Greek Success and Greek Failure: How the Once-Mighty Greek Economy Fell

For several decades, observers have become accustomed to thinking of Greece as an economic catastrophe. The euro crisis, which started in 2009, highlighted this fact, but Greece’s economic stagnation had existed before that.

Because Greece has had this bad reputation since before the start of the new millennium, it can be difficult to recall that there was a time when the Greek economy was working well, as historian Aristides Hatzis writes:

Greece used to be considered something of a success story. One could even argue that Greece was a major success story for several decades. Greece’s average rate of growth for half a century (1929-1980) was 5.2 percent; during the same period Japan grew at only 4.9 percent.

The prosperity during those years is even more significant if one recalls that the time segment in question includes WW2 and several domestic power struggles among Greek politicians.

What were the causes of Greek prosperity? The fact that few industries were owned or operated by the government; a low national debt; government spending was a small percentage of GDP; and a low level of business regulation.

These principles led Greece into economic success.

Greece’s decline began with the reversal of these principles.

The Greek government took ownership of various businesses; borrowed large amounts of money; spend a large percentage of GDP; and regulated industries and financial transactions.

The history of Greece took an about-face in a distinct manner. Nearly every policy trend was turned into its opposite, as Aristides Hatzis explains:

Modern Greece has become a symbol of economic and political bankruptcy, a natural experiment in institutional failure. It’s not easy for a single country to serve as a textbook example of so many institutional deficiencies, rigidities, and distortions, yet the Greek government has managed it. The case of Greece is a precautionary tale for all others.

Greece was once welcomed happily into the European Union — or the “European Community” as it was called back then. But by the first decade of the new millennium, the EU saw Greece primarily as a problem to be solved: a problem which was the result of government intervention which greatly harmed the freedom of the marketplace.

The Italian Economic Miracle: Luigi Einaudi

The amazing recovery, reconstruction, and rebirth of Italy after 1945 shows both the flourishing of a free-market economy and the expansion of human rights and civil liberties. These two facets of postwar Italy are related: indeed, they are inseparable.

Italy had suffered for more than twenty years under Mussolini’s Fascism, which inflicted high rates of taxation, wage and price controls, and government-owned industries upon the people. These Fascist economic policies crushed any hopes for a democratic society, or for the free expression and discussion of opinions and ideas.

After the war, and after the fall of Mussolini and his Fascism, Italians worked toward having a truly democratic society. The instrument they would use to build this society was the free market.

The Fascists had imposed a sort of ‘crony capitalism’ or ‘state capitalism’ which was a ‘planned economy’ or a ‘command economy.’ To undo the harm caused by Fascism, a different direction was needed: a laissez-faire economy, in which the government didn’t intervene to control wages or prices, in which tax rates were kept low, and in which the government didn’t own a significant percentage of the means of production.

An economist named Luigi Einaudi was a leader in the restoration of Italy as a free society. Under his leadership, Mussolini’s high Fascist tax rates were reduced, Keynesian economics were rejected, and public expenditures as a percent of GDP shrank. The lira, which was a sad joke on the international currency markets of the 1970s and 1980s, was valued and reliable during the 1950s and 1960s.

From approximately 1945 to 1965, Italy enjoyed a social and economic renaissance, much of it due to the leadership of Luigi Einaudi, as historian Piercamillo Falasca writes:

Luigi Einaudi’s influence was crucially important. A careful monetary policy curbed inflation for at least twenty years (in 1959 the Financial Times celebrated the lira as the most stable Western currency); free-trade agreements helped Italy to re-enter the international market; a fiscal reform (the Vanoni Act, named for the minister who designed it) cut tax rates and simplified the tax collection system. In an era dominated by Keynesian ideas and easy spending, Italian public expenditure remained relatively controlled: in 1960 public expenditure barely reached the level of 1937 (30 percent of GDP, with a significant share of fixed-capital investments), whereas in other European countries it had risen dramatically.

The deep philosophical underpinning of Einaudi’s thought rested, in part, on his view of human nature. This is true of any political, social, or economic system: whatever one believes about human nature will dictate how one attempts best to structure communal life.

Long before Einaudi, thinkers like Adam Smith had explored various differing archetypes like ‘the prudent man,’ ‘the self-made man,’ or ‘the good family father.’ Einaudi ruminated on these and other paradigms, as historian Alberto Giordano writes:

Einaudi very often stressed the importance of another model, the independent entrepreneur who, at his own risk and following the intuition of his genius, opens new roads for himself and for mankind. We cannot explain, Einaudi writes many times, the legitimacy of profits and the very idea of progress — though moral, political or merely economic — without relying on this peculiar character.

These different personalities can interact with each other in a market economy. If they have more freedom to negotiate and voluntarily settle with each other, then not only will prosperity increase for all parties, but a more democratic society will result.

The amazing postwar recovery of Italian society and the Italian economy reveals the conjunction of free societies with free markets: democracy and civil liberties thrive in a laissez-faire environment.

