In the words of Louis Rossman 'If you're going to be the bitch, be the whole bitch!' If you believe might makes right, then you better be ready to fight.
The lion's share of your paper concerns German behaviour driving Britain into the Triple Entente before WW1. It is easy to think from 2025 this a foregone conclusion.
However, it was on 2 August 1914 that the Asquith Cabinet voted for war. All previous votes had been against by large majorities.
"War was much more the sport of kings [In the 18th Century] than the struggle between peoples it would later become". I think you have mis-interpreted a comment in chapter 1 The Wars of the Knights of Michael Howard's 1976 War In European History about chivalry. Before the 1700s, he points out that barbarian incursions obeyed no rules and "a crusade was virtually a war of extermination" in which whole communites were put to the sword. The 1618-48 Thirty Years' War saw perhaps 8 million casualties from battle, famine, and disease, and the English Civil War witnessed the same percentage of the population die horribly, with concomitant dislocation of the economy.
"states do not primarily consider the distribution of power in the international system when choosing alliance partners" - you really did need to substantiate this statement. Or was it left in by mistake from a previous draft?
In the words of Louis Rossman 'If you're going to be the bitch, be the whole bitch!' If you believe might makes right, then you better be ready to fight.
Exactly. It might make sense to shoot someone at times, but routinely brandishing a gun is a uniformly bad idea.
The lion's share of your paper concerns German behaviour driving Britain into the Triple Entente before WW1. It is easy to think from 2025 this a foregone conclusion.
However, it was on 2 August 1914 that the Asquith Cabinet voted for war. All previous votes had been against by large majorities.
"War was much more the sport of kings [In the 18th Century] than the struggle between peoples it would later become". I think you have mis-interpreted a comment in chapter 1 The Wars of the Knights of Michael Howard's 1976 War In European History about chivalry. Before the 1700s, he points out that barbarian incursions obeyed no rules and "a crusade was virtually a war of extermination" in which whole communites were put to the sword. The 1618-48 Thirty Years' War saw perhaps 8 million casualties from battle, famine, and disease, and the English Civil War witnessed the same percentage of the population die horribly, with concomitant dislocation of the economy.
"states do not primarily consider the distribution of power in the international system when choosing alliance partners" - you really did need to substantiate this statement. Or was it left in by mistake from a previous draft?