CAMBRIDGE
– This year marks the hundredth anniversary of a transformative event
of modern history. World War I killed some 20 million people and ground
up a generation of Europe’s youth. It also fundamentally changed the
international order in Europe and beyond.
Indeed,
WWI destroyed not only lives, but also three empires in Europe – those
of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia – and, with the collapse of
Ottoman rule, a fourth on its fringe. Until the Great War, the global
balance of power was centered in Europe; after it, the United States and
Japan emerged as great powers. The war also ushered in the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917, prepared the way for fascism, and intensified and
broadened the ideological battles that wracked the twentieth century.
How could such a catastrophe happen? Shortly after the war broke out, when German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
was asked to explain what happened,
he answered, “Oh, if I only knew!” Perhaps in the interest of
self-exoneration, he came to regard the war as inevitable. Similarly,
the British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, argued that he had “come
to think that no human individual could have prevented it.”
The question we face today is whether it could happen again. Margaret MacMillan, author of the interesting new book
The War that Ended Peace,
argues that,
“it is tempting – and sobering – to compare today’s relationship
between China and the US with that between Germany and Britain a century
ago.” After drawing a similar comparison,
The Economist concludes that
“the most troubling similarity between 1914 and now is complacency.”
And some political scientists, such as John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago, have argued that,
“to put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.”
But
historical analogies, though sometimes useful for precautionary
purposes, become dangerous when they convey a sense of historical
inevitability. WWI was not inevitable. It was made more probable by
Germany’s rising power and the fear that this created in Great Britain.
But it was also made more probable by Germany’s fearful response to
Russia’s rising power, as well as myriad other factors, including human
errors. But the gap in overall power between the US and China today is
greater than that between Germany and Britain in 1914.
Drawing
contemporary lessons from 1914 requires dispelling the many myths have
been created about WWI. For example, the claim that it was a deliberate
preventive war by Germany is belied by the evidence showing that key
elites did not believe this. Nor was WWI a purely accidental war, as
others maintain: Austria went to war deliberately, to fend off the
threat of rising Slavic nationalism. There were miscalculations over the
war’s length and depth, but that is not the same as an accidental war.
It
is also said that the war was caused by an uncontrolled arms race in
Europe. But the naval arms race was over by 1912, and Britain had won.
While there was concern in Europe about the growing strength of armies,
the view that the war was precipitated directly by the arms race is
facile.
Today’s
world is different from the world of 1914 in several important ways.
One is that nuclear weapons give political leaders the equivalent of a
crystal ball that shows what their world would look like after
escalation. Perhaps if the Emperor, the Kaiser, and the Czar had had a
crystal ball showing their empires destroyed and their thrones lost in
1918, they would have been more prudent in 1914. Certainly, the
crystal-ball effect had a strong influence on US and Soviet leaders
during the Cuban missile crisis. It would likely have a similar
influence on US and Chinese leaders today.
Another
difference is that the ideology of war is much weaker nowadays. In
1914, war really was thought to be inevitable, a fatalistic view
reinforced by the Social Darwinist argument that war should be welcomed,
because it would “clear the air” like a good summer storm. As Winston
Churchill wrote in The World Crisis:
“There
was a strange temper in the air. Unsatisfied by material prosperity,
the nations turned fiercely toward strife, internal or external.
National passions, unduly exalted in the decline of religion, burned
beneath the surface of nearly every land with fierce, if shrouded,
fires. Almost one might think the world wished to suffer. Certainly men
were everywhere eager to dare.”
To
be sure, nationalism is growing in China today, while the US launched
two wars after the September 11, 2001, attacks. But neither country is
bellicose or complacent about a limited war. China aspires to play a
larger role in its region, and the US has regional allies to whose
defense it is committed. Miscalculations are always possible, but the
risk can be minimized by the right policy choices. Indeed, on many
issues – for example, energy, climate change, and financial stability –
China and the US have strong incentives to cooperate.
Moreover,
whereas Germany in 1914 was pressing hard on Britain’s heels (and had
surpassed it in terms of industrial strength), the US remains decades
ahead of China in overall military, economic, and soft-power resources.
Too adventuresome a policy would jeopardize China’s gains at home and
abroad.
In
other words, the US has more time to manage its relations with a rising
power than Britain did a century ago. Too much fear can be
self-fulfilling. Whether the US and China will manage their relationship
well is another question. But how they do so will be dictated by human
choice, not some ironclad historical law.
Among
the lessons to be learned from the events of 1914 is to be wary of
analysts wielding historical analogies, particularly if they have a
whiff of inevitability. War is never inevitable, though the belief that
it is can become one of its causes.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-s–nye-asks-whether-war-between-china-and-the-us-is-as-inevitable-as-many-believe-world-war-i-to-have-been#MXSXHMiLmdlIvlB1.99
ISTANBUL — How quickly Turkey has turned.
