Utter nonsense boy.

You are making conclusive statements ex post facto. As such, you are looking at the facts in a neatly arranged time line and making cause and effect conclusions with the biased benefit of hindsight.

The very popular and academically acclaimed British historian Niall Fergusson wrote following about the time period starting 33 years prior to WWI: "In particular, I ask why the outbreak of the First World War, an event traditionally seen as having been heralded by a series of international crises, was not apparently anticipated by investors."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2005.00335.x/abstract

And as a counterpoint, which supports what fnj said: How often do you have superpowers build up their arsenal and "rattle their swords" but nothing happens. According to you North Korea should have started a nuclear war a long time ago.
Pfft.

If you look at the country and its civilization as an evolving system you would find that early on (during the early settlement period) it was a very rudimentary system with very poor or non-existing infrastructure. At that time, creating anything to satisfy immediate needs produced immediate results and great benefit. Examples: roads & highways, sewer systems, water treatment systems, power plants, railroads, ships, mass manufacturing & automation of heavy and laborious tasks. At the current point in time, the system has become very efficient with its infrastructure, automation, and highly evolved sophisticated communication systems. The challenge at this stage is recognizing when it's more beneficial (think cost & creation of new opportunities) to throw away existing work done and create something completely new to replace it or merely maintain and incrementally improve the existing work. A very intensive multi-dimensional cost-benefit analysis would be required for the former. Aside from that, the current system also represents an evolved complexity which poses another challenge, namely whether to attempt to integrate into the existing complexity or seek to reduce it with the new work done. In some ways, this is similar to software development. =)

Here's a qualifying domestic contender http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/11q2/2012_chevrolet_sonic-first_drive_review