There are no exceptions in history

Political disintegration, internal conflicts, reliance on foreign powers, and imbalances of power all contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The scenes and circumstances were repeated with the Arabs of Andalusia, but the lessons were not learned to avoid them. The world believed that World War I (1914-1918) would be short, but the arms race at the time, the colonial rivalry, and the entanglement of military and political interests led to the continuation of the war for four years with enormous human losses.

Yet the world did not learn a lesson from history, but rather repeated it in all its details. Although the rise of Hitler, the rearmament of Germany, and the Nazi expansion that preceded World War II were not hidden secrets, World War II (1939) quickly ignited, causing losses in lives, money, and the future that were much greater than what the first war caused. History, as we say, repeats itself, but the problem is not in such a repetition, but rather in man’s certainty that the lessons of history are lessons for others, and not for him, and thus he falls here into the illusion of exception.

Otherwise, why did Hitler, for example, not learn from Mussolini’s mistakes, and why did Gaddafi not see in Saddam Hussein’s fate a warning message? Rather, why do we all repeat the mistakes of others daily and consider that we will be the exception to the consequences of those mistakes? The war that began in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and then spread to all the countries of the Middle East, including the Gulf states, is very similar, especially in the details of what preceded and followed it, to that which occurred during the Second World War.

There is a similarity in the accumulations that led to both wars. In the second war, the wars began locally, before expanding internationally, and then the dangers continued when diplomatic settlements began to fail, and with them, blocs were formed in preparation for the war, which later turned, with its escalation, into an economic war in which the whole world experienced a recession, which destabilized political and financial stability. This happened in an atmosphere in which the arms race was at its peak, with the international system’s effectiveness in curbing collapse and destruction declining. Despite all those risks, the same accumulations are returning today, whether in the war in Ukraine or in the war in the Middle East, with increasing international repercussions as a result of the accumulation of regional crises that have become a threat to the whole world.

The tragedy of the world with wars does not lie in their unpredictability, as we all expect a war to break out somewhere. Rather, the tragedy lies in the world’s belief that today’s wars, unlike yesterday’s, are containable, and that the ability to control their repercussions and risks is greater today than during World War II. All parties today imagine that they are capable of escalating and containing at the same time, in a paradox that history has proven to be illogical.

Times may be different today, and that is somewhat true, but the danger is compounded when the difference in circumstances is confused with the absence of risks, or when history is assumed to be repeating itself, but the world is too smart to repeat the mistakes of history. The precursors to wars and disasters are more important than their consequences. The precursors do not appear as catastrophic as the wars themselves, but they are much more important in that they are what ignited them. The great problem of man here is when he realizes the precursors to the disaster, but refuses to change his course, because he sees in this course an exception. We see this every day and in all the details of the war currently raging in our region.