Why is Guatemala Building up its Military on the Belizean Border?!

The shooting death of a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy has provoked the largest border mobilization for the country in decades. On April 20, Belizean troops killed Julio Alvarado Ruano and wounded his father and brother, which Belizean authorities said occurred after the troops came under fire.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales called the shootings a “cowardly and excessive attack” and ordered some 3,000 soldiers to amass near the border — which has been disputed since before Belize’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1981. The mobilization focuses on the Adjacency Zone, a buffer region along the border marked by the Sarstoon River.

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China Seeking International Participation in its Space Station Planned for 2018

China is soliciting international participation in its future manned space station in the form of foreign modules that would attach to the three-module core system, visits by foreign crew-transport vehicles for short stays and the involvement of non-Chinese researchers in placing experiments on the complex, the chief designer of China’s manned space program said Oct. 12.

But he declined to commit to an international orbital docking technology that would facilitate international participation in the Chinese facility.

The Chinese orbital station, consisting of a core module and two experiment-carrying modules, can be expanded to a total of six modules if international partners want to invest in their own components, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the China Manned Space Program at the China Manned Space Agency.

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Explaining Russians' Feelings About America

“America wants to destroy us, humiliate us, take our natural resources,” said Lev Gudkov, director of Levada, the polling center, describing the rhetoric, with which he strongly disagrees. “But why? For what? There is no explanation.”

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What Russo-American Relations COULD Have Been (with attached rant)

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The above photos are especially sad for me.  It is not that I wanted the US and RF to go off fighting side by side in wars.  During the 1990s, I dreamt of the Russians reforming bit by bit and joining NATO, joining the European Union and becoming a partner in the West just as Germany has become.  However, there were warning signs in the 1990s this was not going to be.  

The strains of the Kosovo War would help push relations in the wrong direction.  The incident at the Pristina airport demonstrated there was going to be a problem.  Yet Another Damned Thing in the Balkans.  However, these were merely symptoms of the problem.  

Americans and Russians have a fundamental problem.  Russians need to be paid attention to.  Americans, unless its in their faces or has their interest at the time, tend to ignore things and people.  Politely put, the Russians feel they are important enough they need to have their interests higher than average and Americans feel they are too busy dealing with so much they can't pay attention to everything.  Put less politely, Russians are, culturally, arrogant, prideful attention whores and Americans are self-absorbed in chasing the next bright shiny with the attention span of a squirrel on meth.  Perhaps in a better way, when the Cold War ended, the Russians "said" great! Now we can rule the world together because we are not enemies anymore!  The Americans replied Great!  Now that we are not enemies, we can ignore you.

You have to wonder what would have happened had Clinton been willing to make Russia the center piece of his foreign policy.  Like his lack of pursuit of improvement of American infrastructure, utter failure in health care reform and how his administration's handling of terrorism and the Middle East, this was another missed opportunity.  The first (?) Clinton administration may end up being judged a lot harsher by history than we may.

Rant:

That said, what the administration of William Clinton will only be tangentially related to what a Hillary Clinton would do.  I utterly despise political dynasties and would vote against Jeb Bush for that reason alone.  Their father deserves a lot of respect. The Bush boys are far from their father's equal.  I intensely dislike the idea of another Clinton in office for the same reason.  However, its looking increasingly like I will probably be voting for Hillary.  The Republicans(1) are not offering a candidate who is addressing the fundamental problems this country is facing and Saunders has too much of a nativist streak for me.  So, Hillary...yeah.  No, it doesn't taste good to write that.

1. Where the frack the Eisenhower Republicans??? Or the Rooseveltian Republicans!  When your party of a CENTURY ago is more progressive then you're doing it wrong.

