At Glover Cottages on Tuesday evening, 11 November, Richard Broinowski (AIIA NSW president) and Bob Howard (councillor), discussed parallels between Europe before the First World War and the situation in the western Pacific 100 years later. They agreed that there were similarities – tensions between Germany and the United Kingdom in 1913, and between the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea and China today; the web of obligatory alliances that existed in Europe then and between the United States and countries facing an economically expanding China now; the rapidity with which Europe mobilised in 1914 and the capacity of the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia to do so to face an aggressive China today; suspicions and hubris between state actors then and now; and the possibility in both theatres of minor events or unintentional clashes leading to widespread conflagration.

But there are tangible differences. After many years of peace, the European powers, especially their autocratic military leaders, seem to have been insensitive or indifferent to the slaughter that modern weapons would cause in 1914, whereas Japan, China, the Koreas, the United States and Australia and their neighbours are extremely sensitive to the damage that even more modern weapons in the nuclear age could cause today. Occasional conversations during pheasant shootings at country castles between privileged leaders in 1914 have been supplanted by more rapid, egalitarian and widespread communications between leaders and their advisors today. The ineffectual League of Nations has been supplanted by a partially-effective United Nations. And a web of regional forums is available in the Western Pacific today that simply did not exist in Europe in 1914.

Richard and Bob agreed however that there were no grounds for complacency. Warfare between China and the United States and its allies may destroy important trading partnerships, but that does not mean conflict might not happen. Nor can contingencies leading to armed conflict, especially over disputed territories, be discounted. Meanwhile, the well-worn cliché applies: people and their leaders should be alert and informed, but not (at this stage) too alarmed.