Progress Report 3 On The International Relations Series

Yesterday’s congressional debate that I hosted gave me serious pause to look at more of the history going back to the Napoleonic era in Europe. What Michal said who is currently Liberland’s Minister of Justice said about how international treaties in particular have changed since then. The 1815 Congress of Vienna which shaped the borders of European countries for most of 19th century did in many ways secure nearly 100 years of peace on the European continent. It was in the closing years of the 19tj and early 20th century when the entangling alliances between various major and minor powers of Europe came to a head in 1914 when the “Great War” as it was called then occurred and what many at the time thought would another quick war like those of a century prior soon found out was that the world had changed in so many significant ways since then that quick wars were no longer possible. Add to this the ever growing complexity of how people, goods, and services traverse national borders, added to many countries being extremely protectionist against foreign people and goods entering their borders and you have one extremely disastrous recipe of conflict ready to go off at any time that even the slightest issue could set off a global catastrophe. In fact something as simple as 2 dachshunds eating golden pheasants nearly caused an international crises, (the dachshunds were owned by Kaiser Wilhelm II and the golden pheasants were kept by Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination did cause the start of WWI). I will go into more detail in a revival of my “Don’t Repeat History” series as I really need to do more of a deep dive into the history of 19th century Europe particularly diplomacy.