Abstract: There is a dominant tradition, especially in the USA, to not see 1914 for what it was: a war of aggression, a war crime, a crime against humanity of the greatest proportions.
Both the aggression, and its denial, are cases of emotions dominating reason. It’s historically, psychologically, and philosophically instructive, even fascinating.
What people have been exposed to first, they believe more deeply. And of course emotions are the reasons that come first. It’s sheer sedimentary neurobiology. If you think anew, what happened in one’s mind first tends to still leave the deepest emotional layers intact. Often the deepest is what is thought to profit one’s nation, tribe, or religion first.
***
Bad Boys Be Bad Boys: Leaders of the Kaiserreich Imprinting Themselves In Versailles, 1871.
[When Minds Goose Step, The Goose Soon Cooks; Polyglot Bismarck In White, Center.]
People get emotionally attached to cuddly bears, foods, habits, etc. Just because they were exposed to them, first. The same happens with ideas, or even songs. As the guitarist, singer, composer Keith Richards observed, people make out first in a car, while a song plays on the radio, and, thereafter, forever, they will feel it’s the best song in the world.
Konrad Lorentz systematically studied this phenomenon of imprinting, and got the medicine-biology Nobel for it. Ducklings follow whatever they are exposed to first. It’s not difficult to guess what happens:
New neural circuitry is created by the first exposition to whatever shows up, and thereafter, having being created stays roughly the same. Similarly for the cognitive and emotional circuitry of entire nations. Once in place, it’s nearly impossible to rewrite.
Common wisdom on World War One in the USA does not see the facts as they happened, because they contradict the deepest emotions learned first on the subject: the war was an accident (Sarajevo), the nations of Europe were all the same vicious bunch (hence the USA was right to get rich from the war), the USA tried to bring back peace (but the terrible Versailles Treaty ruined it).
What’s imprinting? Obviously, imprinting is the building of neural networks. Where there was none before, there are some after. Once there are some, new ones are difficult to build; just as it is difficult to build new structures out, or above, old ones. The ethology (Lorentz and company) enlightens the neurobiology, and the establishment of all emotions, hence values. The hierarchy of values has to do with chronological order.
Considering the way imprinting has to work neurologically, an immediate very important philosophical consequence arises: if one wants to be philosophically correct, one will have to be extremely careful about the nature of first exposition… to anything, whatsoever. As what comes first tends to be neurologically irreversible. For the youth, or for oneself, or for any excited tribal member, anywhere out there.
Socrates pontificated that the unexamined life was not worth living, I will counter-pontificate with the following, more stringent declaration:
The unexamined experience is not worth having.
Nationalism is an example of duckling behavior. The tendency of young males to go to war after getting orders to do so, maybe viewed as a tendency strongly manifested by young ducklings. Goose stepping into war is a consequence of imprinting of impressionable youth.
My acid views of Dylan and Oprah Winfrey, two entertainers, were poorly considered by some, perhaps trying to spare pets they are attached to, from blame. More modest people tend to live grand lives through the great. Thus the popularity of celebrities. And the necessity to adore & lionize them (to make them great, hence admirable). Same for nations. Nations are the ultimate celebrities.
Thus many lionize the “Germany” of 1914.
One of the honorable commenters on this site, Old Geezer Pilot, expressed succinctly the Common American Wisdom on “Germany” by claiming that: “Doesn’t anyone suspect the BRITISH for having pushed Germany into starting WWI? After all, Germany was on track to out-produce Britain in Dreadnought class ships very soon…”
No, there was absolutely no way that the Kaiser could catch up with Britain in battleships. Why? Because Britain had basically no army. All British military spending was on the Royal Navy. Germany had the world’s mightiest army, made to crush and encircle the formidable French army, the world’s second mightiest. That cost so much money, very little was left for the Kriegsmarine.
