Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy

[Tymoty]

Yet [...] the U.S. commitment to that system never rested entirely on calculations of pure, near-term economic advantage, precisely because the American role so often seemed at odds with such calculations. Rather, the fundamental motivation was simply that American policymakers understood far too well what disasters—geopolitical as well as economic—could occur if the United States failed to foster a thriving international economy whose benefits were broadly distributed.

[...] American officials certainly aspired to create something better in reshaping the global economy after World War II. But what really drove them was fear of a return to something worse.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

U.S. leaders also openly avowed their intention to uphold stability and prevent aggression [...] and over the succeeding decades they would employ initiatives from covert action to the overt use of force for these purposes. There would be no reliance on international moral opinion to maintain the peace [...] The United States was now committed to playing a security role no less hegemonic than its economic endeavors.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

The logic of these arrangements was thus essentially preventive. The United States would no longer be the world’s balancer of last resort, waiting until the system was crumbling to intervene. Now, it would act as balancer of first resort, taking the hard measures necessary to ensure that such a grave scenario never materialized. It would bear significant costs and risks more or less permanently, so that it would not have to bear far higher costs and risks in extremis. [...]

International order had to be reinforced when challenged, Truman understood; fighting a limited war now could reduce the chances of a global war later. To a generation that had seen two previous crackups of world order, the lesson was clear: eternal vigilance was the price of an enduring peace.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

[...] there was no shortage of incidents in which the quest for order brought out the darker elements in American behavior.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

Yet [...] the overall results of America’s order-building project were stunning. The postwar world was not dominated by aggressive autocracies, however badly those regimes brutalized the populations under their control. Rather, the number of democracies in the world rose from perhaps a dozen at the darkest moments of World War II to around 120 by the end of the century, as respect for basic human rights became more widespread than ever before. The global economy did not plunge back into depression; rather, it entered a historic boom. [...]

Most important, there was no third world war, nor were there any shooting wars between the great powers. Instead, the international system enjoyed the longest stretch of great-power peace since the Roman Empire—longer even than that provided by the Concert of Europe—and only a single country—South Vietnam—disappeared from the map due to conquest.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

[...] the postwar era was one of the most impressive periods of peace, prosperity, and freedom in the history of the world. By cultivating a tragic sensibility, U.S. policymakers were able to achieve results that were precisely the opposite of tragic.

The irony of such achievements, however, is that they eventually undermine the tragic sensibility that produced them. They induce complacency by causing individuals to lose their awareness of the potential disasters that lurk just over the horizon.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Four

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[Tymoty]

[...] a tragic sensibility is not the same thing as an acceptance of tragedy. By dealing squarely with the omnipresent possibility of great suffering, a tragic sensibility can better prepare one to brave an uncertain world. This duality of human existence—its potential for both towering achievement and terrifying descent into the abyss—was never absent in Athens. The best way to prevent a community’s accomplishments from crumbling, the Greeks believed, was to be confronted continually with reminders of just how tenuous those accomplishments were.

This is something that the originators of successful international orders grasped. From the Peace of Westphalia to the post–World War II system, moments of great geopolitical creativity and vision have often drawn on a willingness to keep company with one’s worst fears—and a refusal to be paralyzed by them. Yet as the Greeks also understood, the more distant a community grows from the experience or recollection of tragedy, the less likely it will be to recognize and stifle the sources of tragedy before they emerge fully formed.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Seven

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[Tymoty]

A tragic sensibility begins with the recognition that tragedy is normal—that international orders are often more fragile than even the sharpest contemporaries realize, and that their downfall tends to be more catastrophic than those observers anticipate.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Seven

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[Tymoty]

As the Greeks surely would have realized, in fact, it is precisely when one succumbs to the illusion that tragedy is impossible that tragedy becomes all the more likely.

[...]

This leads to a second component of a tragic sensibility—an appreciation that tragedy is once again stalking global affairs.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Seven

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[Tymoty]

It is impossible to predict precisely when the pressures on the existing order might become unbearable, or to know how close we are to that critical inflection point at which the dangers metastasize and the pace of decay dramatically accelerates. One can only speculate what the terminal crisis of the system will look like if and when it occurs. What is clear is that the telltale signs of erosion are already ubiquitous and the trend-lines are running in the wrong direction. The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. Having a tragic sensibility requires seeing the world for what it is and where it is going, especially when the outlook is ominous.

[...]

If the international order is under strain, however, it does not follow that its collapse is unavoidable. Here a third aspect of a tragic sensibility is vital: the ability to reject complacency without falling into fatalism.

Hal Brands & Charles Edel: The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, Chapter Seven

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