First World War--100 years ago

A century ago, yesterday, Europe plunge into what was called The Great War.Twenty years later, the world plunged into a bigger one. The possession of nuclear weapon might have prevented a third in the twentieth century and we will have to see about the twenty-first.

We are still dealing with the wreckage of 1914. The Middle East has always been chaos but the current boundaries were drawn after the First World War. Asia still has unresolved issues that date back (the Chinese point at Japanese militarism as Japan points back at China) and Europe is obsessing over Ukraine at the moment.

Even some the the names are the same. Russia and Serbia reemerged after the fall of Communism and even Germany is one nation--the most powerful in Europe.  France and Britain are still allies and the US is more deeply involved in spite of trying to "pivot" to Asia.

The First World War was probably inevitable.The Europeans had carved up Africa and Asia and Latin America was declared off limits by the US though the British got around that with some strategic investments in Argentina and Brazil.  There were too many Great Powers in too small a space. Sooner or later, they would come to blows.

And they did.

What everyone thought would be a short war was not and nearly 11 million people died.  It set up a worse war later and over 40 million would die in that one.  You would think someone, someplace, would learn from this.

They sort of did by establishing the United Nations but that seems to be more like a glorified Third World debating society.

The world will continue spinning on its merry way, dominated by psychotic descendants of apes who hopefully will not destroy the entire planet when the human experiment comes to its depressing conclusion.