Stealing Horses to Great Applause, page 24
This attitude, which persisted even long after Sarajevo, can hardly be praised for imagination and initiative. Yet it would have taken remarkable vision and leadership for any British government to have followed any other course. In any case no one can lay any positive responsibility on Britain’s shoulders for the destruction of Austria’s great-power position and for her consequent suicidal venture.
If the preceding argument is correct, it would seem that I, often considered an incorrigible Austrophile, have served the Monarchy very badly. Her case now appears worse than before. If the decisive blow to Austria’s great-power status and position was the loss of Romania rather than the growth of the Serbian menace; if the loss of Romania was primarily due to Austria’s own foreign policy and her internal problems and failures, and not to the actions of Russia and France; if Romania’s desire for greater independence was normal and legitimate within the prevailing rules of the international system, and her policy defensible in terms of her own interests and the maintenance of peace; and if the only answer Austria could find to this adverse development was the basically aggressive policy of either forcing Romania back into a tight alliance, or treating her as an enemy and forming a combination against her—a policy which led naturally and logically to the final punitive-war strategy of 1914—if all this is true, what possible defense can be offered for Austrian policy? One can at least make a prima facie case for punitive action against an incorrigible enemy; but what excuse can one give for bludgeoning an ally who no longer wants to stay in the partnership?
All this, I think, is true; there is no good case to be made for Austrian policy in 1914, any more than there was finally in 1859 (which is not to say that she was always wrong and always the aggressor). But this also seems to me not a very important point, or at least far from the most important one. For Austrian policy might be seen as indefensible and at the same time as virtually inevitable; the chief issue might be not whether her decisions and Germany’s could be justified, but whether they might not have been anticipated and headed off. Here the main point about the reaction of the Great Powers to Romania’s realignment seems to me to resemble Sherlock Holmes’s famous point about the dog that significantly failed to bark in the night. It concerns not what the powers thought and did about this development, but what they failed to think and do about it. As has been seen, all the powers readily understood the crucial nature of Romania’s change of alignment. All saw how it undermined Austria’s position in the Balkans and her great-power position as a whole. All saw that Romania had now become the key to the Balkan balance. All reacted to this development with reactions ranging, as we have seen, from Austria’s frantic despair to Britain’s detached approval. Yet no government addressed itself to the most obvious and critical question of all: how was this new, crucial development to be managed? How, that is, could it be harmonized with the overall European balance, incorporated into the prevailing international system, without raising the already fearful strains upon that system to the point of explosion? No one thought of this problem, or suggested doing anything about it. Austria and Germany thought only of reversing the defeat they had suffered, Russia and France only of exploiting and expanding the victory Romania’s new policy represented, Britain only of not getting involved.
It might be supposed that this is merely typical of the prevailing atmosphere and conduct among the great powers at this time, when everyone could think only of winning and not of preserving the system. But this is not quite true. There were times when the great powers at least thought about longer-range considerations, even in 1914; when they warned of dangers threatening the whole system, and urged action to avoid or defuse them. Instances are familiar to everyone. The British refused to turn the Triple Entente into a Triple Alliance, in part because this would seem too overt a challenge to Germany. Both Britain and France declined to try to get Italy openly to abandon the Triple Alliance, on much the same ground. There were constant warnings before 1914 of the dangers of allowing Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans, or Astro-Serbian hostility, to develop unchecked. At least isolated voices can be found who suggested means of containing these explosive rivalries. Until the world war broke out, no one, not even Russia, was willing openly to thrown the question of the Straits or of Asiatic Turkey onto the table, because of the dangers to general peace such an action would contain. Yet I can find no instance of anyone’s suggesting that if Romania was to leave the Austro-German camp and to lean toward the opposing side, some means would have to be found to make this loss tolerable to the losers, or the whole system might be undermined.
A discussion of what could conceivably have been done in this direction would go beyond the bounds of this paper. Perhaps nothing was even theoretically possible—though I myself am inclined to believe that in this particular area of devising means to save the face of losers and to keep a system going despite major changes and adjustments, the resources of diplomacy are almost unlimited. The impossibility, I would suggest, was contextual and situational in 1914, not intrinsic. But this question must be left aside as unanswered, if not unanswerable. The main point remains that everyone in 1913–14 saw what Romania’s change in alignment meant—and no one among the great powers acted in a European sense to manage it.