I explained, in the “Plot Against France” and in “Emotions Prime Reason II” what happened in 1914. The concept “the British” and “Germany” are NOT comparable. “Germany” did not exist really as a nation. “Germany” was just as an hysteria of poorly designed robots. “Germany” was a dictatorial plutocracy of the spastic and delirious type. Britain was a plutocracy, sure, but under a thick representative democracy’s layer. An evil dictatorship in Germany, a sort-of democracy in Britain: one cannot compare.
I excruciatingly explained in minute details many times that the American leadership goaded the Kaiser into war. The USA had interest for an attack of “Germany” on the rest of Europe. Britain, or France, had a very good reason to avoid war: time was working in their favor, as they were tapping their global empires into giant co-prosperity spheres. Moreover those democracies could not organize a conspiracy, as they societies were too open. And the fact is, they did not conspire.
But the handful of military men at the head of “Germany” could conspire, there were no democratic institutions to check them, and they did conspire, nobody could stop them. We have the documents, we have the facts. We have the attack. “Germany” attacked, “Germany” did the war crimes, within days of said attack.
The explicit analysis by Molkte and company, is that “Germany” was losing the economic, hence military, race. They were correct. That was precisely due to what they clang to, the plutocracy they led. Quite a bit the same situation as in the USSR, North Korea, and maybe soon, China.
The attachment to the Kaiserreich is one of the most striking of those which afflict the West (a variant of this is the attachment of Jews to Keynes, who was pro-Nazi…).
Loving the Reich is the other side of the coin that equates France and Britain, two democracies, to a bloody dictatorship. Thus identifying plutocracy and democracy as the same.
The Kaiserreich, also known as the Second Reich, was the ridiculous dictatorship established by Bismarck as the “German empire” in 1871 at Versailles, in a manly ceremony (see above). In this attachment, the blame for the First World War is spread equally, by platitudes about bloodthirsty Europeans.
That legend is particularly important for the USA’s tragic history, as it excuses the embargo shirking, fortune making attitude of the USA, selling to the Kaiser what he needed to pursue the war. That complicity of the USA and the Kaiser endured until the day came to charge to the rescue of victory, lest Britain and France would keep on ruling the world all by themselves.
As I have explained many times, WWI was not an accident, but a determined conspiracy. And wittingly or not, the leadership of the USA was on the side of the bad guys.
France, Belgium, Britain, and even Russia were completely innocent of the war. Britain, to start with, did not even have an army (or more exactly, the entire British army was no more than one single French army corps).
The French government was so unprepared for war, that all ministers of the government were either completely out of France, as the Prime Minister and the President were, or far away in vacation, when the Kaiserreich mobilized. An under-secretary of agriculture had to launch the French general mobilization.
Reading French or British newspapers, one week before the “German” attack, show no inkling at war.
Nobody could suspect that General von Molkte, the “Prussian chief of Staff”, head of the Kaiserreich army conspiring with four others, had declared in a war council of 1912:
General von Moltke: “I consider a war inevitable—the sooner, the better. But we should do a better job of gaining popular support for a war against Russia, in line with the Kaiser’s remarks.” His Majesty confirmed this and asked the secretary of state to use the press to work toward this end.”
One does not need to artificially create “popular support” if one’s country is attacked, so Molkte intended to attack.
That mass homicidal general was a distant relative, so I knew the inside stories from my astronomer uncle, who was his (grand)son in law; clearly Molkte caused the war, the point man of a dirty mood that had grown over two generations. Molkte, in his fascist dumbness, expected a quick and shattering victory over the French armies. He did not expect that the French would fight like crazy to preserve (their) freedom and democracy.
The French nearly destroyed the main German armies at the First Battle of the Marne, a counter-offensive on the fifth week of the “German” attack (a shattering victory would have been achieved, if the British army corps had been speedier). Afterwards, Molkte fell apart psychologically: he had started the war that was going to destroy the satanic order of things that he wanted to see rule the world with.
