This article seems to suffer from a cognitive dissonance with itself - while the theme is inherently one of speculation, the author seems to shy away from specu

This article seems to suffer from a cognitive dissonance with itself - while the theme is inherently one of speculation, the author seems to shy away from speculation wherever possible. Rather, he focuses on enumerating a list of weakly connected (albeit well-researched) parallels between 2013 and 1913. It seems he is much too concerned about protecting his words from disagreement; as a result, the words are not nearly ambitious enough. Only about 80% of the way through the piece does the author even ask the question: > What does any of this say about the world in 2013? Finally! Now we might be able to see a speculative narrative: > To take an example of one of the more plausible shocks we now face, a miscalculation in the South China Sea could easily set off a chain of events not entirely dissimilar to a shot in Sarajevo in 1914, with alliance structures, questions of prestige, escalation, credibility, and military capability turning what should be marginal to global affairs into a central question of war and peace. And... that's it? The next paragraph is clearly the beginning of the conclusion of the piece, recapping the earlier paragraphs. As they say, "that's all she wrote." I would have loved to see the same depth of research applied to a detailed analysis of this scenario and others. How are the alliance structures similar and different? How might world leaders react? What mistakes were made in 1913 that can be avoided today? This article should be taken for what it is - a thought provoking introduction, but by no means a successful standalone treatment of the issue.