No short or decisive war
By IPE staffOctober 2012 (Magazine)
The essayist Robert Wilson Lynd wrote that “belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions”. The twentieth century conclusively laid to rest the notion that wars between nations would end with the symbolic exchange of border provinces or notional reparations. The economic consequences of the First World War were profound and long lasting, just as the Second World War shaped politics in ways we still see today.