Wilhem II being all over the map psychologically, Molkte and his co-conspirators sent him incommunicado to a vacation home in July, with a crafty lie. They were afraid that, at the last moment, the Kaiser, grandson of Queen Victoria, would stop the planned invasion. Thus they kept him in the dark about what their true intent was (although, once he finally learned from his generals that they were going to attack the world, the Kaiser approved).
What of the assassination in Sarajevo in all this? It’s the standard fare of the (naïve) textbooks. It is much loved, as it provides a mechanism for the thesis of the “accidental” war. The heir of the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated, in a conspiracy from a number of students, guided by elements of the Serb “Black Hand”, who were part of the secret Serb services (acting on their own, without government authorization).
The Archduke was a grim character, not very popular, all the more as he was grimly determined to maintain peace. To boot, he was best friend with the German Kaiser Wilhem. The Archduke’s assassination was a godsend for the war Party of Molkte and company: they got a casus belli, of sorts, or, at least, Austro-Hungary did, and, at the same time, the tragedy removed the greatest enemy of war among the Central Powers’ plutocratic oligarchs.
So determined were the assassins leading the “German” military that, when they encountered unexpected resistance in Belgium from the Belgians and the French, they went insane. They had not expected this. They threw millions of soldiers through Belgium, expecting to quickly break-through, and encircle the French armies (Schliefen plan). That did not happen. French resistance became nearly suicidal: one day 27,000 French soldiers died in combat. Orders were given from above, by the Prussian General Staff, to mass massacre civilians. People such as general Ludendorff came to personally supervise combat. We have reports of two year old girls being assassinated.
Unsurprisingly, Ludendorff, a war criminal in 1914 already, was the most determined founder of the Nazi Party. After Bavarian soldiers fired a volley of gunfire into the top Nazis, in 1923, some were killed, and all fled, including Hitler… All, except general Ludendorff, who kept marching towards the troops.
Much of the preceding are inconvenient truths, because they keep bringing us back to the question of why did the USA help the Kaiserreich? Is the same old same old much older than has been suspected?
Some will say: ”So what?” But the same impulse that leads the American secret services to spy on democracy, the same Dark Side, was already fully in evidence a century ago.
Not only did the USA leadership goad the Kaiser into war, by promising an alliance, but it delivered said alliance: the USA provided the Kaiser’s henchmen with raw materials for explosives until 1917, making a national fortune in the process.
Socrates thought he lived according to: ”Unexamined politics is not worth having.”
However, he was tried because he had neglected a higher calling. The more pertinent: ”Unexamined emotions are not worth having.” The emotional system of an individual, just as that of a nation, or even that of current of thought, if they are not examined, are not worth having.
The emotions the ruling class conferred to the People in Germany, down below, were all wrong, deeply evil. Nietzsche understood this perfectly. The turn took only a few years. Nietzsche saw his friend and fellow musician Richard Wagner take a turn for the worst. Courageously Nietzsche denounced Wagner to the world in “Nietzsche Contra Wagner”. The most acute madness of the German People lasted from 1871 to 1945.
However, that same madness is still going in those who fail to distinguish between the fascist, mass murdering aggressors in 1914, and their victims. So the difference still has to be taught. No doubt the Germans have been much instructed on the subject. However, in the USA the moods, methods, ingrained emotions, and culture that made possible the betrayal of the Republic in 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941 are still beyond any suspicion.
German judges have decided to put on trial a SS who was only 19 when he obeyed orders at Oradour Sur Glane, contributing to the assassination, mostly by torture, of 700 innocent civilians, many women and children. 247 women and 205 children were burned alive in a church.
It’s not just about justice. It’s about education: soldiers cannot obey criminal orders, and contribute to a war crime. That brings a present-day quandary. Private Manning exposed to the world the killing of innocent civilians by the U.S. Army. Who was the criminal here? Manning, who did not obey orders, and revealed the crime (not really an accident, the recording show), or those who condemned him for not partaking in a criminal cover-up? Once again, under Obama, the Choom Gang president, all values are being inverted.
