“For literal centuries, none of the European powers wanted to stand up to the Barbary nations. It was easier to just pay them. It took America—which was, back then, a joke to most of the developed world—to be the change. It took an act of desperation from a nation that was hilariously and hopelessly outgunned to bring about a shift in the power dynamic of the world’s most valuable trade route at the time. And therein lies the lesson.”
