An ancient trap awaits China and US - The Boston Globe:
"A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, World War I was entering its final phase.
No one in either Berlin or London had set out to expend so vast a quantity of blood and treasure on four years of industrialized slaughter.
...Historians often look back to the events of the 1890s and 1900s in an effort to trace the origins of the Anglo-German antagonism.
The long-established narrative goes something like this: The German economy was overtaking the British economy, a trend summed up in the words “Made in Germany” that were stamped on a rising proportion of imported manufactures.
Germany had imperial ambitions, too, acquiring colonies in Asia and Africa.
And it was building a fleet that was obviously intended to rival the Royal Navy.
Increasingly, as their economy boomed, the Germans argued that their political system — in which the parliament (the Reichstag) had much less power than its British equivalent, and the monarch much more power — was intrinsically superior. Their material successes bolstered an already deep-rooted nationalism.
The ultimate result was that Britain and Germany followed the ancient example of Sparta and Athens: the incumbent power and the rising power ended up going to war.
The Harvard political scientist Graham Allison calls it the
“Thucydides trap,” after the historian of the Peloponnesian War.
Are the United States and China on the way to repeating this classic historical mistake?
Having just spent a fascinating week in Beijing and Shanghai, I fear they may be..."
Read on!
Control your smart home with FIBARO's The Button - The Gadgeteer:
At least five counties recently passed resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners — a reference to so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago that don't cooperate with aspects of federal immigration enforcement.
