The 2010s exposed the weakness of declaring history finished once one strategic system appears triumphant. The post-Cold War belief that no modern state would challenge another was followed by a second bubble in which counterinsurgency seemed to define the future of war. That confidence echoed claims made after the First World War that the Great War had ended major war, a warning that societies have announced this rupture before. Force structures built inside a temporary bubble can outlast the assumptions that justified them.
Notable Point · 1:40:13-1:42:41
The end-of-history claim repeats interwar hubris
Post-Cold War faith that peer war was obsolete, followed by confidence that future wars would remain counterinsurgencies, echoes interwar declarations that the Great War had ended war itself.