How many of us have studied the diplomatic nonsense leading up to WWI? Yet here we see it beginning to be repeated.
Prior to WWI, all powers were involved in massive arms buildups. In the past quarter century since the end of the Cold War, all of the Western powers have been involved in massive cuts to defense, while indulging in massive increases in the civilian welfare regulatory industrial complex, which now dwarfs military spending 30 or 40 to 1 in most Western countries. Stateside, it's only just over 10 to 1. The risk isn't of a rush to war by the West - it's that the West will be overwhelmed by a surprise attack by a newly-emergent Russia and China, now purged of the Marxist virus (i.e. central economic planning) but still possessed of the expansive territorial ambitions of their forebears.