Was WWI inevitable?
In his magisterial history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the late classicist Donald Kagan sought to counter the popular conception of Thucydides’ history of that period, per which the clash between the Athenian and Spartan empires was simply inevitable, practically a law of physics extrapolated to the human realm — history and foreign policy scholars call the supposed law that rising powers eventually come into conflict with existing ones a “Thucydides trap.” Throughout the four-volume work, Kagan points to moments when the people in charge on all sides could have reasonably made differen...
Source: washingtonexaminer.com