PragerU's CEO, Marissa Streit, interviewed historian Niall Ferguson on "Whether the U.S. Can Avoid World War III". Professor Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Harvard University, starts his discussion with general comments that bleed into questions and comments on the ancient conflict between Athens and Sparta, followed by several major wars in the last few hundred years of world history. This background, which is covered very quickly, moves into more recent history, beginning only a few hundred years ago, and goes right into WWII, the cold war between the US and the USSR and the modern conflicts involving small powers, like North Korea and Iran (both of which are nuclear powers) and major powers, like the US, Russia and China.

This background becomes the intellectual soil to produce important questions about our current circumstances. Those circumstances cover social and political movements, economics and economic theory and fairly deep discussion of our current history. You can find it at Historian Niall Ferguson on Whether the U.S. Can Avoid World War III.

Unfortunately, the background in history that the vast majority of people are given today is quite insufficient as a prerequisite to understanding and appreciating this discussion.