I read Mr. Snyder's piece yesterday. I also read a piece in the NYT by Oona A Hathaway, you Can’t Be a Superpower Without Allies. She writes, "The war in Iran has made one thing clear: Even the most powerful state in the world is not all that powerful when it decides to act alone. This is a lesson with implications that extend far beyond the war in Iran. It cuts to the heart of the problem with the president’s global strategy: Mr. Trump wants to make America great again, but he fails to understand that what made America great was not its power to achieve its ends unilaterally but its singular ability to build international institutions that embodied its values and interests and that others wanted to join."

She goes on to say, "As the United States is stepping away from its historic role leading global institutions, China is stepping in. On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump ordered the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, to which the United States had been the largest donor. China answered by pledging $500 million to the W.H.O. over five years, positioning itself to replace the U.S. as the organization’s top state donor. While the United States relinquishes its seats on several U.N. leadership bodies, China is eagerly seeking more. It is now the second-largest funder of the U.N., behind the United States, and could soon seize the lead — and the influence that comes with it."

What dictators crave is complete control, which even if achieved, is not sustainable, but it can cause great harm and erase decades of progress.

The post-war peace was a product brought about by a vision of a world free of war, a vision shared by all the people that had been affected by two world wars in two decades. That vision was enabled by the Atlantic Charter and the Bretton Woods Conference and the founding of the United Nations. But the fact that the peace lasted as long as it did was dependent upon the memory of the horror, the destruction, the suffering and the deaths of 100 million people and the dedication of the men and women that were determined not to let it happen again.

WWI was a struggle amongst the Great Powers for dominion, a struggle that no one seemed to want but could not forestall. It was a month after the assassination in Sarajevo before the shooting started. It took four years for the guns to fall silent, and the treaty signed at Versailles ensured that there would be more suffering for the losers, and not coincidently, another war.

WWII was the product of Versailles and the chaos of Europe in the interwar years. That chaos allowed strongmen to rise to power by promising to bring order from the chaos, to restore their countries to their rightful place in the world and expand their reach. Warsaw was bombed on September 1, 1939, and it took six years for the guns to fall silent.

But the planning at Bretton woods did lead to a better peace. Instead of forcing more suffering on the losers, the victors, led by the US, helped the losers rebuild, and the tenets of the Atlantic Charter and the founding of the UN have largely kept the dogs of war at bay for eight decades.

But that stability is wavering. The Atlantic Alliance is hanging by a thread. The UN is a lion with no teeth. Putin's vision of a new Russian empire threatens to again plunge Europe into war. The peace that was bought with so much blood is threatened by what German President Frank Walter-Steinmeier called "the old evil in a new guise" - nationalism, hatred, and authoritarianism.

It feels like we are again sleepwalking into apocalypse. History repeats itself because people forget that there are no simple solutions to complex problems. It takes dedication and hard work to keep the peace, but the lure of the quick fixes promised by strongmen is hard to overcome, and the division they sow rots the foundations of the peace that was so hard won.

I hope we wake up in time.