This year is the hundredth anniversary of the start of the Great War. According to an FT editorial, “the world can still draw lessons from the catastrophe of 1914”.
One lesson is that the contingent causes of conflict should not be confused with more deeply rooted tensions in international relations, or in the internal affairs of nations, that lead to war. Many seeds of the first world war were sown well before the killings in Sarajevo. ….
Another lesson is that the frictions of rival nationalisms, fuelled by pride, ambition, ignorance and lovingly nursed historical grievances, are no less capable of causing war today than they were in 1914. …. One hundred years ago it was Germany seeking its place in the sun at the British empire