Reviving Italy: A Nation Emerges after Suffering under Fascist Domination

In late 1943, the King of Italy led a movement to free Italy from the oppression of Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party. Mussolini was imprisoned, and the King surrendered to the Allies and declared war on Germany. At that time, however, only the southern part of Italy was under the control of the Italian government. The northern part was controlled by the Nazis, who helped Mussolini escape from his prison in South and find refuge in the North.

The Italians had to fight alongside the Allies to liberate the northern part of their own country. By early 1945, the war in Italy was over, Mussolini was dead, and King Victor Emmanuel III began the process of transforming Italy into a free society. Along the way, the monarchy would be turned into a republic in 1946.

The leaders of the new Italy faced a difficult task. How does one lead a nation back to liberty after years of tyranny? It was a complicated process, with many decisions to be made along the way. One principle was clear: the virtuous cycle in which democracy and economic deregulation encourage each other, as historian Piercamillo Falasca writes:

In the very first years after the Second World War, a group of liberal market-oriented economists and politicians attained key positions in government, swept away Fascist legislation, and instituted democratic politics and free-market reforms. A central figure was the anti-Fascist journalist and economist Luigi Einaudi, one of the most prominent Italian classical liberals, who returned to Italy and served after the war as Governor of the Central Bank, then Minister of Finance, and finally President of the Republic; he greatly influenced the economic policies implemented by Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi (1945-1953) and, after De Gasperi’s death, by his successor Giuseppe Pella, and others.

Italy had suffered in multiple ways: The physical destruction of war, the economic devastation of Fascism’s high tax rates, and the social restrictions imposed by Mussolini’s ideology. The Fascists had driven public expenditures up significantly, to over 30% of GDP.

Fascism’s destructive effects on the Italian economy included wage and price controls as well as the nationalization of various industries.

The postwar task was to somehow rebuild Italian society and the Italian economy, as well as the nation’s physical infrastructure. The economists and government officials of the immediate postwar years were brilliant thinkers, but they remain relatively obscure figures, not often mentioned in history books, as Piercamillo Falasca writes:

Some of those figures may not be well known outside of Italy, but they represented an extraordinary “exception” for European political culture. After twenty years of Mussolini’s Fascist regime and the horrors of war, that group of classical liberals represented the only hope for the nation to emerge from its totalitarian past into democratic capitalist freedom. The context they operated in could hardly be considered an easy one. Italy was a poor country that had been devastated by Fascist collectivism and war; most of the population was both unemployed and uneducated; infrastructure was absent or very poor; a powerful Communist Party threatened to replace Fascist collectivism with Communist collectivism; and state-controlled companies dominated much of the economy.

A “democratic capitalist” approach was the truly free market which would restore a sense of human rights and civil liberties to Italy. This stood in sharp contrast to the ‘crony capitalism’ or ‘state capitalism’ which was the ‘planned economy’ or ‘command economy’ of Mussolini’s Fascism.

The approach known as ‘classical liberalism’ allowed Italy to become a free society, in which political beliefs and opinions of all types could be freely discussed and debated. It is the mechanism of the free market economy which enables a truly democratic society.

The Mayerling Incident: Personal Scandal, Geopolitical Effects

For most of the nineteenth century, Europe was organized by the so-called ‘Metternich System’ — a series of diplomatic arrangements worked out at the Congress of Vienna. This configuration kept the peace for a century: Between 1815 and 1914, there were only a few micro-wars among the European nations, small both in temporal duration and in number of casualties.

The Congress of Vienna was a conference, lasting from September 1814 to June 1815, in which a large number of diplomats from various European nations met to create some sense of peace and stability in the wake of twenty-five-year-long streak of violence: the ten years (1789 to 1799) of the French Revolution and the fifteen years (1800 to 1815) of Napoleon’s reign. Tired of war and bloodshed, Europe wanted peace.

Klemens von Metternich was a German-born diplomat working for the Austrians. He organized the conference. The main principle was that there should be five roughly equal superpowers in Europe: the UK, France, Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia. Matched in political, economic, and military strength, the five-way division of power should prevent any one nation from going on a rampage.

Each of the five superpowers was ruled by a dynasty, a royal family: in Prussia, the Hohenzollerns; in Austria-Hungary, the Habsburgs; in France, the Bourbons; in the UK, the House of Hanover; in Russia, the House of Romanov.

In a system of hereditary monarchies, marriages and the births of children were political events as much as, and sometimes more than, personal events. Unlike the common people, the royals were not always free to marry for love. Arranged marriages were not unusual.

So it was that Crown Prince Rudolf married Princess Stephanie of Belgium in 1881. Rudolf was the only son and heir apparent of Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary. Rudolf had little interest in Stephanie, but the marriage was intended to improve relationships between Belgium and Austria-Hungary. Whatever affection Rudolf might have had quickly faded. He began to have a series of affairs. Disappointed with his life, he consumed large amounts of alcohol, cocaine, morphine, and opium. His life spiraled downwards in personal disintegration.

While Rudolf’s private life was a trainwreck, his political life was more productive. He was intelligent and well-educated, writing and reading several different languages. He was well-versed in philosophy and economics, authoring books, articles, and pamphlets. He worked with Carl Menger, an influential economist of the era, and envisioned a useful and productive role for the aristocracy in modern Europe.

