There's a lot of talk about the world war now.

Political leaders, up to and including the President of the United States, recall the bloodbaths of the 20th century to explain the great caution with which they confronted Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It shouldn't be like 1914. At that time, the world had carelessly tumbled into the First World War, the "primal catastrophe" of modernity.

Mobilization followed mobilization, blind enthusiasm swept everything away, and in the end millions were dead.

Konrad Schuller

Political correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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The historian Christopher Clark coined the term “sleepwalkers” for the politicians and monarchs of the time.

That word is coming again now.

It was recently used as a warning by American Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO commander-in-chief.

And when Joe Biden talks about Ukraine, he speaks of the danger of a "third world war".

Retired German officers such as Brigadier General Erich Vad, who was an adviser to Angela Merkel up until 2013, also use the phrase and link it to a request not to supply the Ukrainians with heavy weapons.

“World war” always means “nuclear war” at the same time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ensured that this association is inevitable.

Years ago he started making this connection.

In June 2020, he signed a decree allowing Russian generals to use nuclear weapons for the first time, including in conventional wars.

It states that Moscow reserves the right to use nuclear bombs not only in response to an attack with weapons of mass destruction, but also "in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons, when the existence of the state is in danger".

Then, in 2021, he followed up in a pseudo-historical essay, claiming that the Russians and Ukrainians are not separate peoples but a “unified whole.”

Any attempt to detach Ukraine from Russia is "comparable to using weapons of mass destruction against us."

Finally, just before he invaded Ukraine, Putin then followed up with a terrible threat: Anyone who stands in Russia's way must know that such a step will have consequences "like you have never experienced in your entire history".

Immediately afterwards, Putin made sure that his words could only be construed as a nuclear threat.

At the end of February he had the nuclear "deterrent forces" on standby, and in mid-March he used the Kinzhal hypersonic missile for a conventional attack against a target in western Ukraine.

Sleepwalking can be just as bad as cowardly doing nothing

Some take the threats seriously.

Biden, for example, in the months leading up to the war, when Putin was blatantly deploying his troops to attack, never missed an opportunity to assert that there was no way America was going to war with Russia.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also repeatedly said that his first goal in this tragedy is to keep Germany out of the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has therefore accused the West of appeasement, adding that just as the despondent leaders of France and Britain in 1939 shared responsibility for World War II for not opposing Hitler, today's Western leaders share responsibility for Russia's aggression.

It was above all this accusation – appeasement like in 1939 – that