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  A “moderate” war crisis, by my definition, would include any regional conflict between the United States and an intermediate power like Iran, or a great power like China, say in the South China Sea.
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  By no possible stretch of the imagination could a military conflict between the two countries with the largest economies and armed forces of the world -- and both of them nuclear powers -- be considered a “moderate” crisis.
  
  August 1914 was not a minor escalation of 'politics by other means'.