In January 1889, Rudolf attended a celebration at the German Embassy in Vienna. It was the thirtieth birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm, the reigning monarch of Prussia. Both Rudolf’s wife and his current mistress were in attendance. This was the last time that he was seen in public, as historian Angus Robertson writes:

The day after leaving the German Embassy reception, Rudolf was driven through a snowstorm toward his hunting lodge at Mayerling in the Vienna woods. Collecting young Mary at a prearranged stop on the way, they arrived without anyone at the lodge noticing the presence of the young lover. When nobody answered from his locked bedroom on the morning of 30 January 1889, the door was forced open by Count Josephy Hoyos, the crown prince’s hunting companion. He found Rudolf and young Mary dead both with gunshot wounds to the head, suggesting a murder-suicide by Rudolf. Count Hoyos raced toward the Mayerling railway station to try to stop the Vienna-bound morning express train, so he could get to the capital quickly and tell the emperor. A telegraph to the Vienna owners of the railway line, explaining why the express had been stopped, arrived quicker than Count Hoyos, and Baron Albert Rothschild reported the shocking news to the German and British Embassies: ‘Diplomatic Vienna thus learned of Rudolf’s suicide before the emperor did.’

The deaths of Rudolf and Mary were personal tragedies, but they were also political shocks: diplomats around the world had reckoned Rudolf to be the successor to Franz-Josef. Each nation had to make projections about its foreign policy going forward: international relations would have to be revised.

Now Archduke Karl Ludwig would be the heir presumptive, and for all practical purposes the heir apparent. This news caused governmental recalculations around the globe, as Angus Robertson reports:

German ambassador Prince Reuss immediately broke the word to embassy counsellor Count Anton Monts, while at the British residence on the other side of Metternichgasse the door was ‘burst open’ by Baron Rothschild, in evening clothes with all his Orders on, who said: ‘I have come to tell you a very sad thing, the Crown Prince is dead!’

The death of Crown Prince Rudolf had a significant effect on the international scene. Details about the two deaths — was it a double suicide as the evidence at first suggested, or was there another, deeper, narrative being hidden? — would simultaneously be clues about the inner workings of the Habsburg administration. Angus Robertson continues:

Given that Rudolf was the heir to the imperial throne, the tragedy was doubly shocking; how did it come to this and what did it mean for the future of the monarchy? It led to huge interest in the capitals of the world. ‘Ambassadors in Vienna poked and pried, wrote home reams of hearsay and rumor. Queen Victoria implored her minister in Vienna, “Pray give all the details you can gather, however distressing they may be.” The papal nuncio, on the excuse of praying on the death scene, got admittance to the Mayerling lodge and nosed about for a morsel of truth.

Some observers conjectured that Rudolf had conducted secret talks with certain Hungarian factions, and that he chose suicide over the disclosure of those talks. Speculation is available in far greater quantities than information.

Karl Ludwig didn’t last long in the role of heir. He died in 1896. The new heir was Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, who was assassinated in 1914.

Crown Prince Rudolf, had he lived, would have spent twenty-five years as heir, and during those years, would have exerted influence on Franz-Josef and the operations of the Habsburg administration. In personality and temperament, Rudolf was different from Franz-Ferdinand.

Historians are left with a hypothetical question which, of course, can never be answered: had Rudolf lived, which impact might he have had on the global diplomatic scene? Had Rudolf lived, might World War One have been avoided?

Tragedy in Vienna: A Private Habsburg Scandal, A World-Historical Impact

In January 1889, a scandal jolted the ruling class of Europe. Although a strictly personal incident, it would twenty-five years later arguably change the course of world history.

At the time, the two major powers in central Europe were the Hohenzollern dynasty ruling Germany and the Habsburg dynasty ruling the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The two major powers in the west were France and the United Kingdom. The major power in the east was Russia.

Since the Congress of Vienna 1815, Europe had enjoyed peace; no major wars had occurred since then. The Congress of Vienna had been a large — perhaps the largest ever — gathering of diplomats. Their goal was to stabilize Europe in the wake of a twenty-five-year-long streak of violence: the ten years of the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) and fifteen years of Napoleon’s military aggression (1800 to 1815). They hoped to negotiate peaceful resolutions to whichever tensions existed between various European powers, repair the damage done by the French Revolution and by Napoleon, and create a stable diplomatic system moving forward: a system which would, they hoped, continue to find peaceful international solutions.

The architect of this new international system was Klemens von Metternich, a German-born diplomat who made his career managing foreign policy for the Habsburgs in Austria. He organized the Congress of Vienna and shaped much of its deliberations.

Part of the new arrangement was a balance of power, a sort of equilibrium, between these five nations. The intent was to have each of them approximately equal in terms of their military, political, and economic influence.

The system worked for a century. The few small wars which did happen during that time were brief and resulted in few deaths.

The relationships between the five major nations were not always warm and friendly, but they were at least diplomatic and cooperative. Diplomacy was the sustaining force which preserved the international balance of power and preserved peace.

