It might be argued it was the international system with its entangling alliances and secret treaties that dragged the world kicking and screaming to slaughter of the trenches.... a world without firebreaks can internationalize a local incident that might otherwise have remained isolated. It was precisely the telegraph, railroad and even the invention of corned beef that made "some damned fool thing in the Balkans" able spread like wildfire. Once the finger of Serbia had been caught in the mangle the entire European arm was pulled into the meat grinder, inevitably and inexorably.The focus on nationalism as an evil was made more plausible to teachers as the educational establishment moved left, for the great Soviet cause was internationalism. Nationalism, in the absence of entangling alliances and mobilization plans that thrust British troops to the German front, might well have turned there as here into isolationism. It might have inclined the Brits as the Swiss to avoid the war, because it wasn't their people's business and they would prefer to be left alone.
Imperialism, another Soviet bugaboo, is a better candidate for blame than nationalism. The British people could sit out a world war, but the British Empire couldn't.
In any case, Wretchard points out (as our Eric Blair has long argued) that WWI destroyed the foundations of Western civilization; we may yet die of it. I saw someone post something yesterday to the effect of, 'if we don't have nations, if we don't have children, if we don't have borders: they all died for nothing.' Maybe that's right, as Wretchard notes:
It's instructive to note that even a century has not proved enough time for Macron's EU to recover its religious, national and erotic confidence. In the quartet of leaders formed by May, Macron, Merkel and Trump only the Donald has children. To Macron at least, national ideals have become demons. And as for religion -- perhaps that is a subject best left untouched for the present.
I can't see what nationalism, internationalism, borders, or anti-borderism had to do with it. A nation can be legitimately interested in protecting itself or even in protecting the interests of allies half a world away without deciding it's OK to burn the world down in order to get its way in every conceivable distant
ReplyDeleteor international dispute. I can buy that treaties were a hair-trigger to get armies mobilizing in the first place, but a solid core of leaders (and their supporting populations) had to make some terrible decisions to keep it going for years. Whatever those decisions were primarily based on, it sure wasn't treaty obligations. Treaties can be renegotiated when it becomes obvious they're destroying the very goals that led people to agree to them in the first place. What goals were advanced by the people leading the charges in WWI? Those are the goals we ought to be dissecting, not labels like nationalism--unless nationalism is taken to mean "my country is so great that it's entitled to world domination by extermination of its competitors."
...May, Macron, Merkel and Trump only the Donald has children...
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the quote about Lord Keynes. He advocated for enormous Government debt-and-spending as 'stimulus' in case of recession. Keynes was a homosexual.....and Schumpeter pointed out that to Keynes, paying off that debt was not a concern at all, since he had not children who would be slaves to that debt.
Similarly, Macron, Merkel (an ex-Communist apparatchik), and May have no particular reason to preserve their nations; to whom will they pass them on?
Texan, remember that Wilson was a thoroughgoing scoundrel who--like his Democrat Party descendants--would like like Hell at the drop of a hat to keep the US in that war. And he did!! There is still discussion over the "Zimmerman note" which Wilson used to shove doughboys into ships bound for France.
ReplyDelete"... but a solid core of leaders (and their supporting populations) had to make some terrible decisions to keep it going for years."
ReplyDeleteWell, that's the problem. "a solid core of leaders" is pretty tough to come by, and "their supporting populations" are divided in factions, often under-informed or unaware of consequences, and quite possibly just swept up in the moment. It's as unlikely a path to good ends (hoping for good leaders and populations as a whole) as I can think of.
Reading Sleepwalkers I was struck by the seemingly universal view at the time that the Austro Hungarian Empire simply had to go. It seemed to be a given, a silent assumption that needed no elaboration yet was lost in the translation of a hundred years of history.
ReplyDeleteIt made me wonder how much is still missing of that gestalt aspect of history - not just the Great War but most history. As we seem to be approaching another internal war in the US, I frequently try to project the events of today as a historical past to a future student, and ask - "does what we are doing today seem logical and rational? Do we seem reasonable?". One hopes the truth is possible to reach through such an exercise, but my gut says we are collectively so entwined in our factual *and* emotional times that the exercise is futile.
