I feel like world leaders these days are a lot less trigger-happy when it comes to declarations of war. I say this as somebody who has played entirely too much Civ III and Civ V (Civ IV sucked a fat one, come at me [and I’m waiting for all the expansions to come out before I play Civ VI]); while I understand those games don’t perfectly emulate diplomacy and warfare, they do drive home the point that in the pre-modern era, the easiest way to achieve your goals was to send armies of dudes at your enemies to make them bow to your will.
I’d like to think that the world is a more peaceful place because we, as humans, are more enlightened as to the true effects of war. But it also has to do with the fact that a lot of countries have nukes, and a lot of countries are allied with countries who have nukes. This is another situation where the Civilization series of games has frightening parallels to real-life tactics.
This is all being brought up right now because, in the immediate aftermath of Dennis Schröder slapping Domantas Sabonis in the face, I’m sure some Lithuanian leaders had brief thoughts of declaring war on Germany in retaliation. I’m also sure that some German leaders had brief thoughts of mobilizing their country’s defenses in order to protect their homeland from a sneak attack from the north. But this is the year 2019, and countries don’t just declare war on each other for little incidents like that. If the year were 1500, the Lithuanian trebuchets and pikemen and longbowmen would be armed and ready for battle on the bloody field of war. If the year were 50000 B.C., you’d have two tribes throwing rocks at each other while babbling in their respective proto-languages. They’d also be naked.
We have come a long way indeed.