I have seen and read and heard just about all the theories of Russia marching down Main Street, well that was months ago, and now there are the predictions that HAMAS will sneak across the border and create havoc in the US.....basically these small wars could expand and that got me to thinking about what does it take to turn a rather small regional conflict into a world war.
The Washington Examiner has an interesting take on this question.
We are approaching a pivotal moment in history. The local war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is one front in a regional war between Israel and Iran. The regional war between Israel and Iran is a proxy for America's rivalry with Russia and China. So is the European proxy for that rivalry, the war in Ukraine. Add to that the endless standoff with another Chinese ally, North Korea, and the multiplying brush fires across the Sudanic belt of Africa, where Russia is fanning the flames. This is how a world war begins.
By the time you know a world war has begun, it's too late. The powder trail to the war of 1914 was lit in 1906, with the first of several small wars in the Balkans as local nationalisms unpicked the borderlands of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The war of 1939, which was the war of 1941 for Americans, was the war of 1931 for the Chinese, and the war of 1933 for the Jews. The Japanese began their Asian rampage by invading Manchuria a full decade before Pearl Harbor.
What time is it? Eight years passed between 1906 and 1914 and between 1931 and 1939. Eight years passed between the Iran deal of 2015 and the Iranian-sponsored war of 2023. History really does rhyme. Perhaps Barack Obama, the most professorial president since Woodrow Wilson, would like to share his thoughts with the class. But the beloved verbalist is strangely quiet these days.
When historians try to understand how local conflicts became global ones in 1914 and 1939, they look at those eight-year preludes. They see failure to control expansionist powers in time, and even appeasement as a decaying ruling class realizes too late what is happening. They see the hollowing of alliances, and how one era's security guarantee becomes another era's invitation to war. They see willed delusion, as when Britain's leaders told themselves the war would be over by Christmas, or that Mr. Hitler was a reasonable chap even if he was beastly to the Jews. Complacency is behind all of these errors, and arrogance behind complacency.
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