6
Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War I
The debate over the Great War’s origins persists to this day, despite a century of controversy, a massive literature, and considerable general agreement about how the war started and who started it.1 Though research continues to turn up new details, it has long been clear that among the great powers it was the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, who initiated the so-called July Crisis—for a majority of scholars, Germany more than the Dual Monarchy, for others (including me), Austria-Hungary more than Germany.2
The debate, however, is really not over who or what initiated the crisis, but who or what was behind it, what aims, decisions, drives, and actions by which powers genuinely caused the war. One line of interpretation, the majority view, sees the main force behind events in Germany’s drive for world power, i.e., for hegemony in Europe and a world position in the twentieth century competitive with the existing world empires of Britain, Russia, and the USA. This German bid for power coincided in 1914 with Austria-Hungary’s decision to confront the various foreign and internal challenges and threats facing it and to reassert its position as a great power by eliminating its most challenging and dangerous small neighbor, Serbia. A minority view (also mine) sees the main cause as a general breakdown of the international system and its collective restraints and rules, prompting two great powers to conclude that they had to act forcefully now to meet the mounting threats against them even at the grave risk of general war, and the others to believe that this gave them no choice but to respond in kind—thus the downward spiral into general war.
The two master narratives, despite agreements on many facts and questions, and variations and differing emphases within each, are really about what was still possible within the system and what happened to it in 1914. One narrative claims that the Central Powers smashed it. Peaceful remedies for their problems and alternative courses of action were still open to them in 1914; absent their actions, war need not have developed at this time or later, and the system could have soldiered on. The other narrative claims that while certain contingent events (e.g., the assassination attempt against Archduke Franz Ferdinand) could doubtless have gone differently, the supposed alternative choices available to the Central Powers were illusory, and barring some highly improbable change in outlook and attitudes throughout the system and a serious collective effort to change the game as it was being played, the possibilities of further peaceful development were blocked and a general conflict was in the cards.
Each master narrative, therefore, involves an analysis also of the course of international history over the previous quarter century, and these too diverge. The versions that stress Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s responsibility allege a long record of aggressive and dangerous actions on their parts—Germany’s naval challenge to Britain, German bullying and threats against France in both Moroccan crises, Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Austro-German humiliation of Russia in the Bosnian Crisis, German attempts to penetrate and dominate the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, Austria’s persistent economic and political pressure on Serbia and military threats against it after 1903, especially in the Bosnian Crisis and both Balkan Wars, and of course the final Astro-Hungarian ultimatum backed by Germany in July 1914.
Proponents of the “systemic breakdown” argument, like me, not only interpret many of these same events and developments differently but also cast a wider net for the war’s causes. The list of things alleged to have helped destroy vital rules and restraints and ruin the system as a civil association include for example, Anglo-French colonial rivalry in Africa, culminating in the Fashoda Crisis of 1898 to 1899;3 the Spanish-American War in 1898 and its extension to the western Pacific; Russia’s imperialism in the Far East and Japan’s resort to preventive war to stop it, 1895 to 1905; the Second Anglo-Boer War, 1899 to 1902, and the succeeding incorporation of the Boer Republics into a Union of South Africa; France’s challenges to Germany in each of the two Moroccan Crises; the breakdown of Austro-Russian cooperation in the Macedonian question in 1906 to 1907 and Britain’s policy in response; the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 on Persia and Central Asia, especially in relation to Germany; Russia’s promotion of a Balkan League under its protection in 1912, the French reaction to it, and its impact on the Ottoman Empire, the Balkan states, and the whole Near East; Italy’s attack on the Ottoman Empire, in 1911 to 1912, first in Libya and then in the eastern Mediterranean and the Straits;4 Britain’s agreement with Germany in December 1912 to postpone Concert intervention in the first Balkan War until the warring states had fought it out to a conclusion; Russia’s preparations for war against the Ottoman Empire if it refused to yield on the Liman von Sanders issue; the heightened rivalry and strains between Britain and Russia over Persia, with both, especially Russia, threatening the Persian government; the Anglo-Russian talks in 1914 on potential naval cooperation against Germany in the Baltic; and the Russian and French efforts in 1913 to 1914 to wean Romania away from alliance with the Central Powers and into their camp.
What purpose is served by presenting these two bareboned lists of alleged crimes against the system? Both doubtless prove that the game of international politics from 1890 on was one of intensive imperialist competition, full of dangerous crises. But everyone already knew that; no one has ever disputed it. Everyone also agrees that the war did not arise, at least directly or primarily, over colonial-imperialist competition outside Europe. The great colonial-imperialist powers and rivals, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the USA, all ended up eventually on the same side. The main struggle for power in the years before 1914 was on the Continent and between land armies, and the most critical danger was the rivalry between the three great Central and Eastern European monarchies over Southeastern and Eastern Europe.
