I hate to break it to you, but the world of pre-1900 has been dead and gone for a solid 120+ years, it was killed off by Europe getting itself into two stupid wars that the Americans had to come over and save them from. Nothing works the same anymore.

All those European countries get to invest in those nice social programs and isolationism because the US has at least up until now acted as world police and handled their foreign affairs for the most part.