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Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

economist.com

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Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#71

Post by caf »

VLM wrote: post #7

Not a very good analysis of the causes of WWI or application to today: Problems: 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 A…

The difference between Germany and China is quite stark - Germany is a country perpetually at risk, with few geographical barriers to shelter behind. Germany must worry whenever Russia and France are allied, and be terrified when a rival controls Poland.

China, on the other hand, has considerable strategic depth behind defensible borders. A hostile power controlling the Korean peninsula is their greatest worry.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#72

Post by encoderer »

tanzam75 wrote: post #68
npt4279 wrote: post #9

Thankfully, I don't see WWIII starting anytime soon... But I've always strongly thought the "globalisation will make war unthinkable" argument is naive. We're tribal creatures -Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. As the author hinted at - Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and France were each other's biggest trading partners - by far! Heck, a Belgium company bui…

> Heck, a Belgium company built both the Belgium fortifications... and the German artillery that eventually breached them! Which fortifications are you talking about? The Germans used Krupp and Skoda siege guns to reduce the fortifications at Liège. Krupp was a German company, and Skoda was an Austro-Hungarian company based in Bohemia (today's Czech Republic).

And IIRC their development was DARPA-esque? Didn't the Germans put out a standing order to arms makers for a better siege gun?

Most of what I know of WWI I learned from Guns of August :)

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#73

Post by x0x0 »

Only morons like the economist would look at the US not being interesting in getting involved in a war in Syria -- where we would have to choose sides between an evil regime and al-qaeda -- and conclude "This betrays both a lack of ambition and an ignorance of history." In fact, it betrays rather a good grasp of recent history -- see both Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe America has finally learned to beware Republican assholes volunteering your (but not their!) children for war. One can dream, anyhow...

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#74

Post by Tloewald »

berntb wrote: post #44
Tloewald wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@bertb Communism isn't worse than anything no matter how bad. It's hard to determine how bad some of the less nasty communist regimes such as Cuba and Vietnam would have been without massive economic sanctions from the US. (Both Cuba and Vietnam wanted to be US allies.) There are several cases among my examples of the US taking action against real democracies. Some references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_B…

The subject was war. You started talking about your USA hatred. I asked for examples after the cold war (stupid of me to feed the trolls). You don't have anything relevant here either, so you list cases that are 40+ years old... This is a common pattern -- you can excuse anything (including burning food on the stove) with that a bad dictator had common interests with USA 50+ years ago... It is seriously funny when le…

I see you've inferred I am a "left winger" full of "USA hatred" and a "troll". You've also skillfully defeated arguments I have not made (e.g. blaming millions of deaths or lack of democracy in communist countries on the US).

And having done this you've declared "enough".

Well played.

Incidentally, I love the US and happen to live here. I simply wish the US would stop making really foolish decisions that waste blood and treasure on idiotic adventures which harm its standing in the world. I certainly don't think that any other power, either historical (e.g. the USSR) or speculative (e.g. China or India) is likely to do a better job, or be any "nicer" than the US has been thus far. But we can always do better, and the way to do better is to recognize past mistakes.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#75

Post by jusben1369 »

austinz wrote: post #70
jusben1369 wrote: post #55

It's an interesting time to be writing articles like this. Afghanistan, Iraq then the 2008 financial crisis. America lost prestige and the economy shrank considerably. These factors, real and perceived, coincided with the ongoing rise of China who for the most part avoided a real let down. I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year of this low point. The US economy i…

These same tired arguments were being made back in 2005, and given the utter lack of any sort of critical analysis backing them I predict they'll be just as wrong now as they were back then.

I wasn't making the argument in 2005 so that comment isn't very helpful. I'll assume you're just focused on the Chinese piece in your acerbic reply.

http://qz.com/160091/china-puts-out-yet-another-credit-marke... "China’s highly-leveraged and opaque financial system ranks high on the list of threats to global growth"

Or this that shows the recent problems: http://qz.com/72487/shadow-banking-brought-america-to-its-kn...

Finally this two days ago in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/business/international/chi...

"Official bank lending has more than doubled since the global financial crisis, growing nearly twice as fast as the overall economy. The even bigger problem, however, appears to come from the rise of a shadow banking system that has allowed a number of companies and individuals, often with political connections, to borrow from state-controlled banks at low interest rates and relend the money at much higher rates to private businesses desperate for credit at almost any price."

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#76

Post by marcosdumay »

zw123456 wrote: post #6

The parallel that was drawn in the article is that the U.S. is playing the part of Britain (a waning super power), China plays the part of Germany (a country with an emerging powerful economy and national pride) and Japan plays the part of France. It is an eerie comparison. At that time, many thought that the close trade ties of those countries would prevent war. The comparisons are not perfect of course. It does see…

Also, by 1914 the world was recoveing (slowly) from a very deep depression, and changing its energy sources.

But I'd argee that China does not feel the same pressure that Germany felt by the time... And Russia didn't enter the analysis at all. Times are very similar, but they are also quite different, depends on how one looks at it.

Anyway, I'm hating to see what I think at the headlines of the mainstream press. I tought it was bad when they ignored all the problems, but it's worse when they acknoledge them.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#77

Post by marcosdumay »

jusben1369 wrote: post #55

It's an interesting time to be writing articles like this. Afghanistan, Iraq then the 2008 financial crisis. America lost prestige and the economy shrank considerably. These factors, real and perceived, coincided with the ongoing rise of China who for the most part avoided a real let down. I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year of this low point. The US economy i…

"I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year of this low point. The US economy is finally rebounding - Q4 GDP looks very impressive."

I'm pretty sure one can find a similar quotation from 1913.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#79

Post by JeffL »

scarmig wrote: post #10
JeffL wrote: post #2

It's really hard to see anything big starting up in Europe, since all the countries are now officially democracies, and those that are at the corrupt end of the spectrum are not the most powerful. R. J. Rummels arguments about how democracies don't go to war against each other are pretty compelling. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MIRACLE.HTM I guess the biggest potential problem would be China, but do they really h…

Democratic Peace theorists always run into the issue of "what is a democracy." Consider WW1, in which most of the major belligerants, except for Tsarist Russia, have a plausible case for being called democratic. You might try to exclude one country or another, to save the Democratic Peace. But then you've got to be very careful about that: you can very easily add enough conditions until virtually no states until the…

I know that reality is always more complicated than theories attempting to simplify things, but Germany was officially an empire, with an emperor who had the power to declare war and appoint the chancellor. The Reichstag had no power to dismiss the government.

The Austro-Hungarian empire was also ruled by a hereditary monarch who was in charge of war and foreign policy.

I admit it's all a bit hand-wavy, but wasn't there a huge difference in nature between the likes of UK and France vs Germany, Austia-Hungary, and the Ottomans?

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#80

Post by jusben1369 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #77
jusben1369 wrote: post #55

It's an interesting time to be writing articles like this. Afghanistan, Iraq then the 2008 financial crisis. America lost prestige and the economy shrank considerably. These factors, real and perceived, coincided with the ongoing rise of China who for the most part avoided a real let down. I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year of this low point. The US economy i…

"I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year of this low point. The US economy is finally rebounding - Q4 GDP looks very impressive." I'm pretty sure one can find a similar quotation from 1913.

That is a fair point.
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