It is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.
– Otto von Bismarck (1862)
History may not repeat. History may not rhyme. Yet there are undoubtedly parallels between epochs. While identifying the proper parallels is possible, the exercise is fraught with errors by those dabbling in historical analogies. Many errors are the result of partisan disingenuity, who posit analogies not motivated by pursuit of truth, but in pursuit of advantage. Yet even for the minority, who honestly seek some framework, however inchoate and porous, by which to understand the times, existential complexities make the task exceedingly difficult.
We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, is doing his level best to mimic Bismarck. But neither Miller nor his master have anywhere near the same level of Bismarck’s genius. Indeed, neither Miller nor Trump are even at the level of that buffoon, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888–1918) who dismissed Bismarck in 1890.
Bismarck, at least, recognized the limits of Prussian power and navigated and enhanced Germany’s position within Europe in light of those limits. The Trump administration vastly overestimates America’s relative power.
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