A hundred years later, the dominoes are still falling from the First World War, and people are dying as they fall -- some, in Iraq and Syria, pretty gruesomely. In analyzing how a disaster of this magnitude could have happened, it’s the short-run causes that are critical.  If no one lights the fuse -- to switch metaphors -- the stick of dynamite doesn’t explode. So it’s fair to say that the war was caused by decisions made during the final week of July 1914. Germany and Austria, set on war, rejected repeated offers to negotiate the trivial differences between Vienna’s ultimatum and the conciliatory Serb reply, while Russia decided it would not permit Serbia to be invaded, occupied, and reduced to a vassal state. In the end, some 9.7 million soldiers and 7 million civilians died because Austria, backed by Germany, insisted that it had the right to conduct on Serbian soil an investigation into the assassination of the Archduke Francis-Ferdinand, and...(Read Full Article)