Column: We fail to learn from our warring past

In a Sept. 3 Island Voices commentary, “WW11 history lessons relevant today,” authors Micah Tokita and Stephen Teves advised: Use the lessons of that war to help us make wise choices in today’s chaotic world. A valuable suggestion indeed. And while we’re at it, let’s think about a few of these critical lessons.

For one, there are the key roles played by extreme nationalism, racism and empire building in driving the outbreak of major wars. Of course, the showcase example is Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, which glorified the “Aryan race” and proclaimed Germany’s right to dominate Europe and commit genocide. Hitler’s fascist ally, Benito Mussolini, championed Italian nationalism, even proclaiming his regime to be the second coming of the Roman empire. This resonates for us today when we see nationalism between (and within) nations setting off conflicts everywhere, from Russia’s assault on Ukraine, to Florida’s white supremacist attacks on Blacks and immigrants.

Tokita and Teves mention the heroic American response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. But we should remember the complex back history to Dec. 7, 1941: Namely, the decades of expansive Japanese and U.S. empire building. Both had violently colonized weaker nations in the Pacific and Asia. Ultimately, the war was a competitive conflict between two powerful empires over control of the Asia-Pacific region. Yes, the commentary’s authors are right that “security” was a crucial issue igniting the war — but “security’ got defined by leaders in Washington and Tokyo as military control over the Asia-Pacific region. Which made an armed confrontation inevitable.

Ironically, winning a major war can carry the seeds of another great conflict. The U.S., of course, emerged in 1945 not only victorious, but as the globally dominant military, economic and political power. Along with this came the kind of dangerous illusions any all-powerful conqueror is prone to, illusions of invincibility with the right to control and use armed force against those defying them. From the 1950s on, this led to the well-known U.S. role as “policeman of the world.”

The consequences were tragic: nothing less than a series of disastrous U.S. wars and “interventions” against enemies both real and imagined. The most massive and devastating occurred in Vietnam between l963 and 1975: Driven by an obsessive anti-Communism, the war took the lives of several million Vietnamese and 60,000 or so Americans. By its end, the unique opportunity to build a peaceful, equitable “great society” in America had been tragically shattered.

Perhaps the most poignant lesson from World War II is the truth of the old cliche that because people don’t learn the lessons of the past, it tends to repeat itself. Of course, there are profound differences in how it gets repeated. Take today’s intensifying “Cold War” between a resurgent China challenging U.S. Asia-Pacific supremacy. This might be viewed as an early replay of the 1940s U.S.-Japan confrontation in the Asia-Pacific. Look at the frequent military faceoffs between Chinese and U.S. military aircraft and warships around the South China Sea, sometimes involving American allies.

The huge difference, of course, is that this is not 1941, but the nuclear age, when a small incident can escalate to threaten the fate of humanity and civilization. And World War II teaches us that we humans can (despite everything) use nuclear weapons on each other. After all, witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Noel Kent is a professor emeritus of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.