Exactly the game the Kaiserreich played, until the apocalyptic end of 1945.
Conclusion: To think anew, one has to break down the deepest emotional layers. What can do this? High emotions and passions. Pain. Even pain can be fine, if it is what’s needed to take out erroneous neurology (example: Germany suffered so much in WWII, that it made drastic reforms of its soul; Japan did not suffer as much, by a full order of magnitude, and thus did not improve its soul as much!)
Pain can help to define goodness when, or where, nothing else will. Thus pain helps create a valuable world. If emotion primes reason, only greater emotion will move in the sense of greater reason.
Imprinting passes by emotion first, as emotion is the universal, primary learning system. But it does not stop here. It then goes down all the way to genetics, though epigenetics (=”Lamarckism”). Apparently, pain can change one’s DNA: http://www.mcgill.ca/…/chronic-pain-alters-dna-marking… (Thanks to Alexi Helligar for the link).
Learning is everywhere, and all the way, as long as we open our hearts to it.
Patrice Aymé
***
Warning: My correct point of view is that the cause of WWI, was Nazism, Version 1.1. That opinion was obviously not shared by Bertrand Russel, the well known philosopher and logician. Why? Russell was one of the top Lords in Britain, and, obviously was very emotionally attached to the plutocratic principle that had made the grandson of Queen Victoria the dictator of Germany. If the Kaiser had won in the summer of 1914, the glory of Russell would have risen even higher. Of small things even great minds are made!
Tags: 1914, Emotions, Imprinting, Reason
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
January 10, 2014 at 12:06 am |
Alexi Helligar Apparently, pain can change one’s DNA: http://www.mcgill.ca/…/chronic-pain-alters-dna-marking…
Chronic pain alters DNA marking in the brain | Newsroom – McGill University
http://www.mcgill.ca.
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January 10, 2014 at 12:07 am |
Patrice Ayme Wonderful, Alexi, I’m integrated this in the conclusion of the essay. Lamarckism: deepest learning.
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January 10, 2014 at 11:27 pm |
Dear Patrice, Unfortunately, being a Jew, i can’t refer neutrally, without deep emotion to the historical event of outbreak of WWI, that brought directly to WWII, with all its catastrophic results to my family and myself. For me to try to understand the events connected to outbreak of WWI is kind of psychotherapy. Yet as contrary to the WWII, which was 100% German initiation, and here i blame not only the Fuhrer but the majority of Germans, who supported him actively or passively. And i don’t speak only about the less educated masses, but also the authentic leading elites.
Yet the outbreak of WWI is much more complicated story.
We have to start to understand that Germany, came to existence only few decades before the outbreak of WWI, after Prussians winning the 1871 war against France. Until then but also after the unification of Germany, the Germans felt inferior against the French. Paris was Paris and Berlin couldn’t come close to its importance. So they tried to cover up these feelings of inferiority with stories of superiority about the German race. After the unification, as Germany became a dominant force in Europe, it wanted to become also major worldwide player. This explains also the strong connection of German after 1871 to its traditional rival the Austrian empire, with whom they fought war just few years before the unification (1866). This also explains the German friendship to the declining Ottoman Empire, that caused enmity with Russia, that later became a decisive factor in the outbreak of WWI.
The unprecedented German economic rise in 40 years following the unification, becoming the biggest European economy, while still remembering the history of continuous humiliations they had to absorb from France in the years previous to 1871, made the Germans paranoid about losing their recently achieved dominant position in Europe. This feeling strengthened with the enormous Russian economic development, that started in late 19 century and got extra push with the political reforms following the revolution of 1905 and the French-Russian pact from 1892.
This was the psychological-emotional background, that made Germany paranoid and also aggressive. All the generals including Molkte (the hero of the Franch-Prussian war at 1871), wouldn’t be able to start a world war, if not the German feeling of being unjustly kept as the underdog of Europe.
