespread espionage, and spying, because everyone knew he with the best tech would win the next war. People had jobs and world prosperity was at record levels with fewer people in poverty than ever before and consequently more people literate and with opinions on ideas like economic theory, and what made a legitimate society.
Now we have today, we have new world powers rising, India, China, Russia has moved back to a position of considerable world rather than just regional power. The EU is consolidating, the South American economy is on the rise and Africa is starting to boom. Multinational corporations have vast supply chains that stretch across the globe to produce goods as fast as they can, many governments are pushing protections and trying to tilt international agreements to the favor or their pet corporations. We have been decades since any real large scale war has occurred, we've had regional incidents which although tragic don't even approach the kind of combat seen historically. To add to all this many countries are seeing a rise in nationalism, believing their country to be the best equipped to lead into the future. Research and technology espionage is rife throughout all the world, every country desperately trying to get a leg up for the next conflict. Meanwhile more people are better off than they have ever been historically, global industry has brought many formerly impoverished nations to the forefront of manufacturing and prosperity, the brightest and best aren't flocking to just one or two major world powers but many are choosing to stay in their own country and develop it.
So let me ask you, does our world sound more like the world of 1910, or the world of 1930?
In 1910 or 1930 going to war was a breeze. There was no incentive for major leaders not to do it.
All conflicts in between major powers risks becoming a total war, or a deep conflict very quickly.
Paradoxically, the deep economic interdependence today can actually incentivise conflict, with thinking "it will hurt them more than us"
If the Germans collapsed a few months later or the trinity test had happened earlier, the US would have had the opportunity for a lasting victory instead of a stalemate.
Once available, the US was very willing to use its monopoly to wave the baton of atomic destruction. The constraints of finishing off Japan and the possibility of open war with the Soviets would have been very different.
I am sure I'm missing the point, but the US (together with the other allies) did achieve a lasting victory. It surely wasn't a theoretically optimal victory, but it was unquestionably lasting (for about 70 years, apparently). Am I factually wrong, did I misinterpret your meaning, or is it something else?
The parallels with today are just too much to ignore.