Why China Supports Russia in Ukraine

Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, China has been remarkably forthright in its consistent opposition to the imposition of sanctions against Russia following the country’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and support for separatist movements in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. China, along with Brazil, India and South Africa, abstained from voting on United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 68/262, which affirmed the UN’s commitment to recognize Crimea within Ukraine’s international borders. More recently, on February 2, in Beijing, the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India issued a joint statement condemning interference in the internal affairs of other nations through the use of United Nations General Assembly resolutions, attempts at regime change and the unilateral imposition of sanctions on the basis of domestic law alone in a clear rebuttal of the United States and its sanctions against Russia. These strong statements in favor of Russia, albeit without official statements of support for its actions in Ukraine, suggest that China is actively formulating trade and economic cooperation deals with Russia to circumvent Western sanctions and in extremis may consider providing emergency aid to Russia should it be requested by Vladimir Putin. Beijing’s support for Russia, evident in increased bilateral state-run investments, ministerial pronouncements and wide-ranging media coverage, appears to be motivated by economic concerns and a desire to preserve Russia as a bulwark against U.S. dominance in the international community.

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China Actively Courting Other Nations for its Upcoming Space Station

China is open to cooperation with foreign nations on its manned space station project, according to a senior space official.

"We reserved a number of platforms that can be used for international cooperative projects in our future space station when we designed it," Yang Liwei, deputy director of China Manned Space Agency, said at a news conference following the opening ceremony of the 27th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers in Beijing on Wednesday.

"In addition to collaboration in applied experiments, we also designed adapters that can dock with other nations’ spacecraft," he said.

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The Latest Nadir of Sino-Vietnamese Relations

For now, however, neither side appears eager for a rapprochement. Both China’s insertion and its withdrawal of the oil rig were done on its terms. And as the stronger, richer and more economically diversified of the two countries, it can more easily absorb the shock of extended bad relations. As for Vietnam, Dr Tuan says that China “underestimates the power, strength, will and nationalist sentiments of its opponents”. The flames of nationalism are always easier to stoke than to put out, however. If the Vietnamese public comes to see its leaders as weak in the face of foreign aggression, it may be the Communists in Hanoi that get burned.

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China in Latin America

This July, Chinese President Xi Jinping embarked on state visits to Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela and attended a summit of the loose group of major developing countries known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in Fortaleza, Brazil. This was his second trip to Latin America in less than two years in office, following a previous tour of the Americas in 2013 which included Mexico, Costa Rica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

China’s influence in the region has grown rapidly in recent years, facilitated by the rapid increase in bilateral trade and investment, which as of 2013 stands at $252 billion, second only to the United States. China also appeals to the antipathy of many Latin American leaders toward the United States. Illustratively, this past January the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Havana established a China-CELAC forum excluding the United States and Canada.

Historically, China has shown little inclination to engage politically or strategically with Latin America, conceding leadership to the United States due to its manifest advantages, such as proximity and long historical involvement in the region’s affairs. This ambivalence, however, has rapidly evaporated due to China’s growing commercial interests, U.S. interference in East Asia and fears of encirclement through bodies such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Although China and the countries visited this year signed a large number of deals, many in Latin America have expressed doubts about the benefits of Chinese participation in the region. In the long-term, this skepticism may impede China’s ability to form strategically significant partnerships.

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US Disengagement has Consequences

American disengagement in the world is not consequence free. The new BRICS bank announced in Fortaleza by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is largely a political exercise, which has been given a big boost by American indecision on IMF quota reform. U.S. detachment and inaction have given the BRICS the political cover to start something that would likely die with a whimper if Congress could muster the political will to pass IMF quota reform. The United States suffers from a lack of presidential leadership in the Bretton Woods arena; as we withdraw others fill the vacuum, and we cannot choose our replacements. American leadership always starts at the Presidential level, but Republicans share blame for the rise of the BRICS bank based on their inability to get IMF quota reform done in Congress.

The BRICS have complained about "vote" and "voice" in the Bretton Woods institutions. If we address the ostensible political grievances of countries like China and others at the IMF by passing quota reform their arguments for a BRICS bank largely collapse.

As long as the United States maintains implicit veto and influence over the selection the Bretton Woods institutions' leaders, we should accept marginal adjustments in shareholdings -- this has already happened at the World Bank, and the rest of the G20 has signed off on reform at the IMF. The IMF Quota reform is a good arrangement for the United States until a time when we can trade the U.S. held presidency at the World Bank for the managing director role at the IMF with the Europeans.

