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Comment by hahahahhaah | Hacker News Reader

Always has been. Big powers have always been meddling in other nations.

"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must" Thucydides

Sure, the Melian order of the world is something one could consider as always there. Still, how much of Thucydides still applies when cheap drones, nuclear MAD, and environmental tragedy-of-the-commons are taken into account?

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/the-realists-gr... ...

True, but after this led to the disasters of WW1 and WW2, there was a genuine international effort to constrain it. Of course, it was a deeply imperfect system, especially with the cold war going on, but it was still an improvement on the naked imperialism and genocide that preceded it. Unfortunately, it appears we're rapidly regressing to the former situation, except this time with atomic weapons.

The vast majority of people aren't empathetic enough to learn from experiences they didn't live through themselves. Yet I'm still surprised that the death of the living memory of WW1 and WW2 would take effect this quickly.

The problem is that people aren't effectively taught about the lead up to these wars as much as they are of what happened during them. At least that was my experience when I was taught about them in class.

People don't have a proper reference point of what is currently happening. Once a war starts it is already too late.

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