World War I had a profound impact on modern history, ending a relatively long period of prosperity and peace, and redrawing maps in Europe, as well as in other parts of the world, most notably, the Middle East.

It also had a big effect on the United States, beginning an era of American involvement and leadership in international affairs that continues to the present. In little more than a year of fighting, over 300,000 Americans died or were wounded, more than in any other conflict until then except the Civil War. The Indiana Memorial Union is one of many monuments to these casualties.

For some, the lesson of this war is that it was unnecessary, the result chiefly of the vanity, greed and folly of European leaders at the time. Perhaps so, but a more important and often neglected lesson is that how wars end matters more than how they start. The treaty concluding World War I stopped the battles, but resolved nothing and planted the seeds for further and larger conflicts, World War II and the Cold War.

This is the lesson worth remembering as conflicts rage around the world today. The anniversary of the start of World War I should remind us that creating the conditions for a lasting peace is not the same as stopping the hostilities, and much more difficult.

For Speak Your Mind, this is Leslie Lenkowsky.

Sources:

World War I casualties

Indiana Memorial Union history

The importance of how wars end

The apparent missile shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine also deserves independent investigation, but clearly in both cases innocent people lost their lives when civilian airliners crossed zones of intense conflict. Many civilians have been killed in recent battles in eastern Ukraine after government forces ended a truce with separatists.

If pro-Russian rebels mistook the Malaysian plane for a Ukrainian military aircraft, their mistake, though criminally reckless, was not unique. Ukraine shot down a Russian airliner in 2001, and the U.S. downed an Iranian civilian Airbus in 1988, killing 290.

The Reagan administration seized on the 1983 Korean Airlines tragedy to push Europeans to accept deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles on their soil. Senator John McCain already speaks of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy as a “game-changer.”

One hundred years ago, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to the cataclysm of world war. This is no time for games. NATO deployments in or near Ukraine would be especially provocative. A new Cold War on the border of a resentful, nuclear armed Russia would carry incalculable risk, to which the Malaysian Airlines tragedy is just a clue.

Sources:

Democracy Now

The Nation

The Nation

MSNBC

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