Very recommendable! We live in dangerous times as my blog attests to! Thank God, I am not the only one warning of a possibly impending World War III if humanity is not careful!
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
George Santayana
Some of the premises of this author are questionable or dubious (e.g. Trump Derangement Syndrome and adoration of Putin the Terrible in form of "Putinism"). The title of his article is a sign of lack of candor!
The author, i.e. Lord Daniel Hannan, omitted to discuss how close we currently might be to a World War III given the Russo-Ukraine War and the Iran War (see my blog posts regarding label World War III).
"Countries do not slide into war. They collapse into it suddenly, unexpectedly, incredulously.
“I had grown up in the optimistic belief that major wars were a thing of the past,” the philosopher Bertrand Russell recalled of the 1914—1918 cataclysm. “When I heard the news of the war, I felt as if a curtain had been torn aside and the world revealed itself as a dark and terrible place.” ...
the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig wrote. “It is as if the world has gone mad.”
I am becoming morosely convinced that a major global conflict is gathering head and that we will be caught as much off-guard as our ancestors were at the start of the 20th century. ...
Like them, we have been lulled by three generations of peace. Not total peace, obviously. Just as in their day, we expect occasional wars in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and sometimes, the remote parts of Europe. But, much as they had not known an all-out conflict since the end of the Napoleonic wars a century before ...
Globalization is indeed a check on bellicosity. Free trade makes waging war both less rewarding (why fight to control assets when everyone can buy them at the same price?) and more costly (the disruption to a belligerent’s economy is more severe). ...
We are seeing a similar swing today. More trade barriers have been erected than removed every year since 2008. The difference is that, this time, the chief defender and beneficiary of the global order, the U.S., has itself turned protectionist, and in the most aggressive way. This time, the rush to autarky has come before the conflict rather than accompanying it. ..."
Daniel Hannan (Source)
