Stealing Horses to Great Applause, page 20
But theory of course will not get us far; the central question is historical. Did a change in the system such as I have posited occur, or has international politics always been essentially a struggle for power, security, and advantage played with rules and incentives based on a survival of the fittest? The evidence, I hold, shows clearly that until late in the nineteenth century a European system with a different payoff structure prevailed. True, the ethos of the Vienna era and its solidarity order had since the mid-century given way to the Realpolitik of Napoleon III, Cavour, Bismarck, and others. Yet the system continued on the whole to discourage and penalize attempts to steal horses and to encourage and reward those who stopped looking over the fence, at least within Europe. Bismarck himself led in restoring and maintaining this system for self-interested reasons. The evidence of this is familiar to historians and too extensive to rehearse—Russia and Britain in 1875 warning Germany off another war with France and France off a war of revenge for Alsace-Lorraine; Bismarck refusing to promise neutrality to Alexander II in a Russo-Austrian war because Germany could not allow either of them to be destroyed; Russia being forced to retreat from its violation of the Budapest Accords in 1878 and Germany trying to build a golden bridge for its retreat; various instances, especially in the Near East, in which ambitious smaller powers willing to start a great fire if they could roast their particular marshmallows in the ashes were controlled. Until about 1890, perhaps somewhat beyond this, the incentives structure of the European system continued to sustain a tolerable level of international relations in which, in general, policies of not stealing horses paid off and vice versa.
The New Imperialism beginning in the early 1870s and escalating thereafter ultimately changed this. In a sense, it was bound to, for imperialism and an international system are intrinsically alien, imperial rule being the logical contradictory of membership in a community of independent, juridically equal units. More important in practical terms was the principle on which New Imperialism came to operate, namely, that those who stole horses deserved to win while those who only looked over the fence deserved to lose out. This principle became an explicit part of international law with the Berlin Congo Conference of 1885, making legal colonial possession a matter of successful theft—finding a territory no other so-called civilized state had taken and appropriating it by effective occupation or the appearance of it.8
This had a much greater impact on the ethos of the late nineteenth century system than the imperialism starting in the late fifteenth century, involving major seizures of territory especially in the New World, had had earlier. For most of the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries the European system or society of states was only being formed. Not until the early eighteenth century can one detect any serious regulative principle in it (the so-called balance of power); not until the late eighteenth century did the system embrace both Western and Eastern Europe, even then the rules and norms were almost as rapacious in Europe itself as in the colonial arena. Moreover, only in the late nineteenth century did so many powerful states compete for empire on so broad a scale and in so frantic a manner. Furthermore, an unwritten rule in the Vienna era that lasted into the latter part of the century had erected a certain separation of imperialist activity from European international politics. The imperialist ethos, though applied with drastic effects to lesser breeds without the law, had no great impact on the incentives structure of the European system.
Two developments at the end of the century ended this separation. The first was the virtually universal triumph of the belief that the survival and prosperity of European states in the twentieth century would depend on their success in world policy, i.e., imperialism. This doctrine sharply raised the stakes and tempo of an already heated competition. The second was a series of dramatic events serving to demonstrate that the ethos and tactics of imperialism, hitherto largely confined to the extra-European world, now applied equally to European or Europeanized powers as well, and thus drastically altering the unwritten understandings and incentives structure of the European system.
The best date for marking this sea change is 1898—not, of course, that everything important happened in this calendar year, but that in 1898 many developments began, combined, and jelled to prove that an imperialism already red in tooth and claw abroad would now infect relations between European peoples and states. The British conquest of the Sudan that year in the most glorious and bloody of what Bismarck once called Britain’s sporting wars demonstrated the power-political lesson aptly summed up by Hilaire Belloc: “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not.” A direct aftermath and consequence of this conquest was the Fashoda Crisis, teaching the French government to its astonishment and chagrin that the unwritten rule prevailing in European politics since 1815, that European powers might quarrel over colonial territory but not go to war with each other over it, no longer held. Britain was not only ready to go to war with another European great power over territory in Africa, but also would neither negotiate over that power’s claim to the territory nor allow the rival any face-saving compromise. The British resort to Machtpolitik was successful. The German Naval Bill of 1898 demonstrated that Germany, pursuing its Welt- und Machtpolitik, proposed to challenge British naval supremacy more seriously than anyone had done since the Napoleonic Wars. The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) was clearly foreshadowed already in 1898 by the British government’s firm decision to bring de facto independent South African republics of European stock into its Empire by military force if necessary, and its willingness to respond with force to any European interference. In 1898, Théophile Delcassé took over the French Foreign Ministry and immediately began working to transform the Russo-French alliance from a defensive instrument into a general weapon of world policy. One of his first moves was to seek agreements with Russia and Italy on partitioning Austria-Hungary should it collapse, so as to prevent Germany from getting particular portions of it.9 In 1897–8, European imperialism in China, already underway, escalated sharply from a competition mainly over trade and dominant political influence into a scramble for territorial concessions and naval bases. This touched off a great Chinese revolt, the Boxer Rebellion, leading to further Western intervention and imperialism, and ultimately in 1904 to the Russo-Japanese War. The year 1898, finally, included the Spanish-Cuban-American War in which the United States defeated Spain and ended Spanish misrule in Cuba only to bring it quickly under its own domination, expand the American empire in the Caribbean and Pacific, and seize the Philippine Islands, provoking an insurrection and war that killed thousands of Filipinos.