The international system still operates under the same essential structures and assumptions that were laid out in "the world America made" at the Bretton Woods Conference and elsewhere following WWII, and that international system works best under vigorous U.S. leadership. The BRICS bank is one of a growing number of efforts to "defect" (I think we should bring that verb back in its Cold War form) from an American led system, which serves both U.S. and world interests.

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China Trying to Guess if India's Modi Will be a Nixon or Abe

The landslide victory by Narendra Modi in India’s national elections has raised questions throughout Asia about India’s role in the region. Chinese experts have watched the transition with great interest, many seeking historical analogies to explain the new leader. One of the most optimistic is the idea that Modi could be “India’s Nixon,” a concept which originated in The Shanghai Institute for International Practices, and which forecasts an “opening to China akin to the U.S. President’s. This optimistic analysis also suggests that, given his focus on the Indian economy, Modi could choose to emulate the PRC’s model for economic growth, and thus draw inspiration from Deng Xiaoping. Others have expressed the fear that he might prove to be an “Indian Shinzo Abe,” playing to nationalism and intensifying a border dispute with China.

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Could Putin's European Adventures Lead to Russia Becoming More Dependent on China?

AS RUSSIA’S president, Vladimir Putin, sat down for dinner with his French counterpart, François Hollande, this week in Paris (one of two state dinners in the Elysée on the same evening, so that Barack Obama would not cross paths with Mr Putin), he might have been forgiven for thinking that the worst moments of his angry clash with the West were behind him. Even as eastern Ukraine sinks into further conflict, European leaders have little appetite for new sanctions against Russia. With official meetings fixed with Mr Hollande and Britain’s David Cameron, the diplomatic isolation threatened by Western leaders is not extending to Mr Putin personally. And France is going ahead with its sale of Mistral-class assault ships to Russia.

In Ukraine, Mr Putin may also presume he is getting what he wants, even if Moscow is not directing day-to-day fighting in the east. Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, who will be inaugurated this weekend, is inheriting a messy and intractable conflict that will divert attention and resources from other problems, not least a floundering economy. Financial woes and the need to end the fighting will force Mr Poroshenko to deal with Mr Putin—though the reverse is also true, since the Kremlin will have to accept Mr Poroshenko as a valid interlocutor.

At a minimum, Mr Putin and separatist forces in the east, inspired and in many cases supported by the Kremlin even if not run by it, have created facts on the ground that make the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO impossible. This was Mr Putin’s most paranoid fear from the start of the Maidan protests in Kiev last November. The Kremlin will doubtless push for Ukraine to drop any such aspirations. Beyond that, the insurgency in the east gives Mr Putin a bargaining chip that can be used to threaten Kiev and can ultimately be traded for more decentralisation.

It may be that Mr Putin was not dissuaded from invading eastern Ukraine by the threat of sanctions, but that he would have gone in only if there had been no other way to achieve these goals. The tens of thousands of Russian troops stationed on the border—Western military officials say all but a handful have returned to their bases—were there mainly to intimidate and deter Ukrainian forces and to act as cover for rebel paramilitaries to take over more government buildings.

The danger both Mr Putin and Mr Poroshenko share is that this strategy has worked almost too well. Whatever political aims existed a few weeks ago have been consumed in the logic of violence. The conflict has descended into warlordism, in which rebel commanders control militias that do not necessarily communicate with or much like each other. In Donetsk, a rebel battalion led by Chechen mercenaries has taken control of separatist headquarters and is backing Alexander Borodai, a political operative from Russia. But their influence does not extend to nearby towns such as Sloviansk and Gorlovka, where rival militias hold sway.

The Kremlin may thus have flipped the switch for an anti-Kiev insurgency that it cannot easily turn off.

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China is Overreaching on the International Stage, but Does America Have a Plan?

Dan Twining's excellent post-mortem on the Shangri-La security summit in Singapore accurately captured China's isolation in Asia on both security and values issues. There is more to the story though. The Shangri-La meeting came just a week after China hosted the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), a once sleepy gathering organized by Kazakhstan that Chinese President Xi Jinping took over this year in an effort to form a new continental security system to counter the United States and Japan's strengthening network of maritime democracies. In another over-reach, Beijing thought that Japan-South Korea tensions over history and growing Sino-Korean economic ties would provide an opening to enlist South Korea in that continental system and to pull Seoul away from the United States.

