How Today Resembles The Run-Up To WWI

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Depending on who you ask, we’re either living through a moment that feels totally unprecedented or alarmingly familiar.

Today’s guest argues it’s alarmingly familiar: great powers jostling for influence, nationalism on the rise, trade and technology turning into weapons, and festering conflicts with the potential to spiral.

In his new book, “The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History,” Yale historian Odd Arne Westad compares today’s geopolitical landscape to the decades leading up to World War I.

A hundred-plus years ago, the world looked modern, interconnected, and — at least to many people — too prosperous and rational for a major war. Then, in a matter of weeks, a localized conflict became a continent-wide crisis that ended in 40 million casualties.

The percentage of people alive today who have experienced great power conflict is vanishingly small, and after 80 years of great power peace, it can be easy to think of the prospect as far-fetched. Westad argues that this, too, may be a similarity to the early 20th century.

Today we talk about those similarities and differences and what lessons we can learn.