Is it 1914 or 1939 all over again?

"Human nature is unchanging and remains irrational. Evil is eternal. Unfortunately, appeasement is often seen by thugs not as magnanimity to be reciprocated but as timidity to be exploited.

Someone soon will have to tell the North Koreans that a stable world order cannot endure its frequent missile launches and nuclear detonations.

Someone could remind Putin that the former Soviet republics have a right to self-determination.

Someone might inform the Chinese that no one can plop down artificial islands and military bases to control commercial sea lanes.

Someone might make it clear to radical Islamic terrorists that there is a limit to Western patience with their chronic bombing, murdering and destruction.

The problem is that there is no other “someone” (especially not the United Nations or the European Union) with the requisite power and authority except the United States. But for a long time America has done more than its fair share of international policing — and its people are tired of costly dragon-slaying abroad.

The result is that at this late date, the tough medicine of restoring long-term deterrence is as almost as dangerous as the disease of continual short-term appeasement.

Obama apparently assumes he can leave office as a peacemaker before his appeased chickens come home to roost in violent fashion. He has assured us that the world has never been calmer and quieter.

Others said the same thing in the last calm summer weeks of 1914 and 1939." Victor Davis Hanson