West ponders how to stop - or fight - a new Great War

By EmmaZahn on Tue, 06/03/2014 - 2:36pm |

"It's not that the leadership in Russia or China is looking for a war - and the United States certainly isn't," says Kathleen Hicks, a U.S. undersecretary for defense until last July who now works for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The real worry is miscalculation."

One hundred years after the start of World War One, books on the period have become increasingly popular in Washington, Whitehall and NATO headquarters in Brussels, current and former officials say, and not purely for their historical interest. In June 1914, the killing of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist triggered actions and alliances that brought war in barely a month.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/03/us-security-war-idUSKBN0EE13L20140603

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A great book for the average reader of history regarding how WWI first unfolded in this way that the article talks about, in my opinion, is Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August.

by Elusive Trope on Tue, 06/03/2014 - 3:23pm

If there is a new cold war, it will probably be a smaller thing than the last one, since there isn't any real danger of Russia invading the NATO countries. A Soviet invasion of Western Europe would have been a near certainty if NATO had disarmed as the pacifists were advising.

by Aaron Carine on Wed, 06/04/2014 - 9:26am

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