{"id":8891,"date":"2014-07-28T07:30:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T11:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=8891"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:07","slug":"one-world-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/07\/one-world-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"One World of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Global<\/a>This is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.\u00a0 There has been an ongoing fascination with this war, how it was caused, whether it could have been avoided, and the trappings of the war itself.\u00a0 As one contributor to the U. S. Militaria Forum<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

On one hand you have mounted troops, horse drawn artillery, lancers and communications by pigeon and signal flag.\u00a0 On the other you have the intoduction of machine guns, aircraft, chemical warfare, and tanks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, I think the uniforms, especially the wool ones with bullion SSI’s are really compelling and artistic in their own way.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not to mention small, unartistic details like the sixteen million or so deaths from that war.<\/p>\n

Some still ask, “How could people do this to each other?” as if there were not thousands of years of human behavior serving as precedent, as if borders on a map have ever been able to contain or restrain human conflict.\u00a0 Was Hobbes<\/a> (1660) so wrong about our nature?<\/p>\n

From [man’s] equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends.\u00a0 And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.<\/em><\/p>\n

The map at the top of this post is called The Global Conflict Tracker<\/a>, and is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a foreign-policy think-tank founded at the close of World War I.\u00a0 I counted thirty-four wars and conflicts on this map — and those are only the ones listed as “conflict prevention priorities” by CFR’s Center for Preventive Action<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Center for Preventive Action says its mission is “to help prevent, defuse, or resolve deadly conflicts around the world and to expand the body of knowledge on conflict prevention.”\u00a0 I wonder, looking at the map and considering human history, how many conflicts this think-tank thinks it is going to prevent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.\u00a0 There has been an ongoing fascination with this war, how it was caused, whether it could have been avoided, and the trappings of the war itself.\u00a0 As one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8891"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8925,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8891\/revisions\/8925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}