| Publication |
2012.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The twentieth century was a short century. It began late and badly, in 1914, with the megadeaths of an unexpectedly suicidal war that generated a fatally flawed peace in 1919 and set the stage for a de-humanising reprise 20 years later. Next, however, the century took an astonishing turn for the better as the United States assumed a Western leadership for which the states of Europe were no longer qualified, either on grounds of capabilities or morality. Later, the latter half of the twentieth century, inseparable from the first, proved to be a period of redemption: while Europe re-cast itself as a Union, American power forced history to change course in at least half the world, where an evil ideology was contained and ultimately defeated. When the Soviet empire and the state that had driven it collapsed in 1991, a tragic century of total wars ended early and well with widespread talk of a new world order - a US-led Western order.
|