Has The World Never Changed? � The Dish

Has The World Never Changed? � The Dish: Then there is the simple matter of collective memory. For many Americans and for Krauthammer, the key referent is the Second World War which America won with almost none of the devastating trauma experienced by Germany, Britain or the Soviet Union. But in Germany and Britain right now, the collective memory is much more indelibly that of the Great War, where small matters of territory – like Crimea – metastasized through miscalculation into a generational catastrophe. Hence the resilience of the EU, even as it seems to cripple the economies of its weaker members through punishing austerity. Hence also, of course, the survival of the UN and the countless instruments of collective security we’ve built in its wake.