<story><title>Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-11/100-years-after-world-war-i-there-s-reason-to-fear?srnd=premium-europe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>Actually this is debatable. The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them. Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent. The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.</text></item><item><author>qsdevacc</author><text>I find it laughable that you completely disregarded USA as one of the other &amp;quot;aggressive, belligerent&amp;quot; countries out there...</text></item><item><author>tomohawk</author><text>The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time.&lt;p&gt;Will China&amp;#x27;s big sea grab start a war?  So far, they&amp;#x27;ve been able to smother any of their neighbor&amp;#x27;s push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them.&lt;p&gt;What about when they invade Taiwan, which they&amp;#x27;ve said they will do?  What about when they take over some of Japan&amp;#x27;s islands, which they said they would do?&lt;p&gt;They seem to be going down this path where they think if they just push a calculated amount each time, it won&amp;#x27;t cause a big problem.  It&amp;#x27;s exactly that kind of thinking that is the problem, though.&lt;p&gt;And China&amp;#x27;s not the only aggressive, belligerent country out there.  There&amp;#x27;s also Russia (Crimea&amp;#x2F;Ukraine, Syria) and Iran (Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon), for example.  At what point do their aggressions spill over into a larger conflict?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crispinb</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re setting a high bar for belligerence. The US is diplomatically &amp;amp; militarily sophisticated enough that it frequently exercises rational restraint. It also is an admirably open society, undergoing strategic policy shifts as internal arguments get won and lost.&lt;p&gt;But no-one (for other than ideological purposes) ever mistook the US for a fundamentally peaceable nation (internally or externally).</text></comment>
<story><title>Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-11/100-years-after-world-war-i-there-s-reason-to-fear?srnd=premium-europe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ekianjo</author><text>Actually this is debatable. The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them. Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent. The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.</text></item><item><author>qsdevacc</author><text>I find it laughable that you completely disregarded USA as one of the other &amp;quot;aggressive, belligerent&amp;quot; countries out there...</text></item><item><author>tomohawk</author><text>The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time.&lt;p&gt;Will China&amp;#x27;s big sea grab start a war?  So far, they&amp;#x27;ve been able to smother any of their neighbor&amp;#x27;s push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them.&lt;p&gt;What about when they invade Taiwan, which they&amp;#x27;ve said they will do?  What about when they take over some of Japan&amp;#x27;s islands, which they said they would do?&lt;p&gt;They seem to be going down this path where they think if they just push a calculated amount each time, it won&amp;#x27;t cause a big problem.  It&amp;#x27;s exactly that kind of thinking that is the problem, though.&lt;p&gt;And China&amp;#x27;s not the only aggressive, belligerent country out there.  There&amp;#x27;s also Russia (Crimea&amp;#x2F;Ukraine, Syria) and Iran (Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon), for example.  At what point do their aggressions spill over into a larger conflict?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baursak</author><text>&amp;gt; Since they are not doing so&lt;p&gt;What?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Timeline_of_United_States_mili...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>