In the lead up to CICA, Beijing pushed hard for all the participating countries to sign on to a joint statement that declared bilateral alliances obsolete in Asia and called for a new system of security that would be hailed by Xi Jinping in his keynote speech to the conference. U.S. allies Turkey and Israel signed on, but the Koreans held firm and the joint statement was watered down, though Xi did make his declaration in the keynote speech anyway. The Chinese also tried to get Korea to sign on to a new common front against Japan on history issues, but Seoul rebuffed Beijing again, explaining that these were bilateral problems with Japan and not a reason for Sino-ROK cooperation.

The extent to which Beijing's aggressiveness is pushing the region to the United States for security cooperation was evident in a recent poll we conducted at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of foreign policy elites across Asia. In the survey we asked experts in 12 countries what future order they expected in Asia in a decade and a majority answered that it would be one led by the United States (as opposed to a Sino-centric system, balance of power, U.S.-China condominium, or East Asian Community). Outside of China, a majority of respondents also said they preferred a U.S.-led system. Koreans were among the most enthusiastic about retaining U.S.-leadership in the region. This was not surprising, given that a significant majority outside of China thought it was having a negative impact on regional security, despite enthusiasm about economic ties with China.

But is the United States up to this leadership?

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The Eurasian Union has Been Harmed by Putin's Adventures in Ukraine

t was never meant as a return to the Soviet Union. When Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, first called for a Eurasian Union just over 20 years ago, he envisaged a grouping of individual states with individual interests coming together for the economic benefit of one another. Nazarbayev, an iron-fisted autocrat and the only president an independent Kazakhstan has ever known, cited, seemingly without irony, "the will of the people to integration" as he tried to justify the reintegration of independent states the Soviet Union's demise had left behind.

On May 29, Nazarbayev witnessed this goal finally come to fruition. Sort of. Alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Nazarbayev signed the founding treaty of the Eurasian Union (EEU) in Astana, paving the way for the transition from their current customs union to the full-fledged EEU on Jan. 1, 2015. Putin called the signing an event of "epoch-making significance."

But Putin has a way of mangling rhetoric and reality. While the EEU seeks to rejoin the post-Soviet space in economic agglomeration -- and has even received interested partners from Vietnam to Syria -- it stands far from the goal Nazarbayev once held, and even further from what irredentist Putin would hope.

Rather than launching a wholesale effort at post-Soviet reintegration, the EEU has rapidly morphed into something far more degraded -- and has faced substantive pushback from states watching Putin attempt to shift the EEU into another vehicle for Russia's revanchism, displayed so obviously in Crimea. Where the concerns on the EEU were originally economic -- the benefits are discernibly slanted toward Moscow -- events in Ukraine have displayed that the Kremlin's neo-imperialism is back. "The original purpose of the Eurasian Union was to become a dominant regional economic organization, with a legal architecture controlled by Moscow," said Alexander Cooley, a political science professor at Barnard College. But Crimea ended up illustrating that Putin would much rather have something to "effectively lock countries into Moscow's political and economic orbit."

Modeled on the European Union's economic constructs, the new union will represent a market of 170 million, and will boast a total GDP of nearly $3 trillion. The EEU will serve as the maturation of the current customs union shared by the three nations, and will allow further economic integration -- increased free movement of goods, streamlined trade regulation, unified macroeconomic policy -- between member states. And the EEU has potential to keep growing. If Putin somehow manages to woo the remaining post-Soviet (non-Baltic) nations, the EEU's market could jump to some 300 million members and just under $4 trillion in combined GDP.

But that swell is far from plausible.

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China Losing Interest in Playing by the West's "International" Rules?

