Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
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Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#2It'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 have any allies for their side that would cause a "world war"? Seems to me like if they started anything, then it would be them against the entire west, and as long as we don't feel compelled to invade them, they don't have a lot of power eh can project.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#3It'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…
The concern isn't China bombing Germany. It is China pushing to establish itself as the East China Sea's regional hegemon. This would involve displacing Japan, a conflict likely to pull in the U.S. That risks drawing in, at a minimum, the U.K. and Australia.
A U.S.-China conflict would shoot decades of progress in the head.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#4It'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…
The concern isn't China bombing Germany. It is China pushing to establish itself as the East China Sea's regional hegemon. This would involve displacing Japan, a conflict likely to pull in the U.S. That risks drawing in, at a minimum, the U.K. and Australia. A U.S.-China conflict would shoot decades of progress in the head.
Of course I would have to wonder what about Japan would be worth a war with the U.S.
Logistical value perhaps, for example by denying the U.S. the bases they currently have there, but certainly not for resources?
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#5[deleted]
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#6The 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 seem like there is an approximate 50 year cycle of large conflagration, perhaps because that is the approximate human generation, just enough time for people to forget the futility of war. Hopefully history will not repeat itself, but it often does.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#7Not 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 Americans see is from 5 media companies or whatever, so they can turn on a dime.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
Note if you have the USA play all the parts of WWI then its not much of a WWI anymore, is it?
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.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concern isn't China bombing Germany. It is China pushing to establish itself as the East China Sea's regional hegemon. This would involve displacing Japan, a conflict likely to pull in the U.S. That risks drawing in, at a minimum, the U.K. and Australia. A U.S.-China conflict would shoot decades of progress in the head.
Of course I would have to wonder what about Japan would be worth a war with the U.S. Logistical value perhaps, for example by denying the U.S. the bases they currently have there, but certainly not for resources?
The Chinese in general still feel humiliated by their treatment at the hands of the western powers and then their occupation by Japan in WW2. Furthermore they have an issue of not having enough resouces to feed their growth. Who ever owns the islands (more then one set - China is arguing with Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Philippines) has the rights to exploit the oil/gas fields in the ocean beds around them.
Now to the story. I can see the parallels to the run up to WW1 however there is one large difference. In WW1 there was no real dominate military power (i.e. has complete unmatched and overwhelming force). The fact is that the US military so overmatches everyone else that it would be a very short war. Blood and a mess but still very short.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#9Thankfully, 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 built both the Belgium fortifications... and the German artillery that eventually breached them!
Nowadays, the entire world is trading... but Europe in 1914 was a good example of this principle applying continent-wide.
Convince society the other side is evil and a threat; dismiss and degenerate the peace-mongers as unpatriotic... and economic interest be damned.
Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war
#10It'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 1970s were democratic, which gives you a small sample that coincides with an era when all states, democratic or not, have been relatively peaceful.
It also doesn't have a strong causal explanation for why it'd be the case. Democracies certainly aren't less violent in general: they don't have any issues fighting with autocracies. There's even evidence that weak or developing democracies, like Meiji Japan in the 1890s or the United States in the 2000s, actually are more violent than comparable states.
Most Democratic Peace theorists don't really offer anything more powerful than "the US/UK axis and its allies don't go to war with each other." Which is true, but uninteresting.