VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama is America's version of Stanley Baldwin.

Last year, President Obama assured the world that "we are living in the most peaceful, prosperous and progressive era in human history," and that "the world has never been less violent."

Translated, those statements meant that active foreign-policy volcanoes in China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the Middle East would probably not blow up on what little was left of Obama's watch.

Obama is the U.S. version of Stanley Baldwin, the suave, three-time British prime minister of the 1920s and 1930s. Baldwin's last tenure (1935-1937) coincided with the rapid rise of aggressive German, Italian and Japanese fascism.

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