If you’re an embattled head of state, deflecting criticism through foreign adventure carries seductive appeal: Outside threats can cause people to pull together. As King Henry IV advises his son Hal, the future king, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2:
busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
What better way to patch over domestic discord than to take on a common enemy?In the real world, many historians interpret the Crimean War of 1853-1856 as an effort by French Emperor Louis Napoleon to buttress his support among French Catholics by fighting the …read more
Source: The Atlantic
