“Readers of history often encounter a line like 'In the years before war, relations between the two powers deteriorated.' In this podcast Zack Twomely spends hours lovingly expanding that summary into an epic - detailing exactly how misunderstandings lead to rattled sabers and finally mobilization.
Diplomacy matters. Always has, always will. Even in the most bellicose eras, more time is spent on fighting talk than fighting. Kissenger, famously, was an expert on the Concert of Europe long before he became a diplomat. It's unclear whether today's Foreign Secretaries have access to the institutional memory of how previous spats were unknoted. Well, if not, aspiring Metternichs can bone up on their Bismarck by downloading When Diplomacy Fails on the way to their next summit.”Read full review »