@Potemkin
Potemkin wrote:Before 1914, there were people who claimed that a general European war was "now impossible" because the economic and human costs would be "too high". Guess what happened in August 1914....
Back in 1914 nobody had nuclear weapons either. Besides, this isn't 1914, this is 2021. You can't treat today's wars like they are yesterday's wars. That's what they did in 1914 was treat World War I as if it were the American Civil War with disastrous consequences with millions of soldiers getting mowed down by machine gun fire when charging the trenches.
They learned the hard way in 1914 that you can't treat World War I like the American Civil War. It wasn't the American Civil War they were fighting again. They probably learned the hard way too that "to win without fighting is the acme of skill" given the massive casualties of World War I AND how World War I didn't solve anything and helped to bring about World War II. That being said, wars from the past do have lessons like it's better not to fight if you really don't have to (which they didn't have to in World War I) and if we don't learn some of those lessons today then we are doomed to repeat them with far far more serious consequences than what World War I had to offer for the world.
Aside from that, nuclear weapons is what kept the Soviet Union and the U.S. from directly fighting each other on a massive scale during the Cold War. If nuclear weapons didn't exist during the Cold War then no doubt the U.S. and the Soviet Union would have fought each other on a massive scale in a conventional conflict that probably would have made World War II and all the casualties of World War II like like a total joke.
Another unresolved problem we see here and Russia is not the only guilty major power here, is how bigger countries do not respect the rights of smaller countries. This was the case before and after World War I. The problem with this, is that such behavior by the bigger and stronger countries and the notion of "might makes right" encourages smaller countries to acquire nuclear weapons to guarantee their rights and security are respected. Might doesn't always make right and the "might makes right" mentality and the "law of the jungle" mentality can lead to disastrous consequences globally because it encourages the proliferation of nuclear weapons and makes the use of those weapons more possible.
"I need ammunition, not a ride!" -Volodymyr Zelenskyy