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According to Gallup, as per below, France is LESS popular among us Americans than:CANADA (91% favorable). No matter how often we correct their misspellings, their mispronunciation of the letter Z and lure their best hockey players away, our beaver-worshiping, Molson-swilling Northern Neighbours have whole POCKETS-FULL of fucks and do not give ANY of them awayGREAT BRITAIN (88%). Despite the fact that for decades polls have shown that the British people themselves have a far lower opinion of America than Germans, Italians, Poles and pretty much every other major European country (the notable exception, of course, being France, which has a similarly low opinion of us)GERMANY (85%). Despite having drawn us into catastrophic global wars twice in the last 100 years, as well as being the country of origin of Blue NunJAPAN (81%). Despite being the only nation-state other than Britain to attack us and cause battlefield casualties on our own soilBy comparison, France has never declared war on us, has never burnt down the White House, and has made huge cultural and artistic contributions to our own country while generally avoiding the bizarre or distasteful (e.g., the beaver, German wine, Japanese body pillow girlfriends)...and gets rewarded with a mere 73% favorability rating.Why is this? I think it's a little bit like a complicated romantic relationship. We do not show France the same affection we show other countries because we do not need to in order for them to admire us back--and the French feel exactly the same way in my [pretty extensive] experience. I wager that if you were to ask why Americans like those four countries, they would point to something tangible, something real. Canadians are nice, their wilderness is beautiful, they live nearby, they give us oil, they speak English almost like we do. England is rich, it's our heritage, they gave us common law and the Beatles and Top Gear. Vat about ze Germans? Well, every American wants an appliance cabinet and a garage filled with Teutonic precision: Krupps, Mercedes, BMW, Braun, Heckler & Koch and Walther (for those of us Americans who like guns, which is most of us overall). The Japanese? Similar story: Toyota, Sony, Honda, plus weird little things like Pokemon and of course sushi.But France? France has given us nothing real, nothing practical! French cars aren't sold here (then again, they aren't sold much in France either). French pop doesn't register here. Never mind that in the corporate world, France's biggest companies are some of the biggest foreign investors in America--nobody likes Big Business anyway. We must instead reach down into the intangible, the je ne sais quoi of America to find why France is worth liking.Democracy in America: Alexis de Tocqueville's classic early 19th c. tome on why America is the best country in the world is, to quote a famous American whose name escapes me right now, "Americans' favorite foreign account of themselves"Our Independence: Whatever we may think of France's military these days, there's no denying that America would not exist in its current form without French help. The French Navy neutralized England's single greatest advantage--its seapower--and the French supplied over 90% of the gunpowder used by Continental forcesGood Advice: "The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest, but let us not forget that having won the war, peace has to be built. Let us not delude ourselves. This will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq's unity and to restore stability in a lasting way in a country and a region harshly affected by the intrusion of force." - Dominique de Villepin, Foreign Minister of France, 14 Feb 2003The Statue of Liberty: If you ask me, the idea of embodying so beautiful a concept as human freedom in the female form had, just had to come from the melodramatic, romantic French. Even the bloodthirsty Napoleon used to refer to his famously lethal artillery batteries as "mes belles filles" (my beautiful daughters).The Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen: Secretly amazed by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence but too prideful to let it show, the French Revolutionaries went off the deep end and accidentally wrote what would become the basis of what we today think of as "human rights", with all of the good and the bad that that concept has engendered in the last two centuriesThe Wisdom: The French were practically inventors of the blunt, enigmatic, frequently offensive soundbite. "Plus l'homme cultive les arts, moins il bande," said Charles Baudelaire--which translates as, "The more a man nurtures art, the less he can get it up." Or this one, by Brillat-Savarin, a food critic: "Un repas sans fromage est comme une belle a qui il manque un oeuil" (A meal without cheese is like a pretty girl missing an eye.) What about de Gaulle? "La Chine est un grand pays...plein de Chinois." (China is a big country...filled with Chinese people.) It's like an entire nation of people who would give Ron Swanson a run for his moneyThe Wine: Of course, then there's also the wine. And the cognac. And the champagne, oh yes, the champagne! And for those of us who drink a ton, there's the armagnac, and the