W
hether or not Santayana was the first person to come up with this or not, it is utterly true that we do not learn from history — at our peril.
In 1956, the British government sought to do what it had so often done in the past: brutally suppress a political movement in the colonies.
Britain thought it still controlled the Suez Canal, because, well, British money paid for it. But when Egypt closed down the Suez Canal, a waterway that had become the lifeline of the western “democracies,” President Eisenhower was not pleased. He bluntly informed the British that they were a third-rate power now, and that they had to ask the US for permission to do anything of consequence in their rump colonial empire.
Now it is America’s turn to be schooled by China.