History’s Revenge: Why the USSR’s Collapse Is Like WWI

... aborted military strikes on Syria last fall, to the civil war in Ukraine this spring and Iraq’s de facto partition this summer. Relations between world powers are right back where they were over a quarter century, as if transported by time machine. World War II broke out because the winners of WWI were unwilling or unable to build a system that reserved a dignified place for the losers. The winners of WWII took a more responsible approach – the aggressor country was divided up as punishment, and its parts were integrated into the two ...