Calvados, and the Pastis, and the absinthe, and the Sauternes, and the Ciroc, and the Chartreuse...These are not simple things to keep in mind when some robocaller from Gallup rings you up and asks you to rank which countries you like. We look out the window and see the Camry, and say, "Japan is better than France", or glance at the German toaster oven on the counter and think, "Germany is better than France". We watch Downton Abbey and Top Gear, and feel that somehow we can relate to those quaint people across the Pond. We forget Canada exists most of the time, but when we look at a map and remember what's between Alaska and the Lower 48, we think, "Gee, aren't we lucky that those people in that great green expanse in between are so nice and hospitable?"But France? Jesus. They keep lecturing us, doing things impractically, piping up at the wrong moment. We try to tune them out, but somehow they always make themselves heard. In the 1950's, seeing the writing on the wall and realizing that European powers on their own were too weak to matter in a world split between Russia and America, a nutty Frenchman had the wild idea to unite Europe into a single political entity that would become an economic powerhouse and a voice to equal the Superpowers--all of it a pretense to give France a higher soapbox off of which to shout its brilliant thoughts. England, being a European country, naturally wanted to join. But what did the French say? Non! We don't need a reason, we are French!So there you have it: We love France, secretly at least. But man, sometimes they are so fucking UP themselves! If only they'd be simple people who make nice things and sit there politely, we might view them as favorably as Canadians.***Edit 3 Dec 13 @ 1005: Corrected quote, which was misattributed to Daudet, when it was in fact said by Baudelaire. Sorry.***

First, I am dyed in the wool Patriotic Citizen and retired 20 year Army Veteran. I will answer your question as honestly as I can because I see “Red” every time I hear a question like this or similar to this. The only scenario where in this country where guns and rifles would be prohibited from private ownership is under a tyrannical Government that is so ruthless and oppressive that a large if not a majority of the armed population would revolt against such oppression. In a scenario where a tyrannical and government takes over and rules by ruthless oppression, armed militias and even possibly the armed forces would consider a Putsch and Coup d’ Etat. Many gun owners would simply hide their undocumented weapons and ammunition because only a tyrannical Government would render the Constitution and Bill of Rights null and void thereby repealing the 2nd Amendment by an illegal Executive Order or Presidential Directive.There are already Militias in the United States that are prepared for such an event. Here is one such organization, read their mandate.Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That oath, mandated by Article VI of the Constitution itself, is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and Oath Keepers declare that they will not obey unconstitutional orders, such as orders to disarm the American people, to conduct warrantless searches, or to detain Americans as “enemy combatants” in violation of their ancient right to jury trial.Oath Keepers reaches out to both current serving and veterans to remind them of their oaths, to teach them more about the Constitution they swore to defend, and to inspire them to defend it. See below for details on how we do that. Oath Keepers also includes a membership program designated as “Associate Members”, which consists of patriotic citizens who have not served in uniform but who serve now by supporting this mission with their Associate Membership and volunteer activities. Oath Keepers welcomes our Associate Members and appreciates their support of our mission. “Our motto is “Not on our watch!“Below is the declaration of orders we will NOT obey because we will consider them unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason. We will defend the Republic.DECLARATION OF ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY:Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.The attempt to disarm the people on April 19, 1775 was the spark of open conflict in the American Revolution. That vile attempt was an act of war, and the American people fought back in justified, righteous self-defense of their natural rights. Any such order today would also be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason. We will not make war on our own people, and we will not commit treason by obeying any such treasonous order.Nor will we assist, or support any such attempt to disarm the people by other government entities, either state or federal.In addition, we affirm that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to preserve the military power of the people so that they will, in the last resort, have effective final recourse to arms and to the God of Hosts in the face of tyranny. Accordingly, we oppose any and all further infringements on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. In particular we oppose a renewal of the misnamed “assault-weapons” ban or the enactment of H.R. 45 (which would register and track