Twenty-five years after Pearl Harbor, the world was far from peaceful, but Japan and (West) Germany had been not just thoroughly subdued but also meaningfully resurrected. Both of the nations that had instigated World War II had been reintegrated into world affairs and the global economy, not to stray again. Peace and prosperity had triumphed, at least where the Soviet Union wasn’t able to stop them.
■ The story was far different 25 years after the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania. Now barely remembered outside of history textbooks, it was a savage attack on innocent civilians that took 1,195 lives, including 128 Americans. Woodrow Wilson was not up to the task of responding decisively, leading an editorialist at the New York Tribune to write one year later that “We have been learning that what is going forward remorselessly, steadily, is a war between civilization and barbarism, between humanity and savagery”, and, presciently, that “This war in Europe is going on until the German idea is crushed or conquers.” 25 years after the Lusitania was attacked, the world was right back at war. That outcome may not have been predictable, as such, but there is scant evidence that the right people were willing to spend those years charting a better course.
■ We are now 25 years past the sadistic attacks on the World Trade Center and the nation’s capital. We are not embroiled in a world war as we were in 1940, but nor are we on a golden trajectory as it seemed we were in 1966. The surprise attack of 9/11 didn’t come from a nation-state as it had in 1915 or 1941, but there is very little that one might find reassuring about affairs in the region where the United States has been fighting wars ever since.
■ The effort that went into rebuilding, reordering, and reorienting the world that followed WWII was vast. Hard-headed leaders like Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Marshall saw how an inept and short-sighted response to World War I had only led to a return of disorder and bloodshed. So they made plans, accepted hard choices, and used their resources to forge a better world after the conflict of their own times. In many ways, their actions looked dovish -- but they understood that a degree of charitability, even towards their past enemies, would make their own country safer in the end.
■ They built up international institutions, spread trade and prosperity, and made durable alliances. It’s not like everything went perfectly between 1941 and 1966, but principles like liberty, magnanimity, and cooperation got to lead the way more often than not. And things got better.
■ Twenty-five years can be a very long time over which a lot of good can be done. It can also be a long time during which mismanagement may let problems compound on one another. We are always making choices along the way, whether to mimic the ugly path from 1915-1940 or the much better one from 1941-1966. It does not seem like we’ve used the bridge from 2001-2026 very well. The bad news is the time we’ve wasted cannot be recovered. The good news is that we still have those role models from the past and can choose their course again at any time.