A skosh under a century ago, Europe tore itself apart following the assassination of some pissant Austrian royal. From this temporal distance, it seems insane that over that killing, the Europeans got themselves into a war which resulted in the destruction of four empires* and greased the skids for the eventual collapse of a few more.
I say that because it's by no means implausible that China and Japan will end up going to war over a bunch of insignificant rocks in the East China Sea. Both sides seem to be eagerly backing themselves into corners from which they won't be able to extract themselves without bloodshed.
All of the combatants in the First World War began the fight assuming that they'd settle the contest in a few weeks or months. It didn't work out that way for them. I doubt if a war between China and Japan will end up going th way either nation's strategic thinkers assume that it will go.
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* Russian, German, Ottoman and Autro-Hungarian.
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This blog post fortold with irony in '34 in the last paragraph...
http://xkcd.com/
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