gun owners like convicted pedophiles).2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects – such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.One of the causes of the American Revolution was the use of “writs of assistance,” which were essentially warrantless searches because there was no requirement of a showing of probable cause to a judge, and the first fiery embers of American resistance were born in opposition to those infamous writs. The Founders considered all warrantless searches to be unreasonable and egregious. It was to prevent a repeat of such violations of the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects that the Fourth Amendment was written.We expect that sweeping warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, under some pretext, will be the means used to attempt to disarm the people.3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.One of the causes of the American Revolution was the denial of the right to jury trial, the use of admiralty courts (military tribunals) instead, and the application of the laws of war to the colonists. After that experience, and being well aware of the infamous Star Chamber in English history, the Founders ensured that the international laws of war would apply only to foreign enemies, not to the American people. Thus, the Article III Treason Clause establishes the only constitutional form of trial for an American, not serving in the military, who is accused of making war on his own nation. Such a trial for treason must be before a civilian jury, not a tribunal.The international laws of war do not trump our Bill of Rights. We reject as illegitimate any such claimed power, as did the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1865). Any attempt to apply the laws of war to American civilians, under any pretext, such as against domestic “militia” groups the government brands “domestic terrorists,” is an act of war and an act of treason.4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.One of the causes of the American Revolution was the attempt “to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power” by disbanding the Massachusetts legislature and appointing General Gage as “military governor.” The attempt to disarm the people of Massachusetts during that martial law sparked our Revolution. Accordingly, the power to impose martial law – the absolute rule over the people by a military officer with his will alone being law – is nowhere enumerated in our Constitution.Further, it is the militia of a state and of the several states that the Constitution contemplates being used in any context, during any emergency within a state, not the standing army.The imposition of martial law by the national government over a state and its people, treating them as an occupied enemy nation, is an act of war. Such an attempted suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights voids the compact with the states and with the people.5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.In response to the obscene growth of federal power and to the absurdly totalitarian claimed powers of the Executive, upwards of 20 states are considering, have considered, or have passed courageous resolutions affirming states rights and sovereignty.Those resolutions follow in the honored and revered footsteps of Jefferson and Madison in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and likewise seek to enforce the Constitution by affirming the very same principles of our Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights that we Oath Keepers recognize and affirm.Chief among those principles is that ours is a dual sovereignty system, with the people of each state retaining all powers not granted to the national government they created, and thus the people of each state reserved to themselves the right to judge when the national government they created has voided the compact between the states by asserting powers never granted.Upon the declaration by a state that such a breach has occurred, we will not obey orders to force that state to submit to the national government.6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.One of the causes of the American Revolution was the blockade of Boston, and the occupying of that city by the British military, under martial law. Once hostilities began, the people of Boston were tricked into turning in their arms in exchange for safe passage, but were then forbidden to leave. That confinement of the residents of an entire city was an act of war.Such tactics were repeated by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, and by the Imperial Japanese in Nanking, turning entire cities into death camps. Any such order to disarm and confine the people of an American city will be an act of war and thus an act of treason.7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.Mass, forced internment into concentration camps was a hallmark of every fascist and communist dictatorship in the 20th Century. Such internment was unfortunately even used against American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Whenever a government interns its own people, it treats them like an occupied enemy population. Oppressive governments often use the internment of women and children to