By 1889, the Emperor Franz-Josef was ruling the Habsburg lands, and Kaiser Wilhelm was ruling the Hohenzollern dominions. In January 1889, Kaiser Wilhem had his thirtieth birthday. Celebrations occurred around Europe, usually hosted by the respective German embassy. In Vienna, the event was hosted by the German ambassador to that capital, a man named Heinrich VII, Prince Reuss.

At the German Embassy in Vienna, Emperor Franz-Josef and his son Crown Prince Rudolf attended the party, wearing their German military uniforms. It was the custom that various European aristocrats were made honorary members of other nations’ military units: another way to demonstrate unity and diffuse potential conflicts.

Awkwardly, both the Crown Prince’s wife and his mistress were at the event, as historian Angus Robertson explains:

Despite all kinds of rumors swirling about the personal life of Rudolf, there were no public clues about one of the most shocking personal tragedies to befall European royalty in the entire 19th century. The last time that members of the royal family and Vienna society saw Rudolf alive was at a reception held in the German Embassy in late January 1889 to mark the 30th birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm. None of them had any idea what was about to happen to Rudolf and his young lover. The heir to the throne arrived at the party showing his public respect by dressing as Colonel-in-Chief in the uniform of the German 2nd Brandenburg Uhlan Regiment, despite privately disliking Wilhelm. He joined his father Emperor Francis Joseph, who wore the uniform of a Prussian field marshal, along with the cream of aristocratic society and the diplomatic corps, as the guest of the German ambassador Heinrich VII, Prince Reuss (1825 - 1906). Lady Walburga Paget, wife of the British ambassador, spoke to Rudolf and described the extraordinary scenes at the reception in her diary: ‘I thought the Crown Prince was changed and strange, and I could not think what was the matter with him.’

Crown Prince Rudolf had married Princess Stephanie of Belgium, but not for love. It was a diplomatic arrangement designed to improve relationships between Belgium and Austria-Hungary. In an ongoing irony, it was the wealthy and powerful who were often unable to marry for love and who submitted to such arranged marriages. The common people were free to choose their spouses.

The Crown Prince quickly lost interest in his wife, if indeed he had ever had any. He had a series of affairs with other women, as Angust Robertson reports:

While the crown prince, his wife Princess Stephanie of Belgium (1864-1945) and the other guests mingled in the embassy ballroom, the young beauty Baroness Mary Vetsers (1871-1889) flirted with Rudolf in plain sight. The 17-year-old daughter of an Austrian diplomat had had a crush on the dashing crown prince for some time and enjoyed demonstrating her affections for him at public events, including the opera. While it is not certain when their affair started, it was just the latest for the rakish Rudolf, who maintained a register of his conquests and gifted silver-boxes when he brought his dalliances to an end.

His personal life spiraled downward, out of control. He was, however, a highly-educated man, capable of speaking “four or five languages” according to the New York Times. He authored significant books, and explored philosophy and economics in detail. He was personally acquainted with Carl Menger, a leading economist of the era.

He co-authored a political manifesto, The Austrian Nobility and its Constitutional Calling, which envisioned a healthy sense of civic duty for the aristocrats. While privately troubled, the Crown Prince was professionally forward-looking.

The private troubles would shipwreck the political vision, as Angus Robertson writes:

In an unhappy marriage with Stephanie and barred from meaningful responsibilities by his father, Rudolf had descended into an increasingly dissolute lifestyle of sexual affairs, drink, and drugs. He contracted venereal disease, infected his wife and ended hopes of having further children after their daughter was born. For more than three years he had been prescribed a dangerous cocktail of opium, morphine, and cocaine, which he consumed in addition to ‘copious amounts’ of cognac and champagne. Stephanie remembered the destructive impact this was having on her husband: ‘He suffered more and more from nervous unrest and from a violent temper, culminating in what was tantamount to complete mental decay.’ Queen Victoria, who had taken a shine to Rudolf and appointed him personally to the English Order of the Garter, confided to her granddaughter that he ‘led a very bad life.’

It was shortly after the January 1889 party at the German embassy in Vienna that the end came. Rudolf arranged a secret rendezvous with Baroness Mary in the small village of Mayerling. The royal family had a hunting lodge there.

The next morning, Crown Prince Rudolf and Baroness Mary were found dead. Most of the evidence pointed to a double suicide in which he shot her and then himself. Each of them had left farewell letters to friends and family. But there was some ambiguity in the investigation, and it is possible that it was something other than a double suicide. The letters, for example, might have been forgeries.

In any case, the troubled personal life of the Crown Prince came to an end, but so did his opportunity to influence the European diplomatic scene. In the wake of Rudolf’s death, the Archduke Karl Ludwig became the heir to the imperial throne, but died soon after Rudolf died, so Franz-Ferdinand became the heir to the imperial throne. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Rudolf’s death, the New York Times wrote:

At the age of 84 Franz Joseph, the most unwarlike of emperors, blundered into war with Serbia because Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, had been murdered by Serbian nationalists. With this war all our troubles began. It might not have happened if Rudolph had been alive.

