Eerie echoes of the past

Following the news reports of the past week, I have been trying to figure out which historical parallel is closer:

Is 2013 more like 1914 or 1938?

Heck if I know, but the world’s punditry seems to be seeing both and running with it.

Granted, George Santayana said those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and it is pretty obvious that the world’s current crop of leaders have learned little from their study of history. Of course, teaching history these days is more an exercise in being politically correct that actually looking at what happened.

For example, what happened in Munich in 1938? Well, the major powers of the day came to resolve a territorial dispute over a part of a sovereign county (that was not represented at the conference). On one side was Germany, led by a charismatic leader named Adolph Hitler. He had been a corporal in World War I (then called the Great War because World War II hadn’t happened yet) and had risen to the position of chancellor of Germany (its highest post). Hitler must have been a pretty good poker player because he sure knew how to run a bluff.

On the other side was Great Britain (probably at its imperial height) and France. Now, one has to remember that running an empire is a pretty expensive business and this was in the time of the Great Depression that tanked economies worldwide. In addition, the French spent much of a generation of its young men in the bloody trenches of the Great War and was not eager to repeat the exercise. The Brits were not all that eager, either, have lost a bunch of young men as well as a bunch of money, that it still was trying to get the Germans to pay them in reparations for its role in the First War.

Mister Hitler, already having bluffed the French and the Brits out of keeping his troops out of the Alsace-Lorraine when he marched a small group into the disputed region (with a lot of noise and fanfare that made it look like a much larger force), decided to try again with the annexation of a chunk of neighboring Czechoslovakia. It worked.

The prime minister of England landed with a piece of paper that gave Hitler what he wanted and gave the Brits and the French what they wanted, which was a reason not to go to war. All hail the peacemakers … only Hitler went to war anyway a year later against the Poles and that dragged the Brits and the French back to war … that eventually cost about 60 million humans their lives. Now, had the French held the line at Alsace-Lorraine, or both the Brits and French held the line at Munich, then … well, we will never know.

What happened in 1914? Not much. It was the summer of 1914 that got everyone in to trouble. It started over the assassination of an Austrian nobleman, and then pretty much snowballed almost with a life of its own, until about every nation in Europe was choosing up sides and modern warfare put on its first demonstration of industrial might. The sad thing was that most of the leaders really didn’t want to fight a war, and thought it would be a relatively quick one. Well, we in the 21^st Century have heard that canard, have we not?

So, what are the parallels? Last weekend, the major powers represented on the UN Security Council (plus Germany) reached some sort of nebulous deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran that supposedly, but maybe not, reins in Iran’s ability to process uranium to the point where it can be used in nuclear bombs and the like. Now, the Americans say the deal says one thing and the Iranians say it says another, but then the Americans still are going to go ahead like what they said the deals says is what is going on because they have been fighting wars in that area since 2001 and tired of it; and the Iranians appear to be going to ignore what the Americans are saying and go their merry way. Of course the bottom line is a) do we believe that Iran (after being caught in numerous bluffs and lies) is being truthful when it says it won’t use its capabilities to build a nuclear weapon and b) that the Iranians are merely misunderstood waifs who have been unjustly punished for sponsoring various and sundry terrorist organizations around primarily the Middle East and repeatedly muttering that they want to wipe a neighboring sovereign state off the map. Only time will give us that answer.

Now, not to be ignored, on the other side of the Eurasian landmass, the most populous country in the world is telling its neighbors that that territory they thought was theirs, well … it really belongs to China and they need to get over it. The neighbors are not impressed nor are they very happy. Now, China has told the world that this area of international waters (well, most of it), but includes some islands that have been administered by Japan for almost a couple of centuries, is part of its air defense zone and anybody who wants to fly there has to have Chinese hall passes. Well, the first the Americans, then the Koreans and then the Japanese said poohy to yoohy China and flew their planes through the zone, because areas of it are in zones they already had said they could fly in.

Now, the problem with all this huffing and puffing is that somebody is liable to make a mistake … a very human thing to do … and we will have a repeat of 2001, with airplanes playing bumper cars in the air. Then it cost the Chinese a fighter and a pilot and led to a short diplomatic demarche between the US and China.

This time, however, it seems that the sides are upping the ante and backing their bluffs with a little bit more firepower. The problem with firepower is sometimes, somebody does an oopsie and pulls a trigger and a figurative Austrian noble person gets bumped off.

I guess we could be dusting off the old “domino theory” of global politics, but I hope not. As it stands, however, I don’t see nothing good coming out of events in either Geneva (and the Middle East) or in the East (and South) China Seas. It will be too easy for things to go wrong and then the bullets could start flying for real.

Add to that the economic calamity that is Obamacare, and I think the US is in for a nasty year in 2014. I could be wrong … in fact I hope I am wrong. War really is such an ugly, vile and destructive business. It really ought to be abolished as a bad idea … unfortunately, people just aren’t made that way and war will remain for the foreseeable future an unfortunate part of mankind’s fate.