Of course there were some additional unfortunate circumstances, like the murder of Ferdinand, who personally strongly opposed the war in the Balkans, and his murder weakened very much this opposition. Ferdinand was also close associate to Wilhelm II, and his murder provoked in psychologically not very stable Kaiser, state of unpredictability. And the last but not the least, the old monarch Franz Josef, aged 84 at 1914, couldn’t oppose the militarily activist intentions of Leopold Graf Berchtold von und zu Ungarschitz, Frättling und Püllütz or shortly Count Berchtold who was obsessed greatly with the Balkan wars.
Conclusion; Patrice you rightly said emotions and psychology are the driving force behind the history and as so the human history is arbitrary and unpredictable. All the idea that there is causality in human history comes from the Bible and as so many other claims in the bible, it is also not correct.
I know with this statement above i will make angry many historians and rightly, because there are times, when i do think the history is predictable, like i would claim that the Arab revolution could be predicted, and i have done it few month before its outbreak
viz; https://rodeneugen.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/some-history-and-an-accurate-prediction/
still if you ask me to where this revolution is heading and what impact it will have on the world, i wouldn’t know.
So let us stick to the notion, history is unpredictable, and better to be careful, not to start a WWIII.
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January 11, 2014 at 4:59 am |
All incredibly interesting to this Brit living in Oregon who was born in London during the last year of WWII.
However, I was curious, Eugen, about your last sentence. Was that an entirely random thought or do you think there is a growing risk of another global war? If so, would love to hear your thoughts in that regard.
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January 11, 2014 at 9:11 am |
Dear Paul, you are asking maybe the most challenging question, to be asked, “can we predict the future?”
Exists an ancient Hebrew proverb “The prophecy is given to the fools”, and this expression comes from Jews, the people who invented the prophets and prophecy. Yet i am ready to be the fool in an article i will publish here in the near future. Just don’t expect to much from it, and mainly do not take it to seriously. All the prophecies in history, and mainly those with the very best intentions starting from Jesus to Karl Marx, and all the others in middle had catastrophic consequences to many people, nations and forms of human civilization.
I would add some clue to where to look if to predict the future of the humanity, and this is what we are speaking about. Patrice speaks about the emotions as the driving force of the history. I would like to be more specific about it, and be focused in one emotion that seems to me to be the major force behind human action, be it an individual act or a collective act, “THE FEAR”.
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January 11, 2014 at 9:16 am |
We have better than war coming: plutocracy rising. Plutocracy used war to rise, but it has risen. More in a separate comment.
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 9:40 am |
Thanks for the interest, Paul. Methinks that major chunks in the causality that brought WWI & II are missing, as I describe.
Even madness has its methods.
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 1:03 pm |
All that comes to my simple mind at this early hour of 5am is that comic saying, “You don’t have to be mad to live here, but it helps!”
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January 11, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Very funny Paul!
It sure helps, and I will have another helping.
The most maddening part has been the misinterpretation of what happened. Take Hitler: his mass murderous ways were depicted as something peculiarly thuggish related to him, thus, say some techies, never to pronounce his name, and avoid the subject. But it’s nothing of the sort.
Hitler was just able to carry to extremes what had been invented centuries before, and not just in Europe (the Nazis wanted to do in Europe what had been done in the USA, they said). New technology was crucial that way, including those striking Hugo BoSS uniforms….
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 9:08 am |
Extremely interesting comment Eugen! I will answer it, point by point. I started to do so, but, unfortunately, as soon as I got started, I crashed into Luther. Martin Luther. Also known as Martin Hitler, or Adolf Luther. So, I will address that, first, torpedo style. A good Luther is a sunk Luther.
I have mentioned Luther before, as a full blown crazed maniac, admired by hundreds of millions. Time for another pass!
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 9:37 am |
Dear Paul & Eugen: I would suggest a new method. Make a space with dimensions, each of them a possible war factor. India-Pak war, China-goes-Reich war, Plutocrats go nuts war, North Korea acts up war, Putin-goes-back-to-Stalin war, etc. Then compute accordingly.
