Observing my own brain for a second, it seems like one of the risks of reading a lot of history is you can get the impression that we’re much more wise about how to deal with geopolitics than we are, because you are necessarily reading something that benefits from hindsight. I think people try and get at, what were people thinking at the time (there’s a whole exhibit in the world war 2 museum about the decision to enter the war) but that feels emotionally obfuscated by the fact that most of what you’re reading is post-hoc analysis.

But like 50 years from now, everything that’s going on will seem really clear.