The aging Franz-Josef continued to rule after Rudolf’s death, but without Rudolf’s advice. For eighteen years, the heir presumptive — and for all purposes, the heir apparent — was Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, whose personality and style were different from Crown Prince Rudolf’s. Had Rudolf lived longer, it would have been him instead of Franz-Ferdinand who was working with Emperor Franz-Josef: different decisions might have been made, and the lives of millions affected thereby.

Franz-Josef mentored three men, one after another, to be his successor, and he outlived all three of them. The result was his personal grief and World War I. Had Crown Prince Rudolf lived longer, it’s at least possible that WW1 might not have happened.

North Korea: Persistent Military Threat, Persistent Human Rights Violations

The response to North Korea’s inhumanity and cruelty over the last 75 years has not been the response of any one nation, but rather a global response by almost every nation in the world: sometimes acting individually, but more often in groups. Some of the group are established bodies like SEATO (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), NATO, or the UN. Other groups were formed ad hoc for the specific purpose of addressing the North Korean situation, like the “Six-Party Talks.”

The world’s concerns are obvious and serious. The regime which controls North Korea has not changed its character since it took power in 1945. The three-generation dynasty of the father, Kim Il-sung; the son, Kim Jong-il; and the grandson, Kim Jong-il.

The nature of that regime is made clear by the fact that it unilaterally started the Korean War in 1950, causing the deaths of millions of people. The Kim dynasty obtained the ability to produce nuclear weapons in 2006, during the reign of Kim Jong-il. The regime has periodically attempted to intimidate the world by detonating atomic weapons and by test-flying missiles capable of delivering those weapons to distant targets.

Despite universal distrust of North Korea, the government of South Korea has at times been hesitant to make clear statements or take significant actions to discourage the North in its continued buildup of nuclear weapons and to dissuade the North from its continued violation of human rights and civil liberties.

U.S. President George W. Bush was disappointed that South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung would not make strong statements against the North’s systematic torture and imprisonment of North Korean citizens. Condoleezza Rice, who was at that time National Security Advisor, and who would later be Secretary of State, describes how changing leadership in South Korea brought the U.S. and South Korea into a closer relationship in terms of how it approached North Korea:

The United States had different interests. North Korea’s nuclear program was a global, not just a regional, issue. Its treatment of its own people offended not just the President personally but also our country’s commitment to human rights. Those dueling perspectives would divide us until the ascent in 2008 of Lee Myung-bak, who placed greater public emphasis on North Korean abuses. But for the moment, there was little common ground on which to move forward.

A decade later, despite the improved harmony between the U.S. and South Korea, the behavior of the Kim dynasty hadn’t gotten any better. In 2011, Kim Jong-un succeeded his father as leader, and vigorously pursued a weapons program which would enable North Korea to directly attack the United States. Nikki Haley, who was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018, writes:

On top of being the world’s worst, most systematic violator of human rights, the North Korean regime posed the number-one security threat to the United States in 2017. North Koreans are taught from childhood to hate and fear the United States. They have long dreamed of uniting the Korean peninsula under North Korea’s control and see the United States as a major obstacle to this. To ensure the dictatorship’s survival, the Kim regime has long pursued nuclear weapons, but under Kim Jong Un the country’s efforts to develop a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead into U.S. territory accelerated alarmingly.

The problem of North Korea is three-fold: first, it possesses powerful weapons; second, its leadership is mentally ill; third, it starves and abuses its own citizens on an industrial scale. Nikki Haley continues:

Between February and the end of May in 2017, the North Koreans conducted nine illegal ballistic-missile launches. On July 4 — not at all coincidentally on Independence Day — the North Korean regime launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching Alaska. In August, they launched two ICBMs. One flew directly over Japan, threatening the mainland of Japan, as well as American, South Korean, and Japanese bases throughout Asia. In September, they exploded their most powerful nuclear weapon to date, a hydrogen bomb.

North Korea cannot be said to have good relations with any nation, but perhaps its most functional relationship is with China. North Korea is to some extent economically dependent on China. North Korea does far more trade with China than with any other nation.

Other nations in the world look to China occasionally to discourage North Korea’s more belligerent actions. China occasionally does this. Yet China also sees itself, in some ways, as making common cause with North Korea inasmuch as both nations are prime examples of communism in east Asia. Privately, the Chinese leadership must consider the Kim dynasty to be at least erratic and at most insane, yet the Chinese leadership is loath to vigorously criticize a fellow communist regime.

South Korea continues to show courage in the face of the threat from the North. In May 2022, the NATO website posted:

For the first time, in December 2020, the Republic of Korea participated in a NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting, together with Australia, Finland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and the EU HR/VP, to discuss the shift in the global balance of power and the rise of China. This was only one of the latest and more visible political exchanges NATO has had with the Republic of Korea at various levels in recent years. At the NATO Brussels Summit in June 2021, Allies agreed to increase dialogue and practical cooperation between NATO and existing partners in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Republic of Korea.

If nothing else, North Korea has succeeded in creating a substantial amount of international cooperation, as nations who have little else in common are one in their concern about the North’s brutality against its own people and in their concern about the wreckless buildup of atomic weapons.