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 1:06 pm |
Adding possibly: freshwater war, food war, land war, seafood war – you get my point, I’m sure.
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January 11, 2014 at 4:15 pm |
The point is that resources are threatened… Air and sea being two of them. Price of fuel for planes is 4 times what it was a bit more than ten years ago, so old planes are scavenged, and Airbus and Boeing build 25 new planes, a WEEK.
Germany and Japan used resources’ obsession to go to war. Right now China has extravagant claims, all the way to Indonesia, while Japan is going off the deep end about WWII (it was apparently most heroic, and has become a cult).
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 5:31 pm |
“Even madness has its methods”? .Especially madness !
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January 11, 2014 at 5:32 pm |
Indeed, Margot, madness is all about special methods.
PA
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January 11, 2014 at 10:16 pm |
Dear Patrice & Paul,
I will try to cope in the following pages with the question, is any possibility to predict WWIII. “Luckily” I do not have to cope with the obvious, like what will be after WWIII.
So, let us take as an anchor or the starting point of our historical prediction the obvious result of such a war and ask, who could sincerely think about a WWIII, without to be afraid of the annihilation of the human civilization? Only those with tendency for suicide, or those who act out of ignorance and instinct, without to be able to think about consequences of their acts.
War is a common act of a community of people, who have an emotional glue strong enough, to persuade every individual in the community to endanger its life in the sake of preserving the community as whole. What are these glues? An obvious case is family or tribe, very similarly as it happens in the nature with certain highly skilled animals that live in communities.
But the humans have an additional glue, the cultural bond. This makes us, us and those others different. Yet culture is a very wide phenomena, and I have to ask does all cultural phenomena have potentiality to cause a conflict or alienation of one group from the other? Take for example the most simple one, the food you eat or don’t eat. I am sure, a religious Muslim or Jew is annoyed by seeing a non Muslim non Jew eating pork. The same is with the clothing. The hijab or yarmulke as well as too exposed women clothing may cause fury and anger among those out of the community. If so simple and apparently neutral cultural phenomena have potential to create need for segregation and animosity. And what about more basic and fundamental cultural differences like cultural epic story strongly believed, religious faith, code of rules, ethical behaviors, etc.? All these I cultural uniqueness phenomena, if connected, arises in the individual humans negative emotions towards the other, the different. If we add to it lingual and facial and body feature differences, even if the slightest ones, it can bring animosity that may result war.
There are many reasons for wars in history, but roughly they can be divide to two. The wars between separated political entities and civil wars happening within the borders of one political entity.
The well known examples of civil wars are the Russian and French revolutions, which are wars within the society, where people who were left out of political influence fought to change the ruling elites and the whole political system they represent. On the other hand the Spanish civil war, even if also fought within the borders of the same political entity, was different. It started as a military coup, where the army, that was part of the political elite, supported by certain part of the society, used its military force to replace the existing political system. The Spanish civil war started when big parts of the society decided to oppose this act of their army. If we take as a different example, the civil war in Rome following the murder of Julius Cesar, this was a war among the ruling elites. So if to categorize the wars called revolutions, the question is who fought it. Was it one segment of society against other segment of society, or segment of society against the ruling elites, or one ruling elite against the other one.
And what about the wars between the separate political entities? For example what kind of war was WWI. A war among different nations? Did really the Germans hated the French or the Russians more than they hated their own neighbors? Hard to believe. Maybe for a moment. And still they were enthusiastic to enter the war.
On one hand WWI was caused because of competition of the ruling elites, who fought each other for dominance, on the other hand it seemed as if whole nations were recruited in this effort to achieve dominance. National wars are relatively new phenomena that started in Europe with Napoleon and the redefinition of the European political entities from dynastical monarchies, kingdoms, oligarchic city states to national entities. The most common joint feature of national state was a common language (or what they were told that is a common language in spite of wide range of dialects), religion and race. The definition of nation is not so clear as it may sound. For example the Jews mother tongue in Germany, Hungary France etc., was German, Hungarian or French, still they were excluded from the definition of the nation. Probably the best definition for the nation would be one language and one national epic that we all believe or suppose to believe.
