"Just How Likely Is Another World War?" Topic

"A century ago this month, Europeans stood on the brink of a war so devastating that it forced historians to create a new category: "World War." None of the leaders at the time could imagine the wasteland they would inhabit four years later. By 1918, each had lost what he cherished most: the kaiser dismissed, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which European leaders had been masters of the globe came to a crashing halt.

What caused this catastrophe? President John F. Kennedy enjoyed needling colleagues with that question. He would then remind them of his favorite answer, quoting German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg: "Ah, if we only knew." When, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Kennedy found himself "eyeball to eyeball" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, making decisions that he knew could mean quick death to 100 million people, he reflected on the lessons of 1914. At several decision points, he adjusted what he was inclined to do in an effort to avoid repeating those leaders' mistakes.

As they were choosing to fulfill commitments, or not, to mobilize forces sooner or later, the participants in the First World War were simultaneously seeking to frame public perceptions of the crisis. Each sought to blame its adversary. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, the victors took considerable liberty with the facts to justify punishing the vanquished. The Treaty of Versailles imposed such draconian penalties that it created conditions in which, just two decades later, the Second World War erupted. This larger drama has understandably shaped historians' accounts of the causes of the war. But as the best of the new books on this conflict, Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers, concludes forthrightly, the available evidence can be marshaled to support an array of competing claims. "The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol," Clark writes. "There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

To answer your question…pretty likely. I read the book.

Has the intelligence of "statesmen" gone up since 1914?

"Intelligence" "wisdom" no on both accounts. Fear of entering into something where there'll be only losers . IMO the only reason we haven't had the next one yet. History tells us it's only a matter if rims before a lunatic not lacking the essential madness gains control of a country with the required capacity to draw all others into a world war.

I'm sorry but I don't have much faith in those to achieve leadership roles in this present time. Is the book worth getting?

Thanks Tango

I think nukes reduce the likelihood of a full-blown world war.

Lots of little ones, though, unfortunately.

69 years so far without a world war and the bankers don't want their investments to get blown up.

I agree jpattern … we'll continue to see small conflicts, CION, terrorism, etc. … I include what is happening in Syria, Libya, Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali, etc., to name a few … Modern all out war, even what we saw in Iraq GW 2, proved to be very costly to most if not all concerned in both "blood & treasure" … Even with the moslem predilections for suicide bombings, martyrdom, etc. …

No mention my friend War Panda.

Amicalement
Armand

Most economies are very much linked to each other. The west needs china for its computers etc.
It is not the half agrarian societies of 1914 any-more.
Besides we are all broke.

Unlikely… mercifully. But things can change.

I think little wars could blow up into a full blown one.

Here's a possible scenario in 20 years.

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