RAYMOND ARON CALLED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY “the century of total war,” and so it was, arguably the worst ever, exceeding even the devastation created by the Thirty Years’ War. As many as 175 million people were deliberately killed, whether in combat or in cold blood—so many on both sides of Europe and throughout the world that it is hard to acknowledge them all. Instead, a selective history of pain and a confining geography of horrors set perverse limits on the casualties we single out over the innumerable others we ignore—each “forgotten” victim an infinity and every overlooked region an offense. Yet, with the United States willing at last to accept the baton of Western leadership from the fallen European great powers, this past century ended, or at least appeared to end, as a triumph of American power and Western values: the very values that Europe had transgressed and the power that America asserted to restore them.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 22:48:44 +0000
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