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ISS Forum 16 H-Diplo | ISSF Forum, No. 16 (2017) A production of H-Diplo with the journals Security Studies, International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the International Studies Association’s Security Studies Section (ISSS). issforum.org Forum Editors: Robert Jervis, Frank Gavin, and Diane Labrosse H-Diplo/ISSF Web and Production Editor: George Fujii Introduction by Robert Jervis H-Diplo/ISSF Forum on “New Light on 1914?” Published by H-Diplo/ISSF on 5 September 2017 Permalink: http://issforum.org/forums/newlight1914 Shortlink: http://tiny.cc/ISSF-Forum-16 PDF URL: http://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/ISSF-Forum-16.pdf Contents Introduction by Robert Jervis, Columbia University ............................................................... 2 Article by Marc Trachtenberg, University of California, Los Angeles ................................... 10 Response by Dale C. Copeland, University of Virginia .......................................................... 57 Response by Stephen A. Schuker, University of Virginia ...................................................... 70 © Copyright 2017 The Authors | H-Diplo/ISSF Forum 16 (2017) Introduction by Robert Jervis, Columbia University n introducing this Forum, I am reminded of the joke that when the latest entry into heaven is told that each newcomer is expected to tell the others about a major event in his life, he says that he will talk about a flood he witnessed. His guardian angel nods, adding “Just remember that Noah will be in the Iaudience.” All of us have learned–and continue to learn–from the scholarship of Marc Trachtenberg, Dale Copeland, and Stephen Schuker, whose works blend history and political science. Here, they have laid out a great feast for us. Although it is a lengthy one, readers should not be daunted because the authors are accomplished stylists, and the pages fly by. But, to return to my original metaphor, like any meal cooked by expert chefs, it may be best lingered over because the issues and arguments are enormously stimulating and of lasting significance. My introduction will map the main contributions and then ruminate on some of the questions they raise. This appetizer, if you will, can be skipped by those impatient to get to the main course. Samuel Williamson Jr. and Ernest May begin their excellent 2007 review article by quoting Bernadotte Schmitt’s 1929 review of four books on the origins of World War I: “The failure of four fair-minded men, using the same materials, to reach a reasonable harmony of view or even a consistent statement of facts, is somewhat melancholy, though perhaps hardly surprising. But the fact is eloquent testimony to the complexity of the problem, and only through discussion by men of many nations will it ever be possible to arrive at anything approaching an identity of opinion.”1 The statement is true today, and I am confident it will be true forever. Or perhaps there will be periods of consensus, as there have been in the past, but they will not last. Part of the reason is the normal perversity of scholars who, driven by both intellectual curiosity and professional incentives, will seek something new to say. This is more than a side point: if, over a century later, disinterested scholars cannot untangle the issues and agree in their judgments, it is not surprising that leaders and diplomats at the time had very different perspectives, could not fully understand each other, and were unable to find a way out. But those who seek lessons from history to make this a better world can only be discouraged by the fact that we cannot tell leaders what they should have done to have avoided this war. Trachtenberg’s essay, which Copeland and Schuker find interesting but flawed, is not a full-scale review, but rather a coverage of selected topics. The first is a critique of Fritz Fischer’s famous thesis that Germany bore primary responsibility for the war and that its aggressive policy flowed from the domestic instability of the regime coupled with the belief that time was not on Germany’s side, which produced a strong drive to fight before Russian rearmament reached its culminating point in 1917. Starting with a close reading of the documents Fischer relies on, he argues that many of Fischer’s interpretations are overdrawn if not misleading and that domestic pressures in the form of social imperialism did not impel Germany to follow an expansive course. He then turns to the question of whether this was a preventive war. Here Trachtenberg agrees with the standard view that it was, but goes on to argue that this “point would not support the general claim that Germany was primarily responsible for the war if it could be shown that Germany’s rivals were also thinking in preventive war terms” (23). In the next section of his paper, this is what he does, pointing to numerous parallels in the thinking of German, Russian, and French leaders. He follows this with a discussion of the tangled question of the relationship between the German and the Russian mobilizations, although he notes 1 Quoted in Samuel Williamson Jr. and Ernest May, “An Identity of Opinion: Historians and July 1914,” Journal of Modern History 79 (June 2007), 335. 