How Germany Won World War II (In 2017)

Leon Hadar

Politics, Europe

Has the political upheaval over America's 2016 election inadvertantly made Germany great again?

Remember the good old days? Back in the early twenty-first century, after China had joined the World Trade Organization, the Tom Friedmans of the world told us that before you could say “Jack Robinson” in Mandarin, China’s integration into the global economy and the free flow of goods and the Internet into the Middle Kingdom would create a new middle class that would unleash the forces of political freedom and transform the communist dictatorship into, well, not a Jeffersonian democracy, but perhaps the foundations of a flourishing “civil society.”

We’re all still waiting. But that hasn’t prevented Western pundits from engaging recently in what could be described as a form of dialectical thinking run amok. Some of them have suggested that communist China could replace the United States as the guardian of the liberal international order.

So after Chinese president Xi Jinping delivered an address in front of the business and political elites gathered in Davos early this year, in which he seemed to be defending “globalization”—depending on how you define the term—and even tried to make a joke about “Schwab-onomics” (Klaus Schwab was the founder of Davos. Get it? Ha!), the Financial Times posted a report titled “Xi Jinping Delivers Robust Defense of Globalization at Davos.” The speech by the Chinese president is in sharp contrast to the rhetoric from Donald Trump in recent days.

Yeah. Right. And how do you say, “Peace out, man,” in Chinese? Well, the Chinese communist boss only forgot to wear his Adam Smith necktie. Bummer! But otherwise, he made it clear that he likes what goes for the “liberal international order.” After all, that order has allowed for his country to get rich and powerful, and for its products to flood the entire global economy. It has attracted foreign investment to the economy and made business deals with dictators worldwide, while the Americans spread democracy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. All things considered, not a bad order, or whatever you want to call it.

OK. So associating the term “liberal” with a ruthless dictatorship, which has repressed the Tibetan people and other ethnic and religious minorities, and actually violated almost every human right (except the right to get rich), was a bit too much to swallow—even for those with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

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