In every one of these cases, horse stealing paid off. Breaches of precedent and the use or threat of force never led to any international sanctions or resistance. Concern for how these actions would affect the international system and the relations between its members never served as a deterrent; if anything, it acted in certain instances as a spur to action. The rule was no longer the traditional “Do ut des” (“I give so that you give”), and still less “Do to others as you would have them do to you”; but “Do to others what they might do to you, but do it first.”
The Spanish-American-Cuban War illustrates particularly well how the ascendant ethos of imperialism defeated the declining ethos of European balance and Concert. The centenary observances and discussions of the war in 1998 and publications since have re-examined various effects of the war on Cuba, the Caribbean, Latin America in general, the Philippines, and above all the United States in its rise to world power. One aspect has received little attention: the impact of this disastrous, humiliating war on Spain. Historians of Spain tell us that this war was a major step in the decline and downfall of the Spanish monarchy that led in turn to military dictatorship in the 1920s, the ill-starred Republic of 1931–6, and civil war and semi-Fascist dictatorship under Franco from 1936 on.10 International historians know that in the 1880s and 1890s fear of a revolution in Spain and concern about how to prop up the feeble Spanish monarchy and thereby avoid European complications were a persistent if minor theme in European politics. Two small incidents illustrate that concern, and the difference it made in two eras. In the 1880s a dispute arose between Spain and Germany over the Caroline Islands in the Pacific, arousing the public in both countries and leading to republican agitation in Spain. Bismarck could have forced Spain to yield. Considering, however, that to do so would damage Germany’s reputation and undermine the feeble Spanish monarchy, endangering European peace, the notoriously hard-headed realist Bismarck proposed settling the issue by Papal arbitration, and, as Bismarck intended, Pope Leo XIII decided in favor of Spain.11 In April 1898 the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Count Agenor Goluchowski tried to organize a European Concert mediation of the Spanish-Cuban and Spanish-American conflict so as to prevent a Spanish-American war and help the Spanish monarchy survive. The effort went nowhere. The United States rejected mediation, Spain refused to give way entirely to American demands, Germany and Russia feared jeopardizing their commercial relations with the United States, and Great Britain, concerned over South Africa and actively engaged in appeasing the Americans, wanted nothing to do with it. The British government later claimed credit in Washington for having foiled a continental European attempt to interfere. Imperialism easily trumped European balance and Concert.12
The Spanish-Cuban-American War involved Austria-Hungary only in a minor way, to be sure. In general, it had little directly to do with the late-century developments marking the triumph of the imperialist ethos. Preoccupied with its domestic nationality problems and crises, it could not compete seriously in the imperialist scramble for power and territory overseas and was already seen itself as a possible target of partition. Its efforts later to join the scramble for imperialist prizes, largely for prestige reasons, were half-hearted and proved unsuccessful.13 Nonetheless, Austria-Hungary had a vital role to play in European international politics in the critical years around 1898. In 1897, in agreement with Russia, it began a decade of wary Austro-Russian cooperation in damping down the revolutionary insurrection in Macedonia and the growing rivalry and clashes between various Balkan states and peoples over it, to keep the Balkans on ice and avert an Austro-Russian clash there.14 Here the ethos of Concert and balance trumped imperialism.
Naturally, Austria-Hungary had particular reasons and interests of its own for promoting peace with Russia and restraining revolt and ethnic conflict in the Balkans at this time, the main ones being a serious domestic crisis with the Czechs and growing problems with Hungary. The question, however, is what kind of incentives and rewards an international system must provide in order for it to survive durably and work effectively to control conflict and promote general stability and peace. The policy Austria-Hungary adopted in the Macedonian question, which it followed fairly faithfully until 1907, when Russia under British pressure and with Italian encouragement abandoned their agreement, involved cooperating with its most dangerous rival in the area of their sharpest historic competition in order to manage a critical problem, keep their rivalry within bounds, and preserve the general peace, even while the Austrians knew that this policy offered their opponent the opportunity to make gains elsewhere that would enhance its overall power. A policy such as this must pay off in some clear benefits for both sides if the rival parties are to continue their cooperation and if the international system and peace are to endure. Russia gained major direct benefits from this Austro-Hungarian stance. With their European and Balkan flanks secure, the Russians were able to concentrate on imperialist expansion in the Far East, and when this venture led them into a disastrous war and revolution, Austria-Hungary’s guarantee of neutrality and cooperation paid off still more handsomely in helping the regime survive. Austria-Hungary’s payoff for its cooperation in Macedonia then and later consisted, as leading Russians conceived it, in the opportunity to survive a while longer, provided it could do so by its own resources.
