The Trigger Points For World War III Are In Place

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/world-war-could-happen-iii-trigger-2014-7


Red light reflected from the carpet illuminates Russian President Vladimir Putin as he passes U.S. President Barack Obama at a group photo for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Benouville June 6, 2014.

Pessimism is a useful prism through which to view the affairs of states. Their ambition to gain, retain, and project power is never sated.

Optimism, toward which Americans are generally inclined, leads to rash predictions of history’s ending in global consensus and the banishment of war. Such rosy views accompanied the end of the Cold War.

They were also much in evidence a century ago, on the eve of World War I.

Then, as now, Europe had lived through a long period of relative peace, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Then, too, rapid progress in science, technology, and communications had given humanity a sense of shared interests that precluded war, despite the ominous naval competition between Britain and Germany.



Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/yes-it-could-happen-again/373465/#ixzz392cmp8HE

[Renew Deal]

1. That article has some meat to it

It's starts off sounding like day dreaming, but there are some real ideas in there.

[arendt]

2. The roger cohen piece starts out blaming Putin at least three times.

I stopped reading it. Sounded like they already have Putin set up for the Kaiser Wilhelm role.

Hardly surprising from an Uber-Zionist like Cohen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/opinion/roger-cohen-zionism-and-israels-war-with-hamas-in-gaza.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

Disappointed to click on such biased agitprop hiding under the veneer of objective history.

[steve2470]

3. I'd like to think that nuclear weapons make us rational, calm and peace-seeking nt

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Perhaps, but in the Cold War there was

a general agreement to not directly threaten the "national interests" of either super power. When that broke down, as it did in Cuba, we came perilously close to nuclear war.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union we ignored Russia as a great power, and pushed our military alliances into former Warsaw Pact nations. The fact that Russia retained its nuclear force, and the obvious other fact that it is a huge country with vast natural resources and a developed if decayed industrial base and would not remain fractured and incapacitated for very long seemed to not enter into the calculation.

We are now reaping the results of the miscalculations of our neocon triumphalists. We have a mess of unfortunate entanglements right up on the Russian border, and a revitalized authoritarian militaristic Russia determined to reassert it's great power status. In addition our own authoritarian militaristic asshats have considerable sway in both halves of our duopoly.

The potential for a disastrous misstep is very real, and the threat of nuclear escalation is not sufficient to prevent it.

[Javaman]

4. meh, we are always on the brink of another world war...

this is nothing new.

all it takes is some halfwit with a mission.

the nations will do the rest.

[Turbineguy]

5. Michelle Bachmann for President!

Louis Gohmert for VP!

[Javaman]

8. exactly. nt

[bemildred]

7. My he is a busy writer these days.

I sort of tuned out about halfway through because of the fearmongering and waving around of nebulous abstractions:

"Then, as now, Europe had lived through a long period of relative peace, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars."

[redqueen]

9. Well that was interesting . nt