North Korea: A Horrifying Singularity

Historians and diplomats know that every country is unique, and must be examined in its uniqueness. A few countries are, beyond being unique, outliers in significant ways. North Korea is one such country.

Condoleezza Rice was the National Security Advisor from January 2001 to January 2005. In March 2001, the leader of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung visited the United States. As an advisor to President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice was wrestled with a sentiment common to many diplomats around the world: the question of why the South Korean government was seemingly “unmoved” about the fact that its neighbor to the north was committing brutal human rights violations.

She explains how to understand the South Korean position:

One of the hardest things about diplomacy is to put yourself into someone else’s shoes without compromising your own principles. The United States, sitting on a protected continent away from the monstrous North Korean regime, could be more aggressive in confronting it. For South Korea, a relatively new and prosperous democracy, accommodating the regime was a price worth paying to maintain stability and peace. North Korea has thousands of missiles and artillery pieces that could reach Seoul, only thirty miles from the border. And too much focus on the plight of the North Korean people had another downside: what would happen at the time of unification of the North and South? Many years later a senior South Korean diplomat would tell me that his biggest worry about the North was that Seoul would be saddled with millions of “brain-damaged midgets.” He was not being cruel; he was articulating the special vulnerability that South Korea felt.

Seventeen years later, diplomats still wrestled with the situation. Nikki Haley was the United States ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018, and wrote of “a dictatorship in North Korea that will go down as one of the most repressive and barbaristic in human history.”

During Condoleezza Rice’s time as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, North Korea had been under the rule of Kim Jong-il. He was the son of North Korea’s founding dictator, Kim Il-sung. By the time Nikki Haley was the U.S. Ambassador, the country was under the rule of Kim Jong-un. Three generations of tyranny have oppressed the people of North Korea: father, son, and grandson.

Among other feats, this family of despots started the Korean War in 1950, causing the deaths of several million human beings.

Kim Il-sung ruled from 1945 to 1997. Kim Jong-il ruled from 1997 to 2011. Kim Jong-un took power in 2011. Nikki Haley explains the dynasty’s tactics:

Kim Jong Un inherited his absolute control of North Korea from his father, who had inherited it from his father. Kim was young when he became dictator. He consolidated his power by executing his competitors, including family members. Estimates are that he had well over 300 people killed in his first six years as a leader. No “offense” was too small. Kim reportedly executed one of his generals with an anti-aircraft gun for falling asleep in a meeting.

The human rights situation in North Korea has long been a shocking offense to nations around the world. Yet the cruelty of the reigning family of North Korea is intractable. Negotiations and foreign policy maneuvers of various types have failed to make the North Korean Communist Party — official titled the Workers’ Party of Korea — amenable to acknowledging any form of human rights or civil liberties.

Nikki Haley describes the measures taken by the North Korean communists to control the citizens of the country:

The Kim regime enforces absolute control through complete surveillance and tight restrictions on the North Korean people’s contact with the outside world. Cell phone coverage is blocked and North Korea’s version of the internet is a closed network that few people are allowed to use. The regime uses food as a tool of political control, awarding those who comply and deliberately starving those who don’t. It operates a system of prison camps that torture, starve, and work to death people who say the wrong things or read the wrong books or media. The United Nations found that hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have died in these camps during the Kim dictatorship. Women are subjected to forced abortion and their babies to infanticide. Escapees report that having a Bible is punishable by imprisonment in the camps.

The various nations of the world, individually and sometimes in groups, find that their efforts to persuade North Korea — or more specifically, the dictator family of North Korea — to give up its habit of torturing and starving its citizens are hampered by two facts:

First, North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and the missiles with which to deliver them.

Second, the erratic and deranged nature of the ruling dynasty means that the dictator might actually use the nuclear weapons.

Time and again, starting in 2006, the North Koreans have “tested” nuclear weapons. But the true purpose of these events is not to test the technology, but rather to remind the world that North Korea has the technology, and to show the world the periodic improvements in the technology: “saber-rattling” in the truest sense of the phrase.

The other nations of the world are then compelled to reply, both in diplomatic statements, and in a display of their own weaponry. This cycle has been carried out periodically for almost two decades. In June 2022, for example, Dasl Yoon reported in the Wall Street Journal:

The latest test came Sunday, when North Korea fired eight short-range ballistic missiles — the most it has fired in a day.

South Korea and the U.S. quickly responded by firing eight surface-to-surface missiles the following day to show their “ability and readiness to immediately strike with precision,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. On Tuesday, Washington and Seoul staged a show of air power, with 20 warplanes flying in formation off South Korea’s western coast. The exercise came during a visit to Seoul by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who promised a swift and forceful response if North Korea were to conduct a nuclear test, just as American and South Korean officials have warned of late.

In a rare display of unity, almost every nation in the world has participated in some economic or diplomatic effort to discourage North Korea from this behavior — almost every nation in the world has denounced this warlike activity.

For approximately 75 years, the family of North Korean dictators has made the world a less safe place. Some nations have nuclear weapons; some nations have mentally-ill leaders; only North Korea has both.

