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It was the West's obsession then with appeasement that set the world on course for the cataclysm of World War II.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: A low and dishonest decade
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The more pessimistic tend to see analogies with the early 20th Century, after the Boer War and before the cataclysm of 1914, and it is true there are similarities with the British debate about decline during that period and the current American introspection.
BBC: Is the United States an empire in decline?
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If the cataclysm of the first world war had destroyed any belief in the immutability of a civilisation based on liberal, progressive British values, the origins of the morbid age can also be found in developments in the natural and social sciences that occurred well before 1914.
ECONOMIST: Britain between the wars