[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Perhaps you are correct. Spengler had the concept of “the period of “contending states.” Which may have been the time starting with Napoleon and still going on.

[discostu]

Between who gains power and who gets bitter and angry most wars lay the seeds for the next war. It’s not like there was some grand period of peace before Napoleon showed up. If you want to start looking at the daisy chain of wars begetting wars you can probably track WWII all the way back to stuff in the Old Testament pretty quickly.