break the will of the men fighting for their liberty – as was done to the Boers, to the Jewish resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, and to the Chechens, for example.Such a vile order to forcibly intern Americans without charges or trial would be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason, regardless of the pretext used. We will not commit treason, nor will we facilitate or support it. “NOT on Our Watch!”8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.During the American Revolution, the British government enlisted the aid of Hessian mercenaries in an attempt to subjugate the rebellious American people. Throughout history, repressive regimes have enlisted the aid of foreign troops and mercenaries who have no bonds with the people.Accordingly, as the militia of the several states are the only military force contemplated by the Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, for domestic keeping of the peace, and as the use of even our own standing army for such purposes is without such constitutional support, the use of foreign troops and mercenaries against the people is wildly unconstitutional, egregious, and an act of war.We will oppose such troops as enemies of the people and we will treat all who request, invite, and aid those foreign troops as the traitors they are.9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.One of the causes of the American Revolution was the seizure and forfeiture of American ships, goods, and supplies, along with the seizure of American timber for the Royal Navy, all in violation of the people’s natural right to their property and to the fruits of their labor. The final spark of the Revolution was the attempt by the government to seize powder and cannon stores at Concord.Deprivation of food has long been a weapon of war and oppression, with millions intentionally starved to death by fascist and communist governments in the 20th Century alone.Accordingly, we will not obey or facilitate orders to confiscate food and other essential supplies from the people, and we will consider all those who issue or carry out such orders to be the enemies of the people.10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.There would have been no American Revolution without fiery speakers and writers such as James Otis, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Sam Adams “setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”Give me Liberty, or Give me DEATH! Patrick HenryTyrants know that the pen of a man such as Thomas Paine can cause them more damage than entire armies, and thus they always seek to suppress the natural rights of speech, association, and assembly. Without freedom of speech, the people will have no recourse but to arms. Without freedom of speech and conscience, there is no freedom.Therefore, we will not obey or support any orders to suppress or violate the right of the people to speak, associate, worship, assemble, communicate, or petition government for the redress of grievances.And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually affirm our oath and pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Oath KeepersThe above list is not exhaustive but we do consider them to be clear tripwires – they form our “line in the sand,” and if we receive such orders, we will not obey them. Further, we will know that the time for another American Revolution is nigh. If you the people decide that you have no recourse, and such a revolution comes, at that time, not only will we NOT fire upon our fellow Americans who righteously resist such egregious violations of their God given rights, we will join them in fighting against those who dare attempt to enslave them.

The short answer is that the Germans themselves made the Entente the “good guys” in the First World War, or at least made themselves out to be the bad guys. By Germans, of course, I don’t mean the 1914 generation, but rather a school of history headlined by Fritz Fischer, who beginning in the 1960’s promulgated the idea that German militarist aggression from the late 19th c. through the first half of the 20th was the prime cause of the First World War and, by extension, of the Second as well. Fischer’s thesis was premised on thorough, well-regarded research based on the German state archives, and there’s no doubting the factual basis for his argument. On the other hand, we can say in hindsight that there Fischer’s approach contained some serious flaws, which I’ll discuss below.But, first things first: Let’s be clear that Germany was indeed an aggressive power pre-1914; it had territorial designs on its neighbors (the forcible annexation of parts of Belgium and even more of France than had already been seized in 1871); the martial culture of the imperial state, of which Fischer was so harshly critical, had an undeniably jingoistic effect on its foreign policy in the decades leading up to the outbreak. Both during the July Crisis and the war itself German actions were hardly unimpeachable. In July 1914, the German foreign office, which had worked to restrain Austria-Hungary in previous foreign policy crises, this time gave Vienna the so-called “blank check”. Berlin declared war on Russia and France first, without provocation in either case. And while