"Perhaps the most striking difference between the world in 1914 and that
of 2014 lies, in a way that would have surprised our ancestors of a
century ago, in the greater power of religion today to disrupt the
international order. Whatever the First World War was about, it was a
determinedly secular conflict. Only in the Ottoman empire, and the
Balkans, perhaps, did religion play a role, yet even the Armenian
genocide was justified by the Turks mainly in ethnic and security terms.
The leading combatants in the First World War were pursuing decidedly
secular interests."
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