Are we reliving the build up to World War I?
Hard to believe that war was almost a century ago now. My paternal grandfather fought in it.
Are we reliving the build up to World War I?
Hard to believe that war was almost a century ago now. My paternal grandfather fought in it.
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“Kay: We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public!
Jay: Man, we ain’t got time for this cover-up bullshit! I don’t know whether or not you’ve forgotten, but there’s an Arquillian Battle Cruiser that’s about to…
Kay: There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!”
Difference being that the MIB were working behind the scenes to make sure the world didn’t blow up while our current political leaders seemed to have lashed the wheel and retired below decks to play Farkle and watch Sportscenter.
Wasn’t The Great War considered primarily a failure of diplomacy and rampant militarism?
The assassination of a Prince leading to the deaths of millions and the destruction of 3 empires
and a war on 3 continents.
The Great War was bad for almost everyone. It helped breed the conditions that led to the Nazi’s and
the Holocaust.
The great war was a classic case of political leaders getting their hands on new technological toys (weapon systems) and not being able to resist the temptation to try them out.
Aircraft, all big gun battleships, the machine gun, submarines,
The assassination of Austrian Arch Duke Ferdinand was the spark, but any spark would have done.
Something to remember is that at the time the Great Stupidity started, there was no practical memory on the Continent of what warfare was actually like. The closest you got was the English, to whom the Boers taught every single lesson in contemporary warfare they would’ve needed in France… and who, immediately after the Boer War was over, worked as hard as they could to forget every last thing.
The Franco-Prussian war was relatively fresh, but it was a fast war.
Killed a lot of people but only ran 10 months.
It was two generations earlier.
The fourth Turning….
When the last of the elders that remember the last big war die….
You (and Strauss and Howe) got it. There’s almost nobody left with that hard-earned ability to truly manage geopolitical risk. So we get to learn it all over again.
One scenario I can’t dismiss starts with the US suffering economic collapse, welfare riots, etc, and withdrawing as a coherent force in world affairs. In the resulting vacuum nations such as China and Iran, anxious to cover over their own economic troubles and with a surplus of young men, engage in military expansion.