As a proponent of the “systemic breakdown” thesis, I do not merely accept these points; I insist on them. To believe that High Imperialism lay at the root of a systemic breakdown in international politics by 1914 has never required believing that struggles over colonies and empire directly caused the war or constituted its main issues. The question is what kind of practices, reigning assumptions, and rules of the game were part and parcel of High Imperialism and became thereby common, accepted, and legitimate. The purpose of seeing these two lists of gravamina side by side is not to decide which powers were more to blame for the war, which state’s motivations and purposes were legitimate or illegitimate, revisionist or status-quo-oriented, aggressive or defensive, etc. ad infinitum. Questions such as these have long passed the point of diminishing returns and proved a cul-de-sac. The point of the comparison is to raise again the issue of the nature and role of the system. Can the war be understood best as a system effect of a simple, common kind, resembling many in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the outcome of so complete a breakdown of any systemic rules and practices that could have held it back that general conflict sooner or later became highly likely, if not absolutely inevitable? Did state actors in 1914 and before regularly pursue substantive goals of such a nature and by such means as to make it impossible for international politics to continue for long as the practice of a civil association dedicated to keeping the practice going?
To some this will seem a deceptive maneuver, substituting a new set of terms claimed to be more objective and intersubjectively verifiable than the old, but actually just as laden with value choices, ultimately unanswerable questions, and subjective judgments as the old. Instead of asking whether certain policies and actions were aggressive or defensive, designed to provoke war or preserve peace, one now asks whether they supported or undermined the operation and survival of the international system as a civil association. What difference does this really make?
To see how it can help in a concrete way, try a thought experiment. Assume ex hypothesi that, as argued here, in order for tolerable peace and stability to prevail in international politics, the individual states participating in it and pursuing their individual substantive goals must simultaneously also act as members of a civil association working to maintain the practice, and that this requires members, especially the great powers, to have shared formal and informal understandings on acceptable rules, norms, and practices, a general agreement on what limits have to be observed and joint responsibilities fulfilled, and the ways to do this. In other words, they must understand at least in general terms certain necessary minimal rules of the game and be willing to follow them.
Now apply this assumption concretely to the July Crisis and the quarter century of international politics earlier. Ask the same question of each important action, decision, and policy. Can it be defended as a legitimate way to play the game, something compatible with the international system operating as a civil association?
This is not an unreasonable or inappropriate test. It is often applied, though seldom explicitly articulated. Those who contend that the Central Powers caused the war by their policies and actions in 1914 implicitly assert as a principle or general rule that a great power cannot legitimately confront a small neighbor, especially one allied to a rival great power and under its protection, with ultimate demands that it hopes and expects will be rejected, in order to have a plausible pretext for a war to eliminate that neighbor as a political factor in the region. Why not? Because it is dishonest, aggressive, bullying, bellicose? These are epithets; they may be deserved, but are not reasons. The reason is that any such action constitutes so egregious a violation of essential rules of the international system as a civil association as to destroy it. You cannot adopt such a policy and expect the other players to swallow it and let the game continue.
I agree. On what the Central Powers did, the principle involved, and the immediate consequences, the argument is sound. They acted like two players in a Wild West high-stakes poker game who, losing the game and convinced that it was deliberately rigged against them, kick over the table and draw their pistols, preferring to shoot it out rather than let it go on as before. But then this same principle and reasoning must be applied to all the actions, decisions, and policies of all the other actors as well, in the July Crisis and before, to determine whether these too can be defended or not as legitimate ways to play the game and maintain the system as a civil association. Before assuming that the Central Powers actions were decisive in wrecking the game by violating its essential prevailing rules, one needs to determine what were by 1914 the prevailing rules and consider the possibility that by then the principles on which the Central Powers acted were already the actual prevailing rules.
Look at Serbia. It is remarkable that a century after 1914 a wide scholarly consensus should agree that Germany and Austria-Hungary were responsible for starting the war, and no such consensus prevail in regard to Serbia’s policy, conduct, and role. Here was a state created and enlarged not merely by its own efforts in war, revolution, and ethnic cleansing, but also by international recognition and action. It had been rescued more than once from military disaster by great powers, including Austria-Hungary. It was built on a state ideology of extreme romantic ethnic-integral nationalism. Its goal, ostensibly Serb unification, was actually in practical terms a Balkan mini-empire in which Serbs ruled over minorities of Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Croats, Hungarians, and Germans.5 It targeted all its neighbors at one time or another for territorial acquisitions, principally first the Ottoman Empire, then later Austria-Hungary. Well before 1914, it laid claim in its propaganda and public instruction to large portions of Austro-Hungarian territory. In defiance of clear treaty obligations, it openly encouraged revolutionary movements and secretly supported terrorist activity in Austria-Hungary, and in 1914 was indirectly involved in the assassination of the heir-apparent to the throne, the worst blow short of war that could be struck against the Dual Monarchy. Can anyone suggest a rule of principle to justify this conduct as compatible with maintaining the system as a functioning civil association?
