{"id":6676,"date":"2015-03-20T07:32:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T12:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6676"},"modified":"2015-03-20T07:32:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T12:32:36","slug":"why-were-drifting-towards-world-war-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6676","title":{"rendered":"Why We\u2019re Drifting Towards World War 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/03\/financial-experts-world-war-3-coming-unless-stop.html\" target=\"_blank\">Why We\u2019re Drifting Towards World War 3<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The Economist\u00a0<a title=\"argues\" href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/leaders\/21591853-century-there-are-uncomfortable-parallels-era-led-outbreak\" target=\"_blank\">argues<\/a>\u00a0that there are ominous parallels between the conditions which led to the first world war and today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The United States is Britain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee global security. Its main trading partner, China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristling with nationalist indignation and building up its armed forces rapidly. Modern Japan is France, an ally of the retreating hegemon and a declining regional power. The parallels are not exact\u2014China lacks the Kaiser\u2019s territorial ambitions and America\u2019s defence budget is far more impressive than imperial Britain\u2019s\u2014but they are close enough for the world to be on its guard.<\/p>\n<p>Which, by and large, it is not. The most troubling similarity between 1914 and now is complacency. Businesspeople today are like businesspeople then: too busy making money to notice the serpents flickering at the bottom of their trading screens. Politicians are playing with nationalism just as they did 100 years ago. China\u2019s leaders whip up Japanophobia, using it as cover for economic reforms, while Shinzo Abe stirs Japanese nationalism for similar reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The New Republic\u00a0<a title=\"points out\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/article\/john-judis\/93287\/obama-administration-economy-recession?page=0,0\" target=\"_blank\">points out<\/a>\u00a0that global downturns can lead to war:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As the experience of the 1930s testified, a prolonged global downturn can have profound political and geopolitical repercussions. In the U.S. and Europe, the downturn has already inspired unsavory, right-wing populist movements. It could also bring about<strong>trade wars and intense competition over natural resources<\/strong>, and the eventual breakdown of important institutions like European Union and the World Trade Organization.\u00a0<strong>Even a shooting war is possible.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Telegraph\u00a0<a title=\"notes\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/danielknowles\/100099605\/this-really-is-beginning-to-look-like-1931\/\" target=\"_blank\">notes<\/a>\u00a0that the economic crisis in Europe is increasing tensions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tensions between European countries unseen in decades are emerging.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Indeed, Europe is stuck in a downturn\u00a0<a title=\"worse than the Great Depression\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2014\/12\/economy-worse-great-depression.html\">worse than the Great Depression<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why We\u2019re Drifting Towards World War 3 The Economist\u00a0argues\u00a0that there are ominous parallels between the conditions which led to the first world war and today: The United States is Britain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee global security. Its main trading partner, China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[130,1098,4309,281,4312,694,4310,4311,827,862,891,1823,3985],"class_list":["post-6676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-currency-wars","tag-economist","tag-europe","tag-natural-resources","tag-russia","tag-superpowers","tag-trade-wars","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-world-war","tag-world-war-3","tag-world-war-iii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6677,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676\/revisions\/6677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}