3 ms·

I vehemently disagree. 1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep

I vehemently disagree. 1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep and consolidate power over colonial empires (the Entente) or break up the colonial empires to get some for themselves (the Germans and Austrians). 1939 saw an ambitious despot attack democracies to brutally subjugate them. That is also what we are seeing now.

mardifoufs 5y ago
It literally started with the Austrian empire invading semi recently independant Serbia for bullshit reasons. Yes I guess we can see how russia is evil now. And when we look back at ww1 we think that the situation Was much more ambiguous with tons factors and motivations from all sides. but that's hindsight! if you go back to 100 years ago that was exactly how the french or the russians were justifying the war. "The evil Austrians were trying to subjugate our slav brothers and we need to save them". The Austrians will probably not stop at serbia, and take over the balkan. Yet, we can still see that saving the Serbs was not worth the carnage of the great war. My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future. Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse. But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world. By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing... If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric

mardifoufs 5y ago

It literally started with the Austrian empire invading semi recently independant Serbia for bullshit reasons. Yes I guess we can see how russia is evil now. And when we look back at ww1 we think that the situation Was much more ambiguous with tons factors and motivations from all sides. but that's hindsight! if you go back to 100 years ago that was exactly how the french or the russians were justifying the war. "The evil Austrians were trying to subjugate our slav brothers and we need to save them". The Austrians will probably not stop at serbia, and take over the balkan. Yet, we can still see that saving the Serbs was not worth the carnage of the great war. My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future. Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse. But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world. By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing... If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric