Tensions on the rise as rudderless US fails to show leadership

The events of this summer show a world in which nations seem notably closer than ever before to turning to force, writes Peter Apps            

‘NOT this August, nor this September,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in the summer of 1935 as international tensions in Europe and beyond began to simmer. “But the year after that or the year after that, they fight.”

He was writing, of course, about the threat of a coming world war — and although it took several years longer than he thought, he was right.