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The parallels are important in this article, but an even more instructive study could be done on the misadvanture of Napoleon III.
The attack on a country that had not attacked France, stimulated by media hysteria, with no concept of the consequences is what happened in the late summer of 1870.
European historians trace the consequences directly to World War I, which then led to Communism, World War II, Hitler, The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam and the Yugoslavia breakup.
In short, the Franco-Prussian War took about 120 years to resolve. I believe that the rearrangement of geopolitical forces unleashed in 2003 will similarly take at least that long to be stabilized. Napoleon III showed us how one foolish leader with a political name can do such long lasting damage.