Before Napoleon the wars in Europe were;
a. religious – Crusaders, 30 years war, Muslim wars, Protestants against Catholics, etc. ,
b. socio-economic -Barbarian take over of Roman empire, the Viking invasions,
c. wars for dominance of one cultural empire upon the other, -the Romans against Cartago, the Greeks and later the Romans-Byzantines against the Persians),
d. wars for achieving imperial dominance with tolerance to the different culture – The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and so we can go on in whole line of the history,
e. battles among different fractions of the same ruling elite -the very best example is the 100 years war between the English and the French, but many other conflicts were of this kind.
Since Napoleon it became clear that national identity is a very strong tool to create cohesion within the political entity that gives military advantage, almost invincibility, when used against political entity that doesn’t have it. For example, the weakness of Austrians in WWI was the absence of such a cohesion, after Catholicism, that gave to them cohesion since the thirty years war, lost its attractiveness among the secularized elites. On the other hand this Austrian weakness became one of the reasons for the Austrian leadership support of war before WWI, while hoping that a war will mold such a cohesion within the borders of the Austrian Monarchy. Unsurprisingly the result of the WWI was liquidation of the Austrian Monarchy in spite of their relatively long history, if compared to the short time the German state existed. And still Germany survived the defeat in WWI with even stronger national identity than before the war, while Austria has not, and their identity become unclear. This became obvious with the Austrians support for the German Anschluss. By the way the German Anschluss paved the road to the Munich agreement, etc.
So if we look more deeply into this rather lingual division between wars and revolution, we will hardly find a clear cut between wars among different political entities or revolutions happening within the same political entity. At the end of the day, all the wars are about competition for dominance of one group of leading elites against other group of leading elite and the difference is rather the pretext used to mobilize the masses by these elites. Of course many leaders among the leading elites don’t have the sophistication to understand this reality, and have honest faith in their cause. But their illusion based on faith is always short lived, while the reality is very, very prolonging. I do believe in Robespierre’s honesty, but who survived after him? Fouche, Talleyrand, Napoleon and then the Bourbons. The same can be said about Lenin, who was followed by Stalin. I could bring up many politically successful idealists, who against all the odds successfully changed the political system according to their ideas, but very soon the cruel reality overcame their best intentions.
Here I would like to start with a new perspective of categorization of the wars. I would divide the wars to those to be the totalitarian wars, their aim is destruction and annihilation of certain segment of human community, and wars with limited destructive aim. The Punic war of Romans against Carthage was this kind of war.
In twenties centuries we could find many wars, their aim was destruction and annihilation of certain human society segment, be it a national, racial, religious, economic or social segment. The German intentions to start WWII aimed from the very beginning to annihilate subordinate races. In Nazi Germany they started with homosexuals and mentally ills, then it went to Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and probably all the “ non Aryans” would follow, if Nazi Germany would win the war. An other totalitarian war was the “Big October revolution”, that at the beginning aimed to annihilated the ruling elites of the Russian society, then the bourgeois and the kulaks followed them, and then the Ukrainians, the Generals, the intellectuals and who could say where it would end if not the WWII, that eventually saved Russia from ever more crazy plans to annihilate new and new segments of the society. To these examples we could add, all the genocide type of conflicts, like in Cambodian, Ruanda, but also the Chinese cultural revolution, that aimed and was quite successful to diminish the Chinese cultural identity. It seems, in these days in Syria a new rampant totalitarian war fulminates, while the Sunnis try the annihilate the Shia and the opposite, and both sides try to annihilate the Christians, the Druze and all the others.
All this leads me to the thought, that we should be rather focused on the potential totalitarian war than the political war. These are the wars with potential to start a WWIII.
Let us to remain to ourselves;
a. The modernity did not secure the humanity from the totalitarian wars.
b. The cultural belonging is still a very strong biding force among people.
c. People are strong in their readiness to kill and to be killed for all the non-rational reasons that the human fantasy can imagine. The major and most persuasive substance behind the conflicts is the “Our Story”, as contrary to “Their Story”.
If to look for the next potential conflict, we shouldn’t look for the economical problems, since these have become more and more marginal, unless there will be some total collapse of the economic system, as it almost happened at 2008.
We also should not look for the national conflicts, even if some of the world powers, like Russia and China, tend to behave nationalistically. But both these countries adopted the rational modernity as the only way how to manage and solve political problems.
To my opinion, the conflict that appears to have potential to become a pretext to start WWIII is conflict between societies, who look for salvation for their problems in modernity, science, technology, or in other words the future, and those, who oppose all this, and are looking for truth and legitimacy in the stories of the past. While doing it, they deny the modernity as legitimate way of life, but still are ready to use the tools the modern technology creates as legitimate to achieve their aim.
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March 9, 2014 at 7:16 am |
Just noticed this comment now, 2 months later, Eugen! Sorry. I wonder what your thoughts about Putin are…
A cause for WWIII: exactly the same as in 1914: a crazed, cornered dictatorship and plutocracy, a century ago, the Kaiser, now Putin.
PA
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March 9, 2014 at 7:54 am |
Dear Patrice, I know i neglected lately your site, but it was due to some health problems i had to take care of. But now i am more healthy as ever, and ready to my crusade. Anyway thank you for asking me my opinion about Putin. It gives me hope that you missed my responses. If may I, i would respond directly to the article about the subject and not here.
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March 9, 2014 at 4:19 pm |
Hope you are better Eugen, health is first! Yes, I wrote a whole succession of essays, consecutive to Putin’s astounding behavior. I look fwd your opinion, as it seems WWIII may take a straightforward, 1938 style route…
PA
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March 8, 2014 at 7:16 pm |
[…] https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/1914-imprinting-emotions-rule-iii/ […]
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March 9, 2014 at 7:04 am |
The comment below was misplaced, and belongs to March 7, 2014…
[A complete idiot and conspiracy theorist called Robert Freeman claimed on the Internet that “Ukraine Is About Oil. So Was World War I”
By Robert Freeman, Common Dreams
Following below is my answer on RSN.]
***
World War One was NOT about oil. It was about a fascist plutocracy, the Kaisereich,whic h had planned war since 11/12/1912. The idea was to placate the Socialist SPD, & its ally the French republic.
On June 1, 1914, Col House, special envoy of the president of the USA visited the Kaiser and proposed an alliance against the “racially inferior French”. The Kaiser attacked two months later.
(BTW the assassination in Sarajevo was an elaborate plan with many participants, the “Black Hand” in the highest reaches of Serbia, but was just a pretext, as far as Berlin was concerned. Austro-Hungary had not declared war, when the German attacked Russia, France, Belgium and Luxembourg)
The USA broke the Franco-British naval blockade of Germany, with massive trade through the selfish Netherlands, providing Germany with war materials, including for explosives.
Thus American plutocrats made a fortune. However, when it became obvious that the Franco-British- Italians were going to win, the USA came to the rescue of victory, and reorganized Germany, starting in 1919, for Nazism (financed by Ford, Wall Street, GM, Browning, Harriman Brothers, IBM, etc…)
Mr. Freeman ludicrous excuses for dictator Putin’s attack with “oil” is beyond contempt. So it is to view Syria as a battleground for oil. Iran had decided to turn back many pages, Cathy Ashton, the EU foreign minister is Teheran. Russians fired on international observers of the Organization for Security in Europe. Today
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March 9, 2014 at 7:09 am |
Eugen R: I only noticed your long comment today, March 8, nearly 2 months later! Sorry. I guess we will know about WWIII pretty soon.
PA
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