Similarities and Differences Between the “thirty Years War” and the Earlier Conflict (1618-1648)

Similarities and differences between the “Thirty Years War” and the earlier conflict (1618-1648)

Michael Klare describes the foes facing Syria as a new “Thirty Years War” and as having similar outlines of the 1618-1648 conflict. The present-day Syria is faced with a long and brutal internal conflict, in which numerous different conflicts combine to create a single great conflagration. The same present faced Germany in the course of the great conflict of 1618-1648 that came to be known as the Thirty Years’ War (Klare). There are some similarities and differences between the developing conflict in the Middle East and the Thirty Years’ War that essentially wiped out a third of the population in Central Europe in the 17th Century.

        In essence, both represent geopolitical struggles taking the form of sectarian clashes on the surface. Both in the developing conflict in the Middle East and the Thirty Years’ Warfighting factions get support from foreign powers for years in a more direct fashion of the war. As it was the case in the Thirty Years’ War, different geopolitical rivalries, alongside long-term contentious issues, of the wider region are finding expression in a single country (Klare). In the Thirty Years’ War, it was Germany while in the current conflict it is Syria. In both cases, several foreign players pour resources into the war, with differences between the suffering country’s factions remaining irreconcilable. This implies to rare chance for quick resolution of the developing conflict as it was the case in the earliest conflict that ended up lasting for thirty years. Similarities between the structures of both conflicts are indicators of particular aspects of the international politics’ dynamics which persist in various ages.