Phew. Finally finished “The Ghost At The Feast: America and The Collapse of World Order 1900-1941” by Robert Kagan -- like an extensive history course. Really amazing book. #bookstodon #theGhostAtTheFeast #robertKagan
I did not know that Robert Kagan's wife is Victoria Nuland. #history

“Above all, it would have required self-understanding, a recognition early on that they would not tolerate a shift in the balance of power in favor of global dictatorships and therefore should work consistently to ensure that the risks of such a shift were kept to a minimum”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#bookstodon #theghostAtthefeast #robertkagan #history #pastisprologue

“from the global perspective, appeasement of “the bandit nations” anywhere only strengthened the forces of aggressive fascism everywhere.”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#theGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #pastIsPrologue #bookstodon #wwii #history

“What is America but millionaires, beauty queens, stupid records and Hollywood?”
—Adolf Hitler quoted in Compton, Swastika and the Eagle.

#TheGhostattheFeast
#RobertKagan #WWII #history #AmericanHistory #pastisprologue

I am loathe to quote Hitler, but this is too good—AND as President Joe Biden, said at his State of the Union speech: those who wish the United States ill should know "it's never ever a good bet to bet against America".

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 11, 1941

Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Maintaining Freedom of the Seas,” Fireside Chat #18, Sept.11, 1941 http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msfb0004

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#fdr #wwii #bookstodon #theGhostAtTheFeast #robertKagan #pastisprologue #roosevelt #history #americanHistory

‘Even if the United States faced no immediate threat of military attack, Roosevelt warned in his January 1940 State of the Union address, the world would be a “shabby and dangerous place to live in—yes, even for Americans to live in” if it were ruled “by force in the hands of a few.”’

#TheGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #pastisprologue #isolationism
#history #fascism #MolotovRibbentrop #WWII #bookstodon

“I have a horrible feeling of seeing…a civilization dying even before its actual death….How delicate a fabric this thing we call modern civilization really is.”

Franklin Roosevelt close adviser, Adolf Berle, writing in his diary on occasion of the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, August 1939—Berle, a year before, had regarded fears of Hitler’s intentions as overblown.

#TheGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #pastisprologue #isolationism
#history #fascism #MolotovRibbentrop #WWII #bookstodon

“I have a horrible feeling of seeing…a civilization dying even before its actual death….How delicate a fabric this thing we call modern civilization really is.”

Franklin Roosevelt close adviser, Adolf Berle, writing in his diary on occasion of the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, September 1939—Berle, a year before, had regarded fears of Hitler’s intentions as overblown.

#TheGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #pastisprologue
#history #fascism

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#theGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #americanhistory #fdr #pastisprologue #DefendDemocracy #bookstodon

#TheGhostattheFeast #RobertKagan
#bookstodon #history #tsEliot #ezraPound #pastisprologue

“These are not normal times; people are jumpy and very ready to run after strange gods.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Elihu Root in Elliott Roosevelt, ed., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928–1945”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan

#TheGhostattheFeast
#RobertKagan
#bookstodon #history #americanhistory #fdr

1933 could be 2023–it’s the same:

“Although cautious about challenging the democracies prematurely, Hitler could also be bold and opportunistic. He looked for weaknesses to exploit and early on perceived that the Western powers lacked the determination and coherence to defend their order.”

#TheGhostAtTheFeast #RobertKagan #pastIsPrologue #PutinIsHitler

‘As [Herbert] Hoover later wrote in his memoirs, Americans suddenly learned “about the economic interdependence of nations through a poignant experience which knocked at every cottage door.”’

The Ghost at the Feast
#theghostatthefeast #bookstodon #history

“If you want to quiet the world, you have got to reassure the world, and the only way in which you can reassure it is to let it know that all the great fighting powers of the world are going to maintain that quiet.”
—Woodrow Wilson, September 1919

#TheGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #pastIsPrologue

1918 ‘For anyone not in Paris [Peace talks] and in close touch with representatives of the French people, White wrote Lodge, it was “impossible to comprehend” France’s “extraordinary obsession” with the possibility of a renewed German attack in a few years. It seemed the entire French population was “shell-shocked.”’

#TheGhostattheFeast
Robert Kagan
#WWI #americanHistory #france #europeanHistory

1917 - “and so, as Canada’s prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, put it, ‘the more we can get the United States to realise her great responsibilities for the peace and welfare of the world the better it will be for us and for all mankind.’”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#TheGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #1917 #pastIsPrologue #americanHistory #responsibility

“As Wilson put it in the summer of 1917, “the object of the war” was to deliver the world “from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government.”

As Roosevelt put it, Americans fought Germany in order to defeat an “arch foe of international right and of ordered freedom throughout the world.”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#TheGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #PastIsPrologue #bookstodon #AmericanHistory #history

“At the beginning of April 1918 [President Wilson] told Americans that it was no time for diplomacy but only for unrelenting war: “Force, Force to the utmost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust!”

The Ghost at the Feast
Robert Kagan
#theGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #PastIsPrologue

‘According to Henry Stimson, the United States was not going to war [..] merely because it had suffered “an incidental injury, gross and unbearable as that injury may be.” It was because Americans realized that what was at stake “upon the battlefields of Europe” was “the future of the free institutions of the world.”’
#TheGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #HenryStimson #democracy #bookstodon

[April 2, 1917 President Wilson’s address to the Joint session of Congress] for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” America was “privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”
#TheGhostAtTheFeast #WWI #AmericanHistory #PastIsPrologue