Naftali Bendavid
When a U.S.-led armada sailed into Tokyo Bay 80 years ago to accept the Japanese surrender in World War II, it was just 27 days after an atomic bomb killed some 70,000 people in a single blow at Hiroshima.
It was 125 days after Adolf Hitler shot himself, ending the life of a man responsible for the slaughter of 60 million people. It was 218 days after the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, whose skeletal survivors testified to humanity’s depths.
The lessons, to many Americans, seemed self-evident: Isolationism, nationalism and authoritarianism lead to disaster. Alliances, free trade and democracy are the only way forward. And the U.S. has to take the lead.
Despite some hits, that consensus largely held — at least among policymakers — for nearly 80 years. But Donald Trump’s presidency, with its single-minded pursuit of American advantage, may signal its demise.
That dismays those who believe strongly in the war’s lessons.
“How do you navigate a complicated and dangerous world? You don’t navigate it by unraveling what has worked,” said former senator and defense secretary Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska). “You don’t unravel a post-World War II world order that is based on institutions and rule of law and common interests. That is very dangerous. It is the biggest threat to the future of mankind.”
Hagel’s father served in the South Pacific during the Second World War, and Hagel, who earned two Purple Hearts in Vietnam and served as defense secretary under President Barack Obama, said the memory of World War II was everywhere when he grew up in small-town Nebraska.
“In the ’50s, everybody in the town was a World War II veteran,” Hagel said. “Every kid in that era had a sense of what happened and why, and how did it turn out and what was the future.”
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