PUBLIC rows can be a welcome relief from the stifling obfuscation and pussyfooting courtesy in which much diplomacy is cloaked. So optimists saw an unseemly spat in Singapore on June 1st—between China on the one hand, and America and Japan on the other—as a positive development. Mealy-mouthed antagonists were at least speaking frankly about their concerns, clearing the air. Frayed tempers exposed the concealed limits of national patience. Through the murk of mutual misunderstanding, the edges of “strategic clarity” could at last be discerned. That clarity, however, is not an unmixed boon: it revealed the depth of the gulf separating China’s view of its future role from the West’s hopes about what sort of great power China might become.

The forum for the tiff was this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual shindig for Asia’s defence establishments, held in a hotel of that name in Singapore. As an opportunity to air the region’s security concerns, this year’s dialogue, the 13th, was well timed. Such worries have been mounting sharply over the past six months, as China’s neighbours have taken fright at what they see as its aggressive pursuit of disputed territorial claims.

In November 2013 China unilaterally declared an Air-Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea. It covered the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, which are administered by Japan. In January it announced the equivalent of an ADIZ for fish, in the waters of the South China Sea, requiring foreign fishing vessels to seek its permission. Then, in May, China moved a massive oil rig, accompanied by a large flotilla, to drill in waters seen by Vietnam as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone; it started construction work at a shoal elsewhere in the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines; and it flew fighter jets dangerously close to Japanese surveillance planes near the Senkakus.

China probably feared all along that this year’s dialogue would be an opportunity for concerted China-bashing, orchestrated by America, with Japan as the lead soloist. That fear will have solidified into a near-certainty when it learned that the keynote speech would be delivered by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, whom China shuns as a troublemaker intent on reviving Japan’s militarist past.

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Dmitry Gorenburg @ Moscow Conference on International Security 2014: Russians on MENA

In addition to the plenary panel, the MCIS conference included two panel discussions, one on the Middle East and North Africa and the second on Afghanistan.

The panel entitled “Finding Ways of Stabilization in the Middle East and North Africa” was moderated by Vitaly Naumkin of the Institute of Oriental Studies. Participants included Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, General Vladimir Zarudnitsky — the head of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Deputy Syrian General Staff Chief Mahmoud Abdul Wahab Shawa. Deputy Director of the Israeli Institute for National Security Udi Dekel, Director of the Iranian Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies Kayhan Barzegar, Chief of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence of the Lebanese Army Fadel Edmond, and CIS Executive Secretary Sergey Burutin.

Since I am not a MENA specialist, I was primarily interested in how the region influenced Russian foreign policy.

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What Will India's Prime Minister Modi's Policy be for Indo-Chinese Relations?

Traditionally, Indian policy toward China has been mostly characterized by continuity. As far as Beijing is concerned, in spite of regime change in the past, India has pursued steady engagement with its northern neighbor. Now that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has formed a government with an absolute majority, there appears to be a chance of significant changes under the leadership of Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi.

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China Calls for a new Sino-Centric, American-Excluding Asian Security Structure

China's president called Wednesday for the creation of a new Asian structure for security cooperation based on a regional group that includes Russia and Iran and excludes the United States.

President Xi Jinping spoke at a meeting in Shanghai of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building measures in Asia, a little-known group that has taken on significance as Beijing tries to extend its influence and limit that of the United States, which it sees as a strategic rival.

"We need to innovate our security cooperation (and) establish a new regional security cooperation architecture," said Xi, speaking to an audience that included Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of Central Asian countries.

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Iran Nuclear Talks Headed off a Cliff?

It is now clear that differences in negotiations between Iran and six major powers led by the United States remain intractable, despite the conciliatory words and much friendlier atmosphere which have reigned in recent months. When the two sides met in Vienna last week for a first round of hard-core haggling after months of laying out their positions, it was as if they had run into a wall. Instead of confidently saying an agreement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions could be reached by the July 20 deadline, officials were now talking of “significant gaps” in their positions. It is “not about being optimistic or not optimistic. It is about being realistic,” a senior US official said.

The official said the six nations negotiating with Iran – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – now were “worried about the short time left” until the deadline, the US official said. “In any negotiations you have good days and bad days,” the official said. The Wednesday to Friday meeting in the Austrian capital was clearly among the bad ones. “We need to see some tough decisions being made … more than we’ve seen thus far,” the US official said, referring to such matters as the number of centrifuges Iran will get to keep. Iranian negotiators meanwhile were talking about the deadline possibly being extended six months until next January but the American said the six nations still had a “sense of urgency” about reaching an agreement in July.

