第一大战爆发100周年世界不该这么快遗忘警示_BEC初级作文

第一大战爆发100周年世界不该这么快遗忘警示

The real lesson of history is that a relatively small crisis over a chunk of third-rate eastern European real estate will produce a global conflict only if decision makers make a series of blunders.

历史给我们留下的真正教训是，只要决策者犯下一系列错误，即使是围绕一大片东欧三流房地产发生的相对较小的危机，也能演变成全球冲突。

As it happens, I think it is a blunder to use sanctions to give President Putin no choice but folding or fighting. But – assuming there are no more MH17s – the price for that blunder will be paid mainly by the people of Ukraine. The blunders of a century ago led to the deaths of more than 10m people, mostly young men, drawn from all over the world.

事实上，我认为用制裁将俄罗斯总统普京逼得除了屈服或者战斗以外别无选择，就是一个错误。然而，如果我们假定不会有更多类似马航MH17航班这样的事件，这个错误的代价就主要是由乌克兰人来承担的。而一个世纪以前犯下的那些错误导致超过1000万人丧生，其中绝大多数是由世界各地征召而来的年轻人。

As we commemorate the outbreak of the first world war, let no one swallow the old but tenacious lie that their “sacrifice” was a necessary and noble one. On the contrary, the war is best understood as the greatest error of modern history. That is a harsh truth that many historians still find unpalatable. But then, as AJP Taylor once observed, most people who study history only “learn from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones”.