Democracy — An Idea Makes a Career for Itself

The ugly reality of Nazi dictatorship, which oppressed the German people from 1933 to 1945, often overshadows the advancements made in central Europe prior to those evil twelve years.

Democracy has a long history in Germany. Even before Germany was formed as a country in 1871, the individual German territories had democracy. The region of Wüttemberg had a parliament starting 1457, for example. This legislative body existed for several centuries, its power waxing and waning as political fashions changed from time to time.

Until 1871, government structures were regional, and varied from place to place: in some places, there were constitutional monarchies, in which elected parliaments shared power with kings; in other places, like in the large independent cities, monarchies were gone, and governments were composed of freely-elected representatives.

After 1871, all of Germany was ruled by a hybrid system: an elected legislative body shared power with a hereditary monarch. A robust political system with parties and regular elections lasted from 1871 to 1918. Until 1933, a constitutional system with no monarch and free elections was in place.

An enduring democratic system with a magnificent history was destroyed in 1933 by Hitler and his Nazi Party. The principles which caused this tragedy become clear in the name ‘Nazi,’ which is an abbreviation for National Socialism. Hitler “nationalized” industries, making them property of the government instead of property of the people, and he “socialized” the economy, instituting wage and price controls and raising tax rates.

Historians Uwe Oster, Paul Widergren, and Carol Gratton write:

The Germans also have the Greeks to thank for the fact that modern Germany is a stable democracy. Even the word “democracy” is of Greek origin and simply means “the rule of the people.” No matter how many tyrants got in the way, the concept of democracy has never disappeared but has been passed along from the classical days of ancient Greece to the present day.

Happily, the concept of democracy is durable and enduring, and after the horrors of National Socialism began to fade in 1945, West Germany built once again a government of freely-elected representatives, who in turn honored the principle of human rights by deregulating most aspects of their economy under the watchful eye of Ludwig Erhard.

Serving as finance minister from the start of the postwar government until 1963, and serving as chancellor thereafter, Ludwig Erhard made it his practice to do the opposite of what the Nazis had done: he lowered taxes, and removed wage and price controls. This made West Germany one of the most democratic and tolerant societies on the globe. In 1990, East Germany joined it, creating the Federal Republic of Germany as it exists today.

The Birth of the New: Are There German Roots in Athens?

Scholars have long used the phrase ‘Western Civilization’ to denote the flourishing of art and technology — of science and culture — which has taken place over a millennium or two. This phrase begs the question: West of what?

Some used the label ‘European Culture,’ but upon consideration, it is clear that major elements of this culture have their origin in the ancient Near East.

A third name for this collection of achievements is the ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition,’ yet this name fails to indicate the contributions of pagan and pre-Christian elements from Greece, Rome, and the Fertile Crescent.

By any name, however, it is clear that Chaucer and Goethe are somehow bound to Plato and Aristotle — across centuries and hundreds of miles. It is clear that Newton and Leibniz are of the same fabric as Cicero and Tacitus.

Sophocles and Thucydides lead to Beethoven and Mozart. Livy and Terence lead to Albrecht Dürer and Caspar David Friedrich.

As historians Uwe Oster, Paul Widergren, and Carol Gratton write:

Let’s begin our journey through time in ancient Greece, the cradle of European civilization. This is also where the continent got its name. The story goes that Zeus, the king of the gods, once had his eye on the beautiful princess Europa. He changed himself into a bull to make it easier to get close to her, seduced her on the beach, and then spirited her away to Crete. The name of the continent was already connected to this tale as far back as the days of antiquity.

‘Europe’ is a name for a continent, a landmass. But it is also a name for a dynamic outpouring of mathematics, philosophy, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, physics, chemistry, poetry, and a dozen other disciplines and professions.

Europe is a whole: one cannot treat the parts of Europe in isolation. One must know the ancient Greeks to understand Hegel and Nietzsche. One must know Rome in order to understand Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, Keats, Shelley, and Byron.

This is seen in the fervor with which the universities of Japan and China have embraced the study of European literature, art, and history. It may well be that, in some respects, the rest of the world has a better grasp of the West than the West does, a more profound understanding of Europe than Europe does, and a deeper appreciation of the Judeo-Christian tradition than Jews or Christians do.

Germany — a Small Part of the Big World

The word ‘globalization’ is perhaps one of the most overused words in the early twenty-first century, yet for good reason. Economic, political, social, and cultural relations do indeed happen frequently across borders. This is so obvious that the reader will be familiar with it already.

But globalization is nothing new.

Greece established settlements in the areas which are now Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan by around 329 B.C., where they met with representatives of China. The Romans sent diplomats into China by around 166 A.D., so when Marco Polo made his famous trip to China in the late 1200s, there had already been a millennium of contact between Europe and eastern Asia.

In the 400s A.D., Attila, king of the Huns, moved through Europe with his army. Also known by the name ‘Etzel,’ Attila marched through what is now Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, and into Italy. Although Attila’s presence was primarily military, it nonetheless had a cultural and social impact. One of his wives was a Roman, another one was probably a Goth. The Huns were a nomadic group from central Asia who had settled in the area of what is now Hungary.

