Posted on 10/09/2015 9:12:59 PM PDT by traumer
Watching the events cascading in Syria makes it eerily easy to see how the political elites of 1914 stumbled into World War I while believing they were pursuing a sensible set of national interests.
The parallels are far from precise. The alliances bonding the players in today’s Middle East aren’t as interlocking as those in early 20th-century Europe. The war-mobilizing machinery isn’t as rigid. And, of course, today’s leaders have the precautionary example of World War I to rivet their attention: They know the pitfalls of escalation and the tragic consequences of unbounded warfare—though people don’t always heed the lessons of the past.
Like the Europe of 101 years ago, the Middle East today is a tinderbox, with plenty of kindling supplied by the combination of weak regimes, millenarian militias, and freelance rebels of various persuasion, each faction backed (or directly armed and aided) by larger powers, some engaged in proxy wars, others drawn in for converging motives while trying to resist the centripetal pull of deeper involvement (with diminishing success). It doesn’t require a wild imagination to envision the lighting of a match—some contemporary counterpart to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
“The Eastern World, it is exploding...”
And getting more relevant with each passing day.
There’s a chance of all out war because obama and western european leaders are idiots.
they make an absurd deal with a country that is much more dangerous than Syria ever was.
obama flames rebell ons by the MB in Egypt, Libya and Syria. Thankfully, Egypt fought back.
And now Russia is helping Assad fight ISIS and other “moderate” groups.
Syria and Russia are not the good guys, but they are, right now, the far less bad guys than ISIS.
Not really. 1914 Europe was Christian.
No. I don’t agree at all with the analogy.
The mid-east is the world’s ghetto. the mid-east is to world what Detroit is to the USA. Its where the lowest, most violent, least civilized people kill each other in an endless cycle of poverty and violence.
Its an unimportant place to which the world gives far too much importance. Put a fence around it, and make sure it doesn’t spread itself to nicer areas, that’s all.
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