Irish Examiner view: Great illusion of trade security

Economic power

The aftermath of Russian shelling in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Europe is in its most dangerous place for 60 years. Picture: AP.

In her magisterial account of the opening of the First World War, The Guns of August, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author Barbara Tuchman references a long-forgotten book that was once compulsory reading across Europe.

The Great Illusion, by Norman Angell, who later won a Nobel Peace Prize, possessed a central tenet — that all war was in vain and that the costs of waging it ensured that the victor suffered the same levels of damage and financial degradation as the vanquished. Therefore, it argued, no nation would be foolish enough to embark upon one.