digamma.net - notes

Here’s David Fromkin, from the chapter “Could It Happen Again” in his superb Europe’s Last Summer:

At least one thing has changed greatly between then and now. In 1914 the coming of war was an almost complete surprise to the public. In the open world of today we would be likely to have at least some sort of advance warning. In turn, that would give peoples and parliaments at least a chance to make their views known. How much of a difference that might make is difficult to foretell.

One would like to think so.

But we still don’t know what happened in July of 1990. Did the US diplomat April Glaspie tell Saddam we would remain neutral in his conflict with Kuwait? Brad Plumer writes:

Still, it would have been valuable to at least try and get a fuller picture of this story from Saddam himself. I suppose people could still ask Tariq Aziz, since he was at the April 25 meeting too, and he hasn’t been executed yet.

I want to know. But our world isn’t “open” enough yet that I can ask Aziz. I have to rely on bigshots in the government who are, for their own reasons, neither asking nor telling.

Fromkin’s optimism may be misplaced in this regard.