The world today looks disconcertingly like the one of the early twentieth century - and not only because of regional wars in Iran and Ukraine. Today's landscape of jealous great powers, rampant nationalism, economic competition, and failing globalization mirrors the conditions that led to the catastrophe of 1914.

Odd Arne Westad, a professor of history and global affairs at Yale University, has laid out this argument in a Foreign Affairs essay adapted from his forthcoming book "The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings From History," "Hvylya" reports. Understanding the current US-China dynamic through a Cold War lens misses the point entirely, Westad wrote. The better comparison is the rearrangement of great powers that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Unlike the Cold War's bipolar standoff, today's international system features multiple great powers - China, Russia, and the United States - all jockeying for position while economic interdependence frays. "Sometimes a sense of deja vu rings loud," Westad wrote, noting that leaders communicate without much understanding of one another and share a growing sense that time is running out to settle their differences.

The parallel extends beyond atmospherics. Britain's pre-1914 foreign secretary Edward Grey saw many minor wars but nothing that would pit great powers against each other. "Even in the early months of 1914 the international sky seemed clearer than it had been," Grey later recalled - just months before a war that killed 40 million people. Westad's central warning is that 1914 happened precisely because great powers failed to address the smaller conflicts that together fueled the conflagration.

The historian pointed to a specific mechanism: temporary truces on trade and tariffs, or stated intentions on narcotics control, are not sufficient to turn US-Chinese relations around. Positive cooperation, including dealing with underlying structural problems, remains the only path away from disaster.

Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on why Europe fears being caught between competing great powers as the era of American dominance fades.