the foreign press reports were sometimes exaggerated, it is not disputed that German troops comported themselves in an often barbaric manner against Belgian and French civilians. As they retreated in the conflict’s closing weeks, moreover, the Germans enacted a policy of wholesale destruction of productive capacity and infrastructure in what had been the heartland of French industry prior to the war. (And this, apparently unbeknownst to some of the other answer-writers here, is what the war reparations of Versailles were intended to compensate for.)Hence there’s no disputing that Germany was the great power that attacked first. It was undeniably the aggressor. In that narrow sense, Versailles wasn’t incorrect to assign “war guilt” to Germany after the war. But what I will argue in the rest of this answer is that it is incorrect to claim that Germany somehow brought about the war deliberately and indeed had planned it for some time prior (as Fischer believed it had). Imperial Germany was aggressive, at times illiberal, and very militaristic; in this, it differed from its chief rivals only by degree, not by nature. The proximate question (Who amplified Sarajevo into Verdun and the Somme? Germany did.) must be considered separately from the broader one: Was any one power solely responsible for the conditions that made such an amplification possible? The answer to this last is complicated.First, while Fischer correctly perceived German aggressiveness prior to 1914, he failed to notice that this was not a phenomenon unique to Germany. Most of the other conventionally recognized Great Powers—the British Empire, Russia, France, Austria, the United States, Italy, Japan—were all varying shades of aggressively expansionist. For some time, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Far East provided enough spoils to keep everyone occupied, but by the turn of the 20th c., Turkey’s weakness meant that new lands were being put up on the block. Ottoman North Africa was split up between Italy and France, Egypt was eaten up by Britain, and the Empire’s European territories were mostly stripped away in a regional conflict in 1912-13 which brought Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Austria-Hungary and Russia into direct competition, in a way that had never previously existed. (All would eventually declare war on each other by 1915.) For as vociferously as the German public demanded war with France, and for as much as Germany tried to build up a navy to back its few imperial claims, Berlin’s part in the pre-war game of military aggression was unremarkable. Germany was a bit player in the colonial question, German off-and-on zeal for war with France wasn’t without equal in France and Russia, and well before 1914 Admiral Tirpitz had all but conceded defeat in the naval construction race with Britain. On the road to war, German nationalist ambition, unambiguous a cause of the disaster as it turned out to be, was also echoed throughout Europe (something which should be kept in mind by those who view the revival of European nationalist movements in the early 21st c. as a good thing).Second, though Germany’s declarations of war on Paris and St Petersburg in August 1914 were unprovoked by any military aggression, that is a subtler point than many of you might imagine. When Germany declared war, by which time it had already begun mobilizing its army under the notice of “danger of war”, Russia had ordered general mobilization, and France was in the process of doing so. In 1914, mobilization, to say nothing of actual aggression, was in itself seen as a provocative act. Deployment plans for early 20th c. armies depended on the concentration of vast numbers of troops and supplies from all over the country, which in turn required the coordination of infrastructure resources on a scale that was very difficult to manage for states which were, by comparison with today’s governments, quite primitive. To have even a chance of stopping a German attack, for example, France’s army calculated that it required several weeks’ preparation. Joffre, the French chief of staff, wasn’t exaggerating—or at least was not misrepresenting General Staff thinking—when he pointedly reminded his civilian masters in Paris, dithering over whether or not to order mobilization, that “for every day’s delay I give up twelve kilometers of French soil to the Germans.” The same logic held true everywhere else in Europe: If a war couldn’t be avoided anyway, then you certainly did not want to be the last to mobilize. The process of military mobilization thus introduced an element of game theory into international politics which had hitherto been played out only on a diplomatic scale rather than a military-strategic one. (I’ll leave to Austin Middleton the delicate task of explaining how that works.)To this inherently unstable system was added the further complication of information asymmetry. The various powers knew quite a bit about each other’s military plans and capabilities, but had very incomplete pictures of their rivals’ policy intentions (and those of their allies, for that matter). Military intelligence services were surprisingly well-developed in this period; much information was publicly available, espionage was quite good—for