Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
Not a very good analysis of the causes of WWI or application to today:<p>Problems:<p>1) Cultural attitude of "eh, war is not so bad and higher tech means we'll be home by xmas".  See franco-prussian war and the most recent "world war" being Napoleon's activities in the decade after the revolution a century ago.  I'm not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena.  Of course that can change quickly, 90% of everything Americans see is from 5 media companies or whatever, so they can turn on a dime.<p>2) Germany surrounded by rapidly growing and arming enemies and no allies but Austria, paranoid lash out.  But can you blame them?  China surrounded by, um, Japan on one side?  Is NK threatening to invade?  Who exactly is supposed to invade China next decade if they don't invade today?  Why would they be paranoid?  Yes, maybe NK could try this scheme, but...<p>3) The root cause of the war being the ottoman empire decaying and almost dead and everyone wanted a lucrative piece of it. (edited to add, and no one wanted a competitor to get a piece of it, and willing to go to war to prevent it)  Incredible trade opportunity.  Maybe if you put the American Empire in its place and position this in the latter half of the 2000s century and starving people want our rice/corn?  Anyway the sick man of Europe lead to crazy allegiance switching in the years prior to WWI.<p>4) The article skipped several points WRT the German/British alliance thing, Germany was a continental Army power and the UK had a spectacular navy.  One nutcase admiral on the German side got them all into navy building leading to disaster WRT the natural alliance.  Other than the crazy admiral (Tirpitz?) they were natural allies and their royalty were related, something crazy close like the Kaiser was Queen Victoria's grandson or something.  Aside from the obvious trade issue that was brought up.<p>5) The dangers of multiculturalism.  Austrian Empire was a multicultural nightmare basically think conditions in modern Iraq, no majority and everyone hates everyone and the only thing holding it together is a strong empire.  Then the independent Serbians start going nuts so to prevent revolution spreading into their own empire the Austrian's fight the Serbians and the game is on.  So, uh, who is the nervous feeling multicultural empire with the neighbor in revolution?  Gonna try for USA again?  Maybe with a .MX revolution next door?  I think this is stretching it.<p>6) Speaking of revolution, Russia was falling apart internally and didn't do so well externally against the Japanese but holy cow do they have resources and manpower, so what better external distraction than a war?  Again, I'm just not seeing it. Another allusion to the USA?<p>7) Who plays the part of Italy?  Decades of "we're your ally" "nope just kidding".  Another allusion to the USA maybe WRT having Japan's back?<p>Note if you have the USA play all the parts of WWI then its not much of a WWI anymore, is it?<p>In groups men are by nature irrational not rational, there is nothing inconsistent with the old quote about WWI being impossible because its obviously futile, yet they had a war anyway.  I'm sure WW3 would be completely futile, we'll still have it anyway, but I don't think it'll be this decade and USA vs China or whatever.