While the ignorant many hoped for a short war, the informed few rationally feared a longer, wider conflict. The first movers expected that action would be followed by counteraction (Herwig 2002, Hamilton and Herwig 2004, Fromkin 2007, McMeekin 201, Macmillan 1913, Clark 2013). This triggered a struggle for geopolitical advantage. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were in decline. All the decision makers were subscribers to a negative‐sum game of power, not the positive‐sum game of commerce and development. What ruled the leaders’ calculation in every country was the idea of the national interest (Hamilton and Herwig 2004: 239 on interests as ideas see Rodrik 2014), based on shared beliefs and values. If capital and labour had been represented in the Austrian, German, and Russian cabinets, there would have been no war. Public opinion was considered mainly when the leading actors worried about the legitimacy of actions they had already decided on.
Business interests favoured peace in all countries. No country went to war for commercial advantage. Italy, in contrast, eventually took up arms against former allies. In its ‘blank cheque’ to Austria, for example, Germany went far beyond its alliance obligation. Agency was not weakened by alliance commitments or mobilisation timetables. These governing circles included waverers, but at the critical moment the advocates of war, civilian as well as military, were able to dominate. The decisions that began the Great War show:Īgency is shown by the fact that in each country the decision was made by a handful of people (Hamilton and Herwig 2004). In fact, the record is clear, despite attempts to falsify it (described by Herwig 1987). He warned against a similar ‘inadvertent’ conflict. He noted that strong commercial ties had not prevented the latter powers from going to war. Interviewed earlier this year at Davos ( Financial Times, January 22, 2014), Japanese premier Shinzo Abe likened modern China and Japan to Britain and Germany in 1913. How the war began: An inadvertent conflict? These concern misinterpretations of how the war started, how it was won, how it was lost, and how the peace was made. This is not reassuring.Ī recent paper (Harrison 2014) reviews four ‘myths’ of the Great War. But what ‘mistakes’ do they seek to avoid? We ourselves continue to debate, and sometimes misunderstand, what mistakes were made, and even whether they were mistakes at all. The idea that China’s leaders wish to avoid Germany’s mistakes is reassuring. “The analogy with Germany before the first world war is striking … It is, at least, encouraging that the Chinese leadership has made an intense study of the rise of great powers over the ages – and is determined to avoid the mistakes of both Germany and Japan.” Most obviously, is China the Germany of today? Will China’s rise, unlike Germany’s, remain peaceful? The journalist Gideon Rachman wrote last year ( Financial Times, February 4, 2013): As its centennial approaches, the events of the Great War have worldwide resonance.