The First Twenty Years: Did We Do Better or Worse?

Depending how you count decades, our century is already or will be 20 years old.  So, like others, I asked the question “How have we done these first 20 years?”  You may ask “what’s different about the first 20 years of a century?”  Well, they usually tend to be bad and set the tone for the rest of the century.  There is a Greek saying that you can tell how the day will turn out by how it starts in the morning.

So, I looked at the first 20 years of the last three centuries: from the 19^th to the 21^st.  I admit that, at least for the 19^th century, my retrospective is very much Euro-centric.  But not without a good reason, since European nations have demonstrated unusual belligerence for most of the modern world history.  Despite all the tragedies and the mayhem, we have experienced, from September 11 of 2001 to the current crisis of the US-Iran conflict, I am glad to report that the beginning of this century compares very well to the beginnings of the past two centuries.  It may be an isolated case or it may signal that as a species we have made significant progress in preventing international disputes and antagonisms from erupting into general all-out wars.

Let’s start with the first 20 years of the 19^th century.  They were dominated by the Napoleonic wars that spread from Great Britain to Russia and finally ended with the decisive defeat of Napoleon in Waterloo in 1815.  The ostensible reason for the wars was the desire of the French to spread the liberal ideals of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe that was ruled by Emperors and Princes.  The end result, though, was a backlash that reasserted the dominance of the monarchical model.

The wars were not, however, without some significant consequences.  For one, they brought the end of the 1000-year Holy Roman Empire after the defeat of the Austrian Emperor in Austerlitz in 1805.  Great Britain emerged as the dominant naval power of Europe and this eventually became the springboard of its colonial expansion toward a global empire in which “the sun never sets.”  The embers of liberalism set off by the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars did not entirely die out.  Soon after, they stoked national wars of independence, first in Greece and later in other countries, and inspired civil uprisings demanding social reform and justice.

The first 20 years of the 20^th century proved to be even more catastrophic in human losses and geopolitical consequences.  World War I was, of course, the defining world event of these years.  This time the conflict was truly global engulfing 32 countries.  Besides the usual suspects, Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia, the war drew in the Ottoman Empire, the United States and Japan.  The spark for the war was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist, but the reasons lied in imperial and colonial antagonisms and the prospects of territorial gains from the anticipated collapse of the weakened Ottoman Empire.

WWI proved to be extremely deadly by all standards.  They estimate that 20 million troops and civilians were killed while another 20 million were wounded.  The geopolitical consequences were equally paramount.  The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 ushered in the establishment of the communist system in the lands of the Russian Empire that became the Soviet Union.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire, and the Ottoman Empire were dissolved.  As a result, a whole host of nation-states emerged across Europe and the Middle East.  The United States found the opportunity to establish itself as a global power with a say in European affairs.  The extremely punitive terms against Germany set the flow of events that eventually gave rise to Nazism and Hitler.  It is not a hyperbole to say that WWII was born out of the ashes of WWI.

Unlike the first 20 years of those two centuries nothing equally catastrophic has yet happened in the 21^st century.  With few exceptions, the conflicts and wars have been mostly confined to the Arab and Muslim world and have featured three sets of adversaries.  First, we have fundamental Islam and Arab nationalists going after the Western world to avenge past and recent offenses against Arab sovereignty.  Second, we have progressive Arab masses revolting against authoritarian regimes following the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2010.  And lastly, we have the Shia Muslims going after the Sunni Muslims.  In the midst of these conflicts, we have had two wars launched by the US.  One in Afghanistan, necessitated by the 9/11 terrorist attack by Al- Qaeda and the second in Iraq, now almost universally condemned as a war of choice.   Conflicts with religious undertones are not unique to the Middle East area.  The Rohingya Muslims have been ruthlessly persecuted by Buddhists in Myanmar and Uighur Muslims have seen their human rights been violated by the Chinese government.

These conflicts and wars have cost thousands of human lives but nothing at the scale of the wars of the 20^th century.  Most importantly, these conflicts have not become the excuse for major powers to go after each other as in past centuries.  The US, Russia and China have found a way to avoid direct conflict and limit themselves to diplomatic skirmishes or low-grade military face offs.  There are several reasons for the unwillingness to escalate local frictions to major conflagrations.  First, there are international institutions, like the UN, the WTO and others that mediate international conflicts and disputes before they get out of control.  Second, an extensive nexus of economic and business relationships across the globe has raised the cost of war to all, especially for those countries with the most to lose, like the developed West and the prosperity-dependent China.  Third, nations realize that in a peaceful world control over land and other tangible resources is less critical for creating and sustaining prosperity than intangible resources based on knowledge and soft power.  In sum, the world has moved more toward adopting win-win solutions than antagonistic win-lose (or zero-sum) strategies.

On the negative side, we see that religious beliefs still tend to divide instead of uniting people within and across nations.  If I had to guess, I would err on the side of optimism in light of major forces at work in business and technology, the climate, and human education and advancement that point more toward international cooperation than conflict.