The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War. Brookings Institution

The Rhyme of score: Lessons of the Great warf atomic number 18. primarily this year I was on vacation in Corsica and happened to tramp into the church of a tiny village in the hills where I lay down a memorial to the stagnant from military personnel War I. Out of a population that pile have been no more(prenominal) than 150, eight-spot young men, intent among them only terzetto last names, had died in that conflict. Such lists foundation be found all over Europe, in capital cities and in gnomish villages. Similar memorials are spread more or less the globe, for the Great War, as it was known foregoing to 1940, also draw soldiers from Asia, Africa, and North America. \n if we smoke see ultimo our blinders and take musical note of the telling parallels betwixt then and now, the shipway in which our conception resembles that of a snow years ago, write up does give us valuable warnings. \nWorld War I still haunts us, partly because of the sheer photographic plate of the carnage10 million combatants killed and many a(prenominal) more wounded. unbounded civilians lost their lives, too, whether with military action, starvation, or disease. Whole empires were unmake and societies brutalized. \nBut theres other reason the war continues to haunt us: we still cannot ensure why it happened. Was it caused by the overweening ambitions of most of the men in power at the time? Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, for example, wanted a greater Germany with a global reach, so they challenged the naval victory of Great Britain. Or does the explanation trickery in competing ideologies? field of study rivalries? Or in the sheer and on the face of it unstoppable momentum of militarism? As an fortify race accelerated, generals and admirals do plans that became ever more aggressive as well as rigid. Did that make an explosion inevitable?