China is not 1914 Germany

[unhappycamper]

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2985358

China is not 1914 Germany
Feb 24,2014

Current events are frequently viewed through the prism of analogies. Words become shorthand for a particular type of situation. “Munich” equals the danger of appeasing bloodthirsty dictators.

“Vietnam” and now “Iraq/Afghanistan” mean the folly of getting involved in (or, in the case of Iraq, starting) civil wars in countries whose societies the outsiders don’t understand.

In some cases, acting on these parallels turns out to be wise. The fear of repeating “Munich” helps explain the forceful and successful American response to Soviet expansionism at the start of the cold war (Berlin, Korea, etc.). In other cases, they are misguided, as was the case in the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, where Nasser was no Hitler and giving up the Suez canal would not have equated to throwing Czechoslovakia to the wolves.

The analogy that is currently in vogue in Asia is “1914.” This is a particularly complex one, as there are two distinct narratives of that fateful year. The one that was prevalent in the United Kingdom and the United States for many decades perceived the war through the “Sarajevo” lens as a giant cataclysm in which all the players bore a share of the blame. Another interpretation, which is more dominant today, is best illustrated by the late German historian Fritz Fischer’s “Germany’s Aims in the First World War” (1961), which assigns most of the responsibility to Berlin.

[Democracyinkind]

1. Fritz Fischer is one of the most misunderstood historians of the 20th century.

Yes, he blames Germany, to the extent that it had global hegemonic ambitions.

What most people miss is that this is just as true for three other participants in that farce of a war: Great Britain, France, and the United States.

Fischer explicitly argued against theories of German innocence by proving that Holweg and much of the General Staff wanted war at least from 1912 on. Which is, again, true for all three other participants that I mentioned above.

This is more of a meta comment, the rest of the article makes salient points. It's not 1914 in Asia. (The cynic in me wants to say "rather it's 1904/05&quot .