This is not to portray Austria-Hungary as a victim, which would be inappropriate and irrelevant. It merely asks, to repeat, how long an international system with the kind of ethos and attendant rules, norms, and incentives that emerged around the turn of the century could be expected to last, or states like Austria-Hungary, even if they depended on it to survive, could be expected to continue sustaining it in the face of adverse payoffs.
The year 1898, of course, marked only the point at which the ascendancy of the politics of imperialism over those of European balance and Concert became dear. It would take far too long here to show how almost every subsequent major event and development in European politics further promoted the triumph of an imperialist ethos and fit into its pattern of perverse, destructive payoffs. The list is a long one: the Second Anglo-Boer War and its outcome; the course of Western imperialism in East Asia culminating in the Russo-Japanese War; the results and aftermath of that war, bringing great gains to Japan, colonial occupation to Korea, new threats to China, revolution to Russia, and immense benefits in various theaters (East Asia, India, Central Asia, Europe, and the high seas) to Britain—an instance in which a state could profit by simply being a silent partner to another’s horse stealing; the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale and the accompanying French deals with Italy and Spain on Morocco, designed to exclude Germany; the succeeding French move to gain control of Morocco and isolate Germany, leading to the First Moroccan Crisis and a partial French victory; the Anglo-Russian Convention dividing up Persia and Central Asia, again intended to exclude Germany; the French takeover in Morocco and the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911; Italy’s cynically aggressive attack on the Ottoman Empire in Libya, soon extended, in total disregard of the international consequences and dangers, to the Turkish Straits and the Dodecanese Islands; Russia’s moves to isolate Austria and control the Balkans through its Balkan League; the Serbian-Bulgarian-Greek offensive alliance aimed directly against Turkey and indirectly against Austria-Hungary, which Russian diplomacy promoted, and the two Balkan Wars it prompted. All these well-known developments fit the pattern already seen. Those who set out to steal horses, unless stopped by other horse stealers by threat or superior force, were rewarded; those who held back lost out and were punished.
Two major developments do not obviously conform to the pattern—the Anglo-German naval race and the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway. Even these, however, do not contradict it and basically fit in. The German naval challenge to Britain represented an attempt to better equip Germany for horse stealing, i.e., for competing with Britain for empire and world position. The German bid failed because Germany faced too many other challenges to concentrate fully on it and the British had the resources and will to defeat it. The Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway scheme ended in an apparently peaceful compromise because Russia and Britain had previously secured the prizes in Persia, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Empire most important to them and decided that it would be too costly and dangerous to exclude Germany from a share of the economic spoils in Anatolia—an instance of the shared horse stealing not uncommon in the New Imperialism.
Without trying to expound and defend this interpretation of the whole period from 1900 to 1914 further here, the central point concerning the ultimate impact of the ethos, collective mentality, and incentives structure of imperialism on the international system in general and on Austria-Hungary in particular, can be illustrated through one major development, the Russo-Japanese War. Russia’s policy toward Japan in East Asia from 1895 to 1903 bears a striking similarity in certain respects to Russian policy toward Austria in the Balkans from 1909 to 1914. That is, in both cases Russia did not want a war or desire the physical elimination of its rival. It simply wished to keep its opponent isolated, hold it off, fob it off if necessary with meaningless assurances and agreements, and over time consolidate its hold over the area in dispute until its control became so strong that the opponent would have to recognize and accept it. One difference between the two instances, so far as Russian policy is concerned, is that in East Asia Russia encountered some resistance from outside powers, notably Britain, while in the Balkans it was encouraged and aided by Serbia, France, Britain, Italy, and Romania.
The difference between the two cases that most affected the respective outcomes, however, lies in the way Russia’s opponents, Japan and Austria-Hungary, reacted to Russia’s moves. The Japanese government came to understand Russia’s policy in East Asia and its ultimate consequences for Japan early on and decided, after much debate and considerable hesitation and division, that Japan must either obtain a satisfactory, reliable agreement with Russia dividing the spoils (essentially Korea for Japan, Manchuria for Russia) or fight. When the Japanese government concluded that it could not obtain the deal it wanted from Russia, well before the possibilities of peaceful negotiation with Russia were formally exhausted, it chose not, as Austria-Hungary did in 1914, merely to take actions to protect its interests at the risk of war (such as occupying Korea), allowing Russia to decide on its response. Instead, it chose all-out, immediate preventive war, attacking Russia suddenly and with all its might. In terms of my metaphor, the Japanese saw that under the current imperialist system it was foolish to look over the fence, see a chief preparing to steal horses one coveted oneself, try to reach agreement on shared theft, and failing this fall back on the hope that the horses would not be stolen after all or that one could simply steal a few oneself without fighting the other thief. The rational though risky course was to attack the other thief first, drive him off, and then steal the horses oneself. And that policy worked.
