Juin wrote:
That is also the story of human conflicts in a nutshell. I am reminded of Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly. Most conflicts have that ingredient; a close examination always reveals that each side never understood, or took seriously the perspective of the other side; if wars were not so deadly, the lead up to them is easily a comedy of errors.
Freshman history majors wonder why everyone is always screwing up. Sophomores wonder why life is so screwed up. Seniors wonder how anything big got done.
Yes, I am accusing Babs of making a freshman's mistake. Don't get me wrong, she's ok. But she is writing for a lay audience, it's not serious history.
There were 4 or 5 empires, Brits, Russians, Austro-Hungarian, the Turks, maybe the US. The European powers were all painfully aware there wasn't enough 'room' for everybody. A shakeout was coming, they knew they were in deep doodoo.
So they tried to prevent it, and their actions made it inevitable. Those interlocking alliances locked them into starting a war. A war that would bring them all down. The British empire wouldn't collapse for a while, but WW1 ripped their guts out, it was just a question of time after that.
The reason we haven't had a major war can be summed up in one word: nukes.
Humans discount the future, it's in our nature. We will always accept a larger risk later in exchange for reducing a smaller risk immediately. Like climate change...
But with nukes there is no later.
Bottom line, don't expect humans to be rational actors, because humans are not rational. One of the reasons for this is the context in which people work. An example of this is how often leaders do things to avoid appearing weak.
Ike knew Vietnam was a lousy idea. LBJ slowly learned it was a mistake. Everyone knew it was a mistake by the time Nixon became president (even Nixon), but he didn't want to be the guy to admit failure.
The 'news' is that we don't always screw up. But you'd be amazed how hard that is.