These big sprawling communal efforts, like empires--they can seem so powerful and inevitable, but they're also fragile. Who really had a big stake in ensuring that the Austro-Hungarian Empire sustained itself? Just a few leaders? If you're extremely ruthless and isolated (and maybe you have a powerful covert protector) like North Korea, maybe you can keep your powerful state going even though almost no one who lives in it cares about preserving it. If not, it's amazing how fast something can fall apart when the status quo is disrupted. War is plenty of disruption for some unpopular governments: all of a sudden, the price of rebellion is not so much the risk of violent conflict but the style of violent conflict one will subject himself to. The price of fundamental change shifts abruptly.
ReplyDeletere Austria-Hungary, an interesting comment from AJP Taylor about the relationship between government overreach and ethnic conflict:
ReplyDelete"The Austrian state suffered from its strength: it had never had its range of activity cut down during a successful period of laissez-faire, and therefore the openings for a national conflict were far greater. There were no private schools or hospitals, no independent universities; and the state, in its infinite paternalism, performed a variety of services from veterinary surgery to the inspecting of buildings. The appointment of every school teacher, of every railway porter, of every hospital doctor, of every tax-collector, was a signal for national struggle. Besides, private industry looked to the state for aid from tariffs and subsidies; these, in every country, produce ‘log-rolling,’ and nationalism offered an added lever with which to shift the logs. German industries demanded state aid to preserve their privileged position; Czech industries demanded state aid to redress the inequalities of the past. The first generation of national rivals had been the products of universities and fought for appointment at the highest professional level: their disputes concerned only a few hundred state jobs. The generation which followed them was the result of universal elementary education and fought for the trivial state employment which existed in every village; hence the more popular national conflicts at the turn of the century."
Tex, re : why they kept fighting.
ReplyDeleteI think they had decent reasons that extended beyond the sunk cost fallacy. Germany captured pretty much all of Belgium and a good bit of northern France (if I remember right German guns could be heard in Paris at one point in 1914), and held it pretty much through 1918. Asking for peace at any point before the US entered the war would have meant the annexation of more French territory by German, Belgium
becoming a German vassal state, and probably negative effects on Holland and Denmark too. Whilhelm wasn't Hitler but he was bad enough as German conduct in Belgium showed. That's not even considering the Eastern front where Germany captured huge chunks of what became Poland. A peace treaty in 1916 would have put a very strong and aggressive Germany astride the heart of central and eastern Europe, with Belgian and maybe Dutch ports to threaten the English, and neither the French nor the English could tolerate that outcome. They just hung on until they could get the US into the war while slowly attritting German reserves down to nothing.
I imagine they had reasons that seemed good to them, though it's questionable whether most of them were worth the cost in the end. What I was saying, really, was that it was neither a simple nationalism (in the sense of asserting control over one's own territory and culture) nor a simple internationalism (in the sense of being entangled in treaties or excessively concerned with promoting worldwide progress or justice) that could explain the catastrophic prolongation of the conflict.
ReplyDeleteAs for the various goals that various players originally sought, some were probably pretty reasonable while others stank. It's not clear to me how much relevance any of them has to the current goals of world leaders like Trump. In any case, throwing around words like nationalism or internationalism doesn't seem to shed much light.
Everybody is missing the real reason the US ended up getting into the war; The loans for food and materiel that had been made to the allies.
ReplyDeleteKinda hard to get your money back if they go down to defeat.
It can be argued that the Allies, absent American manufactured munitions (paid for by loans by American banks), would have had to end the war in 1916 or so, because they would have had run out of stuff. It was obviously a concern to the Germans, as the "Black Tom" explosion in 1916 is usually considered a German clandestine operation.
Nobody much wants to discuss the banking angle because nobody wants to admit that 400,000 soldiers died so that JP Morgan could recoup his loans with interest.