Six centuries ago, Niccoló Machiavelli discovered that politics was a science with rules of cause and effect. That is why it is important to know History, because the facts tend to be repeated.

The dangerous situation between Turkey and Syria reminds me of a basic principle that seems invariable throughout Universal History. It is that neighborhood conflicts between the small allies of great powers are the ones that, with their friction, ignite the spark that triggers the great wars.

Reviewing ancient history, this principle begins to be noticed from the two Peloponnesian Wars, between Athens and Sparta.

After defeating the Persian Empire by sea and land, both cities had remained as the greatest powers of the Greek World. Each was surrounded by a court of allies.

Sparta with the Peloponnesian League.  Athens with the League of Delos.  This League had some common traits with today’s NATO. It had a common currency: the Athenian Drachma; its members had to deposit their Treasures in Athens; its members had to contribute to the maintenance expenses of the League’s army and Navy.

The first Peloponnesian war began with a small conflict between Corfu and Corinth, according to Tucidides, both cities were part of the Peloponnesian League but were in conflict. Corfu received support from the League of Delos, led by Athens.

Unsatisfied with the support received, Corfu changed sides to align itself with Sparta against Athens.

Anyone thinking of Turkey?

The second war begins when Megara, an ally of Sparta, located on the border of Sparta was seduced by Athens (like Ukraine?) to join  the League of Delos. In the end she regretted it and returned to side with Sparta. An angry Athens imposed economic sanctions, quite a novelty for that old time. As the blockade by Athens affected the commerce of the entire neighbourhood; Corinth summoned the Peloponnesian League which declared war on Athens. Sparta found itself involved because of its alliances.

During this Second War Athens was affected by a plague epidemic in which Pericles and half of the Athenian population perished

(Coronavirus in 429 BC?).

Modern Europe

The tendency for small allies to involve large powers in wars is found also in Renaissance Europe.

As Niccoló Machiavelli concludes in his Il Principe. The small Pontifical State was an obstacle to peace in Europe and to the unity of Italy.

It so happened that every time one of the several independent states that inhabited together in the Italian peninsula began to be predominant, the Pontiff came into conflict with it and invoked the intervention of the Christian King of France. That happened many times.

In the end, the reigning Pontifice ended up facing France with Spain and there the old papal game ended. The Christian King Francis I was taken prisoner in Pavia and Rome was sacked by the troops of the Constable of Borbon, a Frenchman in the service of Emperor Charles V.

The principle that wars between great powers are usually unleashed by conflicts between minor allies was confirmed by the Seven Years' War.

According to Guy Breton in his spicy Histoires d’Amour de l’Histoire de France, the Marquise de Pompadour, the famous lover of Louis XV, in a tantrum against Frederick II of Prussia, ordered Argenson to make an alliance of France, Russia and Austria against Prussia. A minor incident between Austria and Prussia triggered the 7-year War in which England, the only ally of Prussia, took away Canada from France and most of its Asian empire.

That same principle of conflicts between minor allies of great powers unleashing great calamitous wars is confirmed by the First World War, whose prologue was the tension in the Balkans between Serbia (ally of Russia and France) and Austria (ally of Germany). What triggered the war was an attack by a Serbian terrorist, Gavrilo Princip, in Sarajevo (Bosnia) that killed the Austrian Crown Prince. Serbia hosted Princip and Austria requested extradition to be judged in Vienna. When Serbia accepted, Russia, France and Germany were already at war.

The war lasted 4 years and was the hecatomb of the most cultured youth Europe ever had; four empires were scrapped, the decline of the British Empire began, but the American Empire was affirmed.

World War II is another confirmation of the rule. When the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed to a Fourth Division of Poland, Churchill in England, thought  to ally England with Poland. Two days Iater, England was embarked on a terrible war that it almost lost.

An English mistake that left Russia and the United States as exclusive protagonists on the world stage.

The danger now is that with the voluble Muslim frate Erdogan at the helm of a Nato-allied Turkey, very determined to protect the patch of Salafist terrorism encamped in Idlib, we might reach a global confrontation between the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and NATO

Almeria 10/03/2020