Mental Rambling

OK, I'm a nerd.  I admit it. 

I was doing some thinking today while I was cutting up and splitting wood for the fireplace.  Try to follow this:  (Remember, I'm not a real historian, just a putz who likes to read about history)

1. France and England fought numerous wars in the Americas, Europe, and India during the 17th and 18th centuries.
2. After losing her colonies in North America, France stuck a thumb in England's eye and helped the Americans in their revolution.
3. France went into an economic depression that was caused at least in part by the money it spent on the American Revolution, bringing about the French Revolution
4. The great powers of Europe declared war on France following the revolution, which gave rise to Napoleon.
5. Napoleon fought a series of wars with the rest of Europe.  These wars started the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.  They also started the ball rolling on Italian and German unifications.
6. Europe created several multi-lateral mutual defense accords, at least in part to keep a balance of power on the continent and keep another country from creating a new Napoleon.  These agreements also ushered in a united Germany and Italy.
7. These interlocking mutual defense pacts led almost directly to the escalation of an assassination to the beginning of the First World War, with new empires (Germany and Italy) fighting against old empires (France, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Britain).
8. Russia's lack of ability to fight a long war with the Austrians and Germans led to the conditions that Lenin used to hold the October Revolution, establishing Communism in Eastern Europe.
9. The aftermath of the First World War and the Versailles treaty created the conditions for the Second World War.  It also destroyed the large stabilizing influences of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires on Eastern Europe and the Mid-East, contributing to the problems we have in those areas to this day.
10. The aftermath of the Second World War put the final nail in European colonialism, which pretty much died in Africa and Asia within 30 years of the end of the War.  
11. The Soviet Union and the United States faced off in a stalemate in Europe, but fought a series of proxy wars in other parts of the world, such as Asia, Central and South America, the Mid-East, and Africa.
12. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the stabilizing stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union disintegrated, bringing fights that have simmered for a long time back to the forefront in much of the world.
13. The United States has strived to remain a relevant stabilizing force in world that is rapidly returning to the fragmented semi-chaos that ruled throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.

So basically, I somehow came to the conclusion that the issues we are facing today are directly related to wars that France and England fought 300 years ago.

Sometime my mind wanders. I'm just surprised it finds its way back.