The Second Coming of the First World War?

by David P. Billington, Jr.

After taking a diplomatic history class in my senior year of secondary school (1970-71), I began to think about whether international relations since 1945 resembled those that existed in the years before the First World War broke out in 1914. I decided that there were some interesting parallels. In January 1974, I submitted an essay on these to the U.S. Department of State. I received the following note in reply:



In my 1974 essay (table of contents below), I compared the two eras. The first began in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. The second began in Europe and the wider world after the Second World War ended in 1945. I thought that three of the great powers after 1815: the Austrian Empire (later known as Austria-Hungary), Imperial Russia, and Great Britain; had returned after 1945 as the Soviet Union (USSR), Maoist China, and the United States of America respectively. The last three differed in obvious ways from the first three but what interested me were certain similarities in position and function that I proceeded to describe.



The Austrian Empire after 1815 was a multinational empire that dominated smaller autocratic states in Germany and Italy. Austria did not control Imperial Russia to its east, but the two regimes shared autocratic monarchical forms of government and ruled serf majorities. In contrast, Great Britain after 1815 set an example of a liberalizing state with a modernizing industrial economy. Britain inspired countries in western Europe to follow its example and the Royal Navy ruled the world's oceans.

This pattern seemed to repeat itself after 1945. The Soviet Union was a multinational empire that dominated satellite states in eastern Europe. Moscow did not control Maoist China but the two regimes adhered to versions of Marxism-Leninism. Both regimes depended on modern forms of serfdom imposed on their agricultural populations. In contrast, the United States set an example to the wider world of a modern liberal and industrial state and facilitated the postwar recovery of western Europe and Japan. America's navy dominated the world's oceans.

Later in the post-1815 era, Austria put down revolts in areas under its control, with Russian support, but then Austria and Russia had a falling out. After 1859, Austria lost control of its satellites and itself became a new state, Austria-Hungary. In a compromise known as the Ausgleich, hardline oligarchs in the new state limited domestic reform.

Later in the post-1945 era, the USSR put down revolts in its satellite states, with China's approval, but Moscow and Beijing then had a falling out. I did not foresee the Soviet loss of eastern Europe but I did see further domestic reform in the USSR itself deadlocked by hardliners.

My essay went seriously off track, though, in forecasting what would come next. I thought that in the post-1945 era West and East Germany would eventually reunify, by West Germany moving sharply to the left. If a unified Germany then propped up a declining Soviet Union, I thought that France might develop closer ties to Communist China, echoing German and French ties respectively to Austria-Hungary and Imperial Russia in the years before 1914. Before these events happened, though, I also thought that the USSR could try to preempt China from acquiring nuclear weapons and that a world war could erupt in 1974 and begin a repetition of the events of 1914-1945.

With hindsight, I was wrong in three principal respects:

First, I should have seen that West Germany was unlikely to move to the left, and eventual reunification did not require it. My forecast about France therefore also did not come true.

My conjecture about Germany followed a trip to Europe at age 17 in 1970, when I visited East Berlin and saw the goose-stepping guards at the Victims of Militarism memorial. This made me wonder if something of old Prussia was still alive and well. I also stood on a street corner when a troop truck full of Russian soldiers my age pulled up. I looked in at them and they looked at me, and their faces didn't seem at all eager for war. I later concluded that the Soviet Union was in trouble.

Second, I did not know at the time that the moment for a Soviet preemptive attack on China had actually come in 1969, when Washington rejected an invitation from Moscow to support a Soviet strike. As a result, Moscow backed down and war was not on the near horizon.

Third, and most importantly, I did not take the second repetition beyond 1974. If I had given the post-1945 period as many years to unfold as the post-1815 era (130 years):

(1) I could have better anticipated the timing of change in the Soviet bloc. Starting with the unification of Italy in 1859, Austria began to lose control over its European satellite states, 44 years after 1815. The Soviet Union began to lose control over its satellites in eastern Europe with the reunification of Germany in 1989, 44 years after 1945. It may be argued that this timing was a coincidence but my analogy implied that a loss of control would happen if the USSR was in decline as an autocratic state.

My description of deadlock in the late Soviet Union was also true of reformers and oligarchs in the Russian Federation that followed. Moscow also never really accepted the freedom of the western Soviet republics that it let go in 1991. Russia today is not as multi-ethnic a state as Austria-Hungary but Moscow seems intent on having back restive national minorities. So I think in its essentials the analogy would have held, with the Russian Federation taking the place of the Soviet Union in the same way that Austria-Hungary took the place of the Austrian Empire.

(2) I could have carried forward the domestic evolution of Imperial Russia and again by analogy predicted what would happen in Communist China. Just as Tsarist Russia eventually abolished its version of serfdom, in order to modernize, I could have expected China at some point to free its peasant majority from what amounted to state serfdom, also in order to modernize. Imperial Russia then embarked on a two-track policy of industrialization and political repression. I could have expected China to follow the same two-track policy, which in fact it did.

However, Tsarist Russia modernized less fully than Communist China. Alexander II freed all of the serfs in Russia in 1861 but Russian industry was still underdeveloped when war broke out in 1914. In Communist China, Deng Hsiao-ping freed the rural majority after 1978 and industrial modernization began that catapulted China into the world's leading manufacturer by the 2010s.

(3) Without a great power to fulfill the Imperial German role that I mistakenly assigned to post-1945 Germany, there remained a hole in my pattern of the two eras. However, if one were to allow an added stretch to an analogy that already asks for considerable latitude, the development of China might have filled this hole as an outgrowth of representing Imperial Russia.

The actual scale of China's rise as a great power was impossible to imagine in the 1970s, and I certainly didn't foresee it. By extending the timeline of my analogy, all I could have predicted was that China would try to modernize with a rural majority and autocratic government analogous