A Foreign Country

"The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there"

The United States is a young country and a strong country, and the benefits of her youthful vigour are clear to see. But one of the characteristics of youth is wilful blindness to the experiences of previous generations. LP Hartley's opening line to The Go-Between (above) seems to be written for America, but upon analysis and reading his novel it becomes clear that he is referring to the differing responses to life's choice within a generation, not the cycles of repetition that occur throughout history.

One of the most glorious days of British History to historians and ruddy-faced schoolboys is the Battle of Waterloo, where combined British and Prussian armies under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon and the French. No one argues (except maybe the French themselves) that the dismantling of the French empire in Europe was a good thing: one only has to look at the paintings of Goya to see the disastrous effects of the occupation upon Spain.

The main -and intended- consequence of the defeat of Napoleon was the removal of Britain's only rival on the world stage. From the fields of Quatre-Bras until the fields of the Somme a hundred years later, Britain was without a Great Power rival and therefore unchecked in her territorial ambitions, building the largest empire the world had ever seen.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States finds herself in a similar unrivalled situation. The massive armed forces created as a counterpoint to the now-defunct Warsaw Pact create their own imperative for deployment by their very existence. America stands on the threshold of creating her own Empire; like the British, not by grand plan but by incremental powerful responses to differing, often unrelated events. The dangers to the world are obvious; the dangers to America are just as evident -she'll go to bed a democracy, and wake up an Empire.

Learn from your father!