The world isn’t heading toward a new Cold War – it’s closer to the grinding collapse of the 1930s

Pelican Press · August 29, 2024

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The world isn’t heading toward a new Cold War – it’s closer to the grinding collapse of the 1930s

The breakdown of global order in the 1930s resulted in totalitarian leaders pulling the strings. (Philippe Clément/Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The past decade and a half has seen upheaval across the globe. The

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and its fallout, the

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and major regional conflicts

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,

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,

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and elsewhere have left residual uncertainty. Added to this is a tense, growing rivalry between the U.S. and its perceived opponents,

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.

In response to these jarring times, commentators have often reached for the easy analogy of the post-1945 era to explain geopolitics. The

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,

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,

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”

But as a

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, these references to a conflict that pitted

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and its allies – and the ripples the Cold War had around the globe – are a flawed lens to view today’s events. To a critical eye, the world looks less like the structured competition of that Cold War and more like

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that

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.

The ‘low dishonest decade’

In 1939, the poet W.H. Auden

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as the “low dishonest decade” – a time that bred uncertainty and conflict.

From the vantage of almost a century of hindsight, the ******* from the

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to the

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can be distorted by loaded terms like “isolationism” or “appeasement.” The decade is cast as a morality play about the

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and simple tales of aggression appeased.

But the era was much more complicated. Powerful forces in the 1930s reshaped economies, societies and political beliefs. Understanding these dynamics can provide clarity for the confounding events of recent years.

Greater and lesser depressions

The

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defined the 1930s across the world. It was not, as it is often remembered, simply the stock market ****** of 1929. That was merely an overture to a large-scale unraveling of the world economy that lasted a painfully long time.

Persistent economic problems impacted economies and individuals

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and wrought profound cultural, social and, ultimately, political changes. Meanwhile, the length of the Great Depression and its resistance to standard solutions – such as simply letting market forces “purge the rot” of a massive crisis –

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to economics and the ******** capitalist states that supported it.

The “Lesser Depression” that followed the 2008 financial crisis produced something similar – throwing international and domestic economies into chaos, making billions insecure and

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that had ruled since the 1990s.

In both the greater and lesser depressions, people around the world had their lives upended and, finding established ideas, elites and institutions wanting,

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.

It wasn’t just Wall Street that crashed; for many, the crisis undercut the ideology driving the U.S. and many parts of the world: liberalism. In the 1930s, this skepticism bred

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, already beset with contradictions in the form of discrimination, racism and empire, were suited for the demands of the modern world. Over the past decade, we have similarly seen

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in countries around the world.

********* essayist Edmund Wilson

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: “We have lost … not merely our way in the economic labyrinth but our conviction of the value of what we are doing.” Writers in major magazines

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“why liberalism is bankrupt.”

Today, figures on the left and right can similarly share in a view articulated by ************* political scientist Patrick Deneen in his book, “

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.”

Ill winds

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– an ideology broadly based on individual freedoms and rule of law as well as a ****** in private property and the free market – was touted by its backers as a way to bring democratization and economic prosperity to the world. But recently, ******** “globalization” has hit the skids.

The Great Depression had a similar effect. The optimism of the 1920s – a ******* some called the

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– collapsed as countries

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established populist, authoritarian governments.

The rise today of figures like

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,

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, and

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remind historians of the continuing appeal of authoritarianism in moments of uncertainty.

Both eras share a growing fragmentation in the world economy in which countries, including the U.S., tried to staunch economic bleeding by

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to protect domestic industries.

Economic nationalism, although hotly debated and opposed, became a dominant force globally in the 1930s. This is mirrored by recent appeals of

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in many countries, including the U.S.

A world of grievance

While the Great Depression sparked a “New Deal” in the ******* States where the government took on new roles in the economy and society, elsewhere people burned by the implosion of a ******** world economy saw the rise of regimes that placed enormous power in the hands of the central government.

The appeal today of China’s model of authoritarian economic growth, and

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embodied by Orban, ****** and others – not only in parts of the “

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” but also in parts of the West – echoes the 1930s.

The Depression intensified a set of what were called “

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: fascism in Italy, communism in Russia, militarism in Japan and, above all, Nazism in Germany.

Importantly, it gave these systems a level of legitimacy in the eyes of many around the world, particularly when compared to doddering ******** governments that seemed unable to offer answers to the crises.

Some of these totalitarian regimes had preexisting grievances with the world established after World War I. And, after the

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based on ******** principles to deliver stability, they set out to reshape it on their own terms.

Observers today may express shock at the return of large-scale war and the challenge it poses to global stability. But it has a distinct parallel to the Depression years.

Early in the 1930s, countries like Japan moved to revise the world system through force – hence the reason such nations were known as “

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.” Slicing off pieces of China, specifically

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, was met — not unlike

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— with little more than nonrecognition from the Western democracies.

As the decade progressed, open military aggression spread. China became a bellwether as its anti-imperial war for self-preservation against Japan was haltingly supported by other powers. Ukrainians today might well

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.

Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and eventually Poland became targets for “revisionist” states using military aggression, or the threat of it, to reshape the international order in their own image.

Ironically, by the end of the 1930s, many living through those crisis years saw their own “cold war” against the regimes and methods of states like ***** Germany. They used those very words to describe the breakdown of normal international affairs into a scrum of constant, sometimes violent, competition. French observers

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of “no peace, no war” or a “demi guerre.”

Figures at the time understood that it was less an ongoing competition than a crucible for norms and relationships being forged anew. Their words echo in the sentiments of those who see today the

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and the

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looking to expand their own local influences.

Taking the reins

It is sobering to compare our current moment with one in the past whose terminus was global war.

Historical parallels are never perfect, but they do invite us to reconsider our present. Our future neither has to be a reprise of the “hot war” that concluded the 1930s, nor the Cold War that followed.

The

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like Brazil, India and other regional powers remind one that historical actors evolve and change. However, acknowledging that our own era, like the 1930s, is a complicated multipolar *******, buffeted by serious crises, allows us to see that tectonic forces are again reshaping many basic relationships. Comprehending this offers us a chance to rein in forces that in another time led to catastrophe.

This article is republished from

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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