After all none of the present crop of European leaders have had time to study much history, and all of them made their way upwards in their party ranks because of their skill and knowledge of domestic affairs. They have had little or no preparation for the affairs of the world.
On the Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian side one can make the same argument. Ignorance reigns so history can be repeated. World War I was the most important geopolitically of the last century. After 43 years of unbroken peace in Europe, the continent slipped into war with barely a diplomatic thought. The issues were there, whether or not Austrian power could prevail in Italy, the degree of influence Russia was allowed to enjoy in the Ottoman Empire, the balance of power between Prussia and Austria in Germany and that between Prussia and France across Europe. But Europe had managed these tensions for four decades until an assassin’s bullet murdered Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and leaders across Europe lost their perspective.
Without this tragic mistake of statecraft, owing more to insouciance than malevolence, there would not have been the massive carnage of 1914-18. There would have been no Great Depression, no rise of Hitler, no consolidation of the autocracy of Stalin, no World War II, no unilateral development of the nuclear bomb, and no Cold War.
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