example Russia and Austria had excellent knowledge of each other’s deployment plans, while French intel had managed to obtain a complete copy of the German Schlieffen Plan several years before 1914—and cryptanalysis was a well-developed science, with the code-breaking services of France and Russia being notoriously strong. But there’s a well-known truism in business strategy that it is almost as dangerous to plan on the basis of incomplete information which one thinks complete, as it is to plan with no information at all, and so it was in July 1914. This preponderance of “unknown unknowns” tended to increase fear and mistrust. The Germans received intelligence reports about a major pickup in rail traffic toward the depots on Russia’s western borders; they could not to hear the ferocious behind-the-scenes debates in St Petersburg over what to do (not to mention the Tsar’s last-minute vacillations). The German declaration of war was welcomed by the public, but it came after a month of serious internal debate over what exactly was going on, and it must be seen in this context.Third and finally, it is important not to minimize the importance of the assassination of the heir of Austria-Hungary. Around the world, the murders caused great sensation, and within the Empire proper, despite Francis Ferdinand’s unpopularity in life, they led to a tremendous outpouring of sympathy; particular outrage was directed at the murder of his wife, which, it emerged during Gavrilo Princip’s trial, had been accidental—he was aiming for Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia, but hit her instead, and Princip, unrepentant at having shot the archduke, burst into tears when cross-examined about killing the archduchess. Sarajevo prompted a wave of patriotic fervor within Austria-Hungary which, for all of the problems plaguing the army in July-August 1914, ensured that desertion and failure to report was not one of them. There exists not a single recorded instance of Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Croats, or people of any other nationality failing to show up when mobilization orders were issued. (So much for the claim that nobody felt any sense of loyalty to a multi-ethnic state.) Austria-Hungary was acutely aware that the integrity of the criminal investigation into the killings carried major implications for retaining international goodwill in their aftermath, which was considerable, not unlike that following 9/11. And of course it was aware that evidence brought forth at the trial might form part of the justification of any military action against Serbia. So Vienna was careful to be as “by-the-book” as possible. Its ultimatum to Serbia was humiliating, yes; Asquith, Grey, Churchill and their French counterparts certainly seemed to think so. But the Austrian police had uncovered evidence of the terrorists’ informal ties to networks inside Serbia, and it’s difficult to imagine how those might have been followed up on, if not by the terms demanded in their ultimatum. Besides, is it really so surprising that an ultimatum sent in the aftermath of an assassination should be harsh? What would the United States do if the president-elect were shot in Seoul by a North Korean claiming to have no ties to the North Korean government? In any case, while Belgrade technically acceded to most of the demands in the ultimatum, as a practical matter it did just the opposite. The official reply to Vienna amounted, essentially, to, “We will cave in to your demands…as soon as you provide proof for your allegations [which you’ll never find without our accepting them in the first place].” The intent of the telegram was to humiliate Serbia, and in that it succeeded, or at least it succeeded in swinging French and British public opinion to the view that brave little Serbia was being reasonable in the face of monstrous German-backed Austrian brinkmanship. But Serbia’s response couldn’t objectively be characterized as a genuine concession.To be sure, none of this is to take exception to the key facts of the outbreak of war: (1) That Germany egged on Austria-Hungary to demand harsh terms of Serbia; (2) that Austria, blank check in hand, proceeded to do just that, and when they weren’t fully accepted, declared war; (3) that Russia ordered general mobilization; (4) that Germany demanded French territorial concessions and disarmament as a gesture of neutrality, then declared war on Russia, invaded Luxembourg without warning, and declared war on France; (5) and that Britain declared war on Germany after it invaded Belgium. From the train of events, one can’t reasonably dispute the point that Germany was the aggressor. The “War Guilt” clause, detested as it was by German propaganda in the inter-war period (plus a surprising number of Quorans), was not a fiction.But 1914 was a complicated year in a complicated era, and it’s important not to be led astray by simplistic teleological narratives. To look back on state-to-state relations a century ago and pronounce one side to be the bad one is both historically inaccurate and, for policymakers interested in learning from the past, potentially quite dangerous. (Does anyone in Beijing or Washington believe that in a war between the two countries, they themselves would be the bad guys?)