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A third world war is plausible. Here’s how to avoid one
The key is to understand that great wars can happen by accident.
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The next world war could hinge on the judgment of leaders like North Korea's Mr Kim Jong Un, a man with nuclear arms at his disposal and little time to make a fateful decision.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Economist
One disquieting lesson of history is that, although world wars affect nearly everyone, the task of avoiding them falls to a tiny number of decision-makers. And those decision-makers are sometimes fools.
Today’s world looks “quite a bit” like the world before 1914, argues Yale history professor Odd Arne Westad in The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, And Warnings From History.