There are to be more senior-level talks in June; experts from the two sides are consulting on a full-time basis. Talks are expected to become non-stop as the July 20 deadline nears. The bottom line is that the fundamental divide which has existed since the beginning of the Iranian nuclear crisis in 2002, when secret Iranian nuclear work was first revealed, has not diminished. The devil may be in the details in the talks but the details reflect ways of thinking about nuclear goals and needs. Compromising on issues such as centrifuges, which refine uranium into either reactor fuel of bomb material, are as political as they are technical and therein lies the rub. Here is a look at what the main issues are going forward:

Centrifuges

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Japan and America Growing Closer

FOR the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, it was a milestone. On May 15th a panel published its long-awaited report recommending that the country’s “self-defence forces” (SDF) be allowed to act more like a normal army. At present, in Article Nine of its constitution, Japan renounces war as a sovereign right. For Mr Abe, rewriting the clause is a cherished aim. For most Japanese, that remains several steps too far. So Mr Abe, backed by the panel, has a narrower goal: reinterpreting the constitution in ways that, for the first time, allow for “collective self-defence”—that is, would let Japan aid its allies, notably America, should they come under attack.

The recommendations stop far short of allowing combat missions overseas. Assuming the recommendations become law, only collective defence related chiefly to the protection of Japan will be permitted, meaning in practice in its near-abroad. But in a country aware of its past imperial rampages through Asia and proud of its post-war pacifist credentials, even this change faces opposition. Public support for Mr Abe’s changes has been ebbing. In particular, his coalition partner, New Komeito, has grave doubts. The party is backed by Soka Gakkai, the country’s biggest (and staunchly pacifist) Buddhist organisation.

New Komeito’s support is critical and, for the fact that it is not a given, Mr Abe has partly himself to blame. His visit in December to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which honours war criminals as well as the war dead, appalled the party. Its leader, Natsuo Yamaguchi, deplores Japan’s bad relations with China and South Korea. Both countries are wary of Japan being seen to boost its armed forces. Still, New Komeito may yet come around. It seems to have been heartened by President Barack Obama’s endorsement, when he visited Tokyo last month, of the desire to reinterpret the constitution. It was just the boost that Mr Abe needed.

Mr Obama’s endorsement makes sense. The panel’s recommendations ought to help Japan act as a more effective partner should the United States find itself, for instance, in combat with North Korea or defending Taiwan. Indeed, the debate about collective self-defence is taking place in parallel with an overhaul of defence guidelines between America and Japan, the first in 17 years.

For the first time, Japan could provide logistical support, including the supply of ammunition, fuel, transport and medical services, to front-line American forces in the event of a crisis on the Korean peninsula. Japan could also provide America with more help in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. And the self-defence forces would have clear permission to shoot down North Korean missiles heading for American bases or territory.

Separately, in UN-approved peacekeeping operations, Japanese soldiers could bear arms for the first time.

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2014 is not Like 1914?

It has become fashionable, on the eve of the centennial of the outbreak of World War One, to ask, or worry about, whether it could all happen again. This vague sense of anxiety – this sense of how good we have it now, and how it could all be gone tomorrow – is perhaps fitting, given that it has become an accepted (if debatable) point of history that neither the decision-makers nor the publics of the various European powers expected a prolonged and civilization-devastating war. Such anxiety has a long pedigree: Kipling, writing a poem for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee a mere decade and a half before the war broke out, chose to quietly shelve his now-infamous imperialist tribute, “The White Man’s Burden,” for another occasion, in favor of publishing the more sombre and (at the time) jarring “Recessional,” which reminded its reader that all glory is fleeting and God alone is permanent (“Far-called, our navies melt away/On dune and headland sinks the fire/Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre…”).

In fact, the war’s outbreak and subsequent course probably were predictable in advance, and if anything reflected what we would now call a failure of analysis, either on the part of the leaders of the European states, or on the part of their people.

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