Too Long; Didn't Read
We live in unprecedented times — at least in Europe and the West: apart from the blip that was the war in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, we have been conflict-free since 1945. Okay, so the Cold War was a ‘war’ of threats and dilly-dallying and second-guessing the strength of the other side not to mention the near-miss of all-out nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But ignoring all that — and the continual wars in the Middle East, the Dark Continent as well as Asia — we should count ourselves very lucky.