2 | Page H-Diplo/ISSF Forum 16 (2017) that no brief treatment can go into the depth that the subject requires. His main point, however, is that Fischer and others err in downplaying if not missing the extent to which the Germans were reacting to the Russian moves, and that the latter (along with the French) were duplicitous, which showed their awareness of the risks they were running. The analysis of mobilizations leads to the vexed question of whether this was a “war by timetable,” to use A. J. P. Taylor’s famous phrase2 and whether, as Trachtenberg queries, “the political process–which normally should have led to an agreement–was overwhelmed by forces suddenly and unexpectedly welling up from within the military sphere” (36). Trachtenberg is doubtful on two grounds, one empirical and the other theoretical (although they are related). Although Sir Edward Grey’s efforts are well known (if contested), they were only undertaken at the last minute and for the continental countries directly concerned; “it is astonishing how little attention was given…to that fundamental issue of what the terms of a settlement might be” (37). While those who point their fingers at the Central Powers correctly note that they never seemed to have contemplated anything less disruptive of the European order than a local war against Serbia, neither Russia nor France put serious thought into diplomatic solutions that might punish Serbia (and presumably curb its nationalist ambitions) without destroying its independence. The second, theoretical point is that moving toward the brink of war and exploring diplomatic solutions could never be kept separate because it was the former that generated much of the pressure for the latter. That is, as bargaining theorists like Thomas Schelling stressed in the context of the Cold War, the danger of war, either calculated or inadvertent (when war was seen as mutually disastrous the latter was the more important), was the only thing that would make states compromise. While it is to be regretted that “the Germans waited until the very end to show any real interest in a political solution” (40) this can be explained by the conflicting incentives of the bargaining situation rather than reflecting a commitment to go to war. After this, Trachtenberg opens what he calls “a broader perspective” (40). The analysis of Serbia’s role stressed by Christopher Clark in The Sleepwalkers 3 is important, not only for fleshing out the picture, but for showing that the Austro-Hungarian grievances against Serbia were well-grounded and that we cannot simply dismiss as paranoid the conclusion that the Empire’s stability required a drastic change in Serbian policy, something that probably was out of reach without serious infringements on Serbia’s sovereignty (whether this was possible at all is another question). For Russia to protect Serbia, and for France to support Russia in this, was to clearly challenge the vital interests of Austria, and therefore of Germany. This brings Trachtenberg to “the war guilt question” (47). As he notes, scholars now rarely speak of guilt, substituting the term “responsibility,” but Trachtenberg believes this is merely a euphemism. His main point is that scholars have too quickly jumped from the well-grounded historical judgment that Germany was very slow to make concessions to the conclusion that it is the guilty party. Not only do we need to consider the bargaining incentives discussed earlier, but looking at other cases shows the fallacy of equating intransigence with war. In the fall of 1939 it was Britain that refused to consider a political solution to the Polish problem, and two years later it was Germany rather than the U.S. that was trying to avoid war between them. 2 A.J.P. Taylor, War by Timetable: How the First World War began (MacDonald and Company and American Heritage Press, 1969). 3 Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2012). 3 | Page H-Diplo/ISSF Forum 16 (2017) Trachtenberg does not end on this negative point, however: “There is only one way, it seems to me, to base these moral judgments on something more solid, and that is to connect them more directly to a body of theory….and to my mind the test here is whether the policies adopted make sense in our political terms: if they are attuned to the basic structure of power” (54) In the context of 1914, this means looking at “history as an interactive process,” paying attention not only to what each country was doing, but to what it was reacting to, and to leaders who were trying to make the best of bad situations.
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