The Post-World War II Era Is Over. What Now?

Yoram Hazony is right: the Brexit vote in Britain is a sign that the post-World War II era has come to an end. Another sign, this time in the United States, is the failure of the conservative establishment to prevent Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination; still another sign is the unpopularity of Hillary Clinton. All in all, the right-left contest that defined the postwar decades is being eclipsed by a politics in which establishment powers coalesce to fend off anti-establishment challengers.

In this new contest, a central and divisive issue is certain to be the role and future of the nation, Hazony’s main subject. Will we enter into the bright uplands of a prosperous, globalized fusion of civilizations managed by experts and guided by the high ideals of human rights? Or will we return to the dark days of xenophobic nationalism, war, and death camps?

To put it that way is, of course, tendentious—but this is how at least one side, the side of the establishment consensus, has long expressed it. Traumatized by the civilizational failure that ran from 1914 to 1945, postwar elites in the West consolidated around an interpretation that saw the cause of the disasters in nationalist zealotry. Especially barbaric were the gods of blood, soil, and Volk, but the larger problem was said to be the injection of a sacred significance into the nation’s public affairs. Among conservatives and some on the pragmatic left, Communist totalitarianism was seen as prey to the same dark disease. But in all quarters, right, left, and center, the postwar consensus held that nationalist and ideological fervors are a perennial danger. They threaten to burst into life, leading to violence, oppression, and systematic injustice.