Posted on 12/06/2014 7:07:08 AM PST by nuconvert
A large war is looming absent preventive American vigilance
The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before.
In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored.
The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others.
The same was true in 1939. The tragedy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not that it had been too harsh. In fact, it was far milder than the terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in 1918 or the requirements it had planned for France in 1914.
Instead, Versailles combined the worst of both worlds: harsh language without any means of enforcement.
The subsequent appeasement of Britain and France, the isolationism of the United States, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany green-lighted Hitler’s aggression — and another world war.
We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted.
Lots and lots of people were well aware of the dangers of the international situation during this decade. They just weren't able to figure out what to do about it. Probably because the conflicts between the "old" powers of Russia, England and France were simply inherently in conflict with those of the "new" power of Germany, and to a lesser extent Italy.
For Germany to get what she viewed as her simple due, she'd have to take stuff away from the others, which was simply unacceptable to them.
I shudder to think what WWIII would look like. I don’t think the US will go unscathed like we did, relatively speaking, in the previous world wars.
WWIII will see a revolution in the US as what happened in Russia during WWI. I just hope the reds don’t win this time...
I would submit that it's already begun.
Everyone should rent/buy a copy of the movie “The Sand Pebbles.” Aside from being a brilliant movie and probably the best movie of the 1960s, it is wonderful in its depiction of how the US can be drawn into a war not of its own making.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060934/
A very real possibility, and I agree, I hope the Reds don't win this time either.
What is this guy smoking? Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Russia paid six billion marks and renounced claims to Finland, Estonia, Livonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi -- the vast majority of the populations of which were not ethnically Russian and did not welcome Russian occupation.
Under the Treaty of Versailles Germany, was required to 20 billion gold marks and lost Moresnet, Eupen-Malmedy, Alsace-Lorraine, Czechoslovakia, Upper Silesia, eastern Prussia, Danzig and its surrounding area, and renounce claims to Poland. Bear in mind, unlike the territory lost by Russia, the majority of the populations of a large portion of the territory lost by Germany were ethnic Germans. Germany also lost all foreign colonies, was put under occupation for 15 years and was to "gift" huge portions of its coal production to France for 15 years. Not to mention the crippling military restrictions and being forced to accept responsibility for the war in its entirety, and losing protector status of the nations lost by Russia under Brest-Litovsk.
Anybody who claims that the Treaty of Versailles did not directly lead to ww2 is peddling a serious agenda or else is deluded. The US did not ratify it and the British said the French were being vindictive and harsh. The French didn't like the treaty either -- Clemenceau was voted out of office because the French felt the treaty was too lenient!
Unfortunately, what goes around quite often comes around. What else should France have expected in 1939?
Good movie. In The Sand Pebbles, the sailors had the Chinese coolies doing their work for them because it was “their rice bowl.” Seems a little like the current situation. Like a kind of inertia has taken over.
I think so too. I think America will break up into regions. The politics of division has fragmented, and weakened our society.
With Russia and China getting all chummy and the usurper slashing our defenses, it would take a miracle for the reds not to win and win big.
Let it be so. Americans have irreconcilable differences over fundamental issues. We are no longer a cohesive United States.
The Reds would be decimated,trust me on this.
“Anybody who claims that the Treaty of Versailles did not directly lead to ww2 is peddling a serious agenda or else is deluded.”
He is saying it did.
I agree. Cyber attacks are acts of war. Russia and China are actively engaged and already know how to cripple our infrastructure and economy.
For sure world power shifts to that region leaving the US in the dust of history.
So are instigating revolutions (Kiev, Syria, and Egypt), overthrowing leaders (Iraq), direct attacks (Syria and Kosovo), and destabilizing countries (Afghanistan and Libya), all in the name of stopping terror. etc
Democrats.
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