In the early 1200s, Genghis Khan, also known as ‘Temujin,’ advanced from Mongolia as far west as Poland.

Although Europe’s contacts to China, Mongolia, and other parts of central Asia go back more than 2,000 years, such contacts were sporadic and occasional.

By contrast, on a more regional level, contact between the nations of central Europe have been ongoing and largely uninterrupted over the millennia. The peoples of central Europe have continuously interacted with each other over the centuries.

Maps can be misleading: territories are shown with clear boundaries. But social and cultural contact often ignores those frontiers. In areas close to either side of a border, languages are mixed. In Strasbourg, a city in France near the German border, German is spoken as much, and sometimes more, than French, and the locals refer to their home as Straßburg. Likewise, the Belgian government acknowledges German as one of that country’s official languages, spoken mainly in border areas.

But cultural interaction goes into the hearts of these countries and is not limited to border regions, as authors Uwe Oster, Dieter Benecke, and Carol Gratton write:

Even before our current century, history could not be isolated and considered only from the point of view of one nation or one people. In this century it is even less possible because distances hardly matter and the world has shrunk to the size of a global village. Germany lies in the heart of Europe. The history of Germany, therefore, has always been the history of its neighbors in Europe and the world.

It is impossible to write the history of any one nation, nation-state, people, or country without reference to its neighbors. The history of Germany cannot be told without telling the history of Europe. This is always true, but especially true of the centuries prior to 1871. In that year, Germany as a sovereign unified territory appeared for the first time.

The history of Germany prior to 1871 is the history of various German kingdoms, with their various alliances and enmities among themselves, united only by a common language and culture, but not by politics or economics. Indeed they were as likely to be allied with a non-German neighbor as with a fellow German kingdom. France and Hungary have a role to play in German history as much as Saxony and Bavaria.

The Burden of History: Who Are the Germans, and What Is Germany?

It is impossible to study World History without studying Germany. The German people and the German culture have produced artists and scientists and shaped not only their own civilization but also many others.

For more than two thousand years, the Germanic people have been a major influence in central Europe: the Germanic people, but not the Germans. Two thousand years ago, there were many Germanic tribes who lived there. Some of them were semi-nomadic, living in one place for a few decades or a couple centuries, and then relocating. The tribes are known by their own names:

Alemanni, Angles, Burgundians, Cherusci, Cimbri, Danes, Franks, Frisians, Goths, Helveconae, Holstens, Jutes, Langobards, Lombards, Marcomanni, Marvingi, Merohingii, Merovingi, Merovingians, Normans, Ostrogoths, Saxons, Suebi, Swabians, Swedes, Teutons, Thervingi, Thuringi, Vandals, Visigoths, and many others.

These dozens of tribes each had its own language, but all these languages were related to each other, descending from one parent language. These Germanic languages would continue to develop, and eventually produce not only the German language as it is today, but also other modern Germanic languages, including Flemish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and others. Notably, English is a Germanic language.

Aside from a linguistic kinship, these tribes shared similar, but not identical, cultures.

Politically, they were independent. Both alliances and antagonisms were repeatedly made and then changed.

As scholars Uwe Oster, Paul Widergren, and Carol Gratton write:

People have lived for thousands of years in the areas which we now refer to as Germany. These people did not, however, view themselves as “Germans.” This concept first originated in the Middle Ages, but Germany did not exist as a single nation as we know it today even then. The single nation was not conceived until the 19th century. If we want to take a journey through time and through German history, then naturally, this entire development is part of the big picture. Therefore, let’s start at the very beginning. Is there any reason why we have to feel like we are going to collapse under the burden of centuries of history? No, no reason whatsoever. German history is exciting, entertaining, and often very different from what you might think.

The beginnings of the tribal era are lost in the mists of history, but the tribes were a clear feature of central European history by the time the Romans began encountering them in the two or three centuries before Christ. One hypothesis suggests that one original Germanic group, the parent and grandparent of all the tribes, began by migrating from the northern coast of the Black Sea to the area which is now southern Denmark. A Germanic identity would have been established by around 500 B.C.

Like most historical eras, no precise ending point or starting point can be given to the tribal phase of Germanic history. Gradually, the tribes became less nomadic and embraced feudalism as both a political and economic way of life. Some of the tribes became kingdoms. Other tribes slowly dissolved as they intermarried with neighboring tribes. Perhaps by the time of Charlemagne — more accurately known as Karl the Great — dynastic and regional identities replaced tribal identities. That would be around 800 A.D.

The Goths embraced the Christian faith at some point in time around 300 A.D., and the Merovingians did the same in the 400s. It was during the decades leading up Charlemagne’s reign, and during his reign, that most of the rest of the Germanic tribes were Christianized. This changed Germanic culture significantly: human sacrifice was no longer practiced, and women were no longer bought and sold.

In any case, in the approximate span of time between 500 B.C and 800 A.D., much was put into place — much of what makes regional and cultural identities what they are today, both in central Europe and in the world. Indeed, it could be said that after that time, history has simply played out, on autopilot, what was decided by the migrations and cultures of the Germanic tribes.