IRREVERSIBLE ESCALATION TO TOTAL WAR

Perhaps the greatest lesson of World War I was the illustration of the phenomenon I call “irreversible escalation to total war.” After Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914, a series of escalating provocations and retaliations ensued, culminating in a world war – two, actually, if you follow the chain of causality following the Carthaginian peace imposed on Germany at Versailles. 

The recent escalations of provocations and retaliations (both physical and verbal) between North Korea and the United States raises the ominous possibility that we are approaching, or maybe even have passed, that line beyond which escalation becomes irreversible, culminating an unpredictable, yet certainly calamitous outcome at a time when both sides possess nuclear weapons. The thing about that line is that you don’t know when you have crossed it until the outcome becomes manifest. In 1914, during the 39 days between June 28 when the Archduke was assassinated, and August 4, when war was declared, the question on everybody’s mind was, “Will there be war?” Once that question was answered, nobody foresaw the extent of the calamities to follow. It was this blindness to consequences that allowed the leaders of the Axis and Allied powers to embrace war as a viable course of action. 

See: North Korea Hits New Level of Brinksmanship in Reacting to Trump

        White House Weighs Response to North Korea’s Threats.

The problem with the escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un is the obstacle it presents to de-escalation without which crossing the line becomes inevitable. We seem to be approaching a point in history when putting an equator between ourselves and the Northern Hemisphere becomes the prudent thing to do. 

Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.

H.G. Wells

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes . . . a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive.

                                                                        Albert Einstein

What is past is prologue.

                                                                        William Shakespeare

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 

                                                                        George Santayana

History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

                                                                        Maya Angelou

The future is under no obligation to reprise the past.

                                                                        David Hume

Hope springs eternal in the human breast. 

                                                                        Alexander Pope