India, Jan. 25 -- The president of the United States has spoken of "taking back" the Panama Canal, absorbing Greenland, and turning Canada into the fifty-first state. In recent public remarks, he has pressed for negotiations on Greenland and warned that refusal will carry consequences. He has threatened tariffs on NATO allies: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Belgium. Commentators are alarmed. They speak of a new wave of imperialism, of liberal values collapsing, of international norms under siege. They assume something has changed.

But in reality, nothing has changed. We are the same people we were in 1945, when the curtains fell on the various theatres of war. That war happened because the various powers wanted to consume. Japa...