DefenseUS Coast Guard Collection/US National Archives/Handout via REUTERS US Army troops and crewmen aboard a Coast Guard-manned LCVP approach a beach on D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1944.
- Seventy-five years after Allied troops stormed ashore in Normandy, the world continues to enjoy a peace they and other Allied forces helped secure.
- The international system built in the decades that followed is not guaranteed, however, and we must do more now to ensure it survives, writes Jim Townsend, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former US
defense official. - Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
As you read this, you are enjoying the legacy of the "Greatest Generation." Their greatest achievement is not the victory over Japan and Germany in 1945 but the 74 years of peace that followed.
That peace eluded the victors of World War I, who, without the participation of an isolationist United States, struggled for 21 years to find a way to never again experience the horror of 1914-1918. But the political structures they made, such as the League of Nations, could not stop the terrible second convulsion in 1939 of an even bloodier war in Europe.
The victors of that second war, however, this time including the United States, turned again to diplomacy and statecraft to build an international system that could keep not just war, but nuclear war, at bay.
They succeeded beyond their expectations; the international system built over decades by the same generation that had fought one another has held the line of peace for 74 years.
REUTERS
British World War II veteran Frederick Glover watches soldiers parachute during a D-Day commemoration event in Ranville, northern France, June 5, 2014.
The bones of this structure include organizations you have heard of, such as the UN and NATO, the European Union and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as those less known (until a crisis occurs), such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
This alphabet soup of institutions was developed based on lessons learned from failed diplomacy and geopolitics in the 1930s, modified for the nuclear age. It absorbed Cold War tensions and contained hot wars between superpower proxies. But more importantly, this post-World War II system and its organizations tackled those problems that caused instability and that fed conflict, such as poverty and political unrest.
One of the major reasons the post-World War II system has been so successful is because of US leadership in the building and the operation of this system. The fear of nuclear war - along with a better appreciation of the importance of global leadership to US interests - compelled the US to take on global responsibility unlike it had ever done in the past.
Associated Press Macedonian soldiers raise the NATO flag in front of the government building during a ceremony in Skopje, February 12, 2019.
Working closely with Allies and partners not just in Europe but in other parts of the world, the US bore, sometimes uneasily, a heavy burden as a global policeman.
The international system overseen by the US and its allies was not always fair, efficient, or successful. There were "freeloader" nations that didn't carry their fair share of the weight as well as nations that didn't buy into a post-war system led by the United States and either followed the Soviet lead or went their own way.
But flawed as it could be, the international systems of institutions and bilateral relations between nations, underpinned by shared values and history, absorbed the shocks and tended to the catastrophes made by man and nature that in days past could have led to war.
The post-war system under fire
President Donald Trump and other member-country leaders the opening ceremony of the 2018 NATO Summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, July 11, 2018.
It is a fair question whether this creation of the "greatest generation" can stand the test of time and so ask if it is fit for purpose today.
Patience is running out with international organizations that seem to cost more than they are worth.
That ever-moving stream of national
The post-war system seems to be under fire from many directions in both the US and in Europe, without many suggestions of an alternative. The values that are shared by the transatlantic community that provide it unity are even being questioned.
So as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings and once again raise a glass to honor those members of the greatest generation still among us, we should take care to remember they passed on to us a legacy - a system of international governance to keep the peace so there would not have to be another Omaha beach.
That generation built this peace on the shoulders of those who died fighting for values that the survivors knew had to be protected. The system they built to do this was imperfect, but it is our legacy now.
It is good to question and revalidate the ways we've always done business. The United States is right to expect the nations that benefit from this system to do their fair share to carry the burden of its maintenance and operation.
But we must not take for granted this legacy, this system built from hard lessons learned during a bloody 20th century by those that had to fight those wars. To do that is not worthy of a generation that we thank for its service but then turn away from as we avoid the hard work of maintaining the legacy that generation left us.
Jim Townsend is an adjunct senior fellow in the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program. He worked on NATO and European issues in the Pentagon, at NATO, and at the Atlantic Council for over two decades, including eight years as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO Policy.