“Two generations of Americans have grown up feeling that international stability is as natural as the air we breathe”

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Two generations of Americans have grown up feeling that international stability is as natural as the air we breathe. It’s not. It depends on continual, calibrated tending. It depends on the delicate balancing of alliances and the careful signaling of enemies. It depends on avoiding self-inflicted trade wars and on recognizing the value of allies like Germany, Japan and South Korea as cornerstones of our own security rather than satrapies who are here to dispatch tribute to their imperial master in Washington.

It took seven decades to build this open, free international order. It could be brought down in a single presidential term. That would be a high price to pay for the catharsis of kicking over a table.

Charles Krauthammer, “Final Days, Awful Choice”, Washington Post (3 November 2016) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/final-days-awful-choice/2016/11/03/bd052402-a1dd-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html]

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