"'That's another lesson we've learned from history. The ancients could have saved themselves...'" (p. 136)
History and the ancients are us. This is a Maurai speaking. So how could we have saved ourselves?
"'...if they'd had the courage - been hard-hearted enough - to act before being snowballed. If the democracies had suppressed every aggressive dictatorship in its infancy; or if they had simply enforced their ideal of an armed world government at the time when they had the strength to do -...'" (ibid.)
I don't think so. How democratic are the democracies? Are they innocent of aggression? They have allied themselves with dictatorships. Would democracies retain their democracy if they suppressed and enforced?
Poul Anderson is right to use characters in futuristic sf to comment on the present. If we do not agree with this Maurai commentator, then what do we propose?
Another example of futuristic comment: in Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, set in Fascist Britain in 1997, one character has heard that the Leader is "absolutely barking." Another comments, "Remember all those things he said when he was Chief Constable." When this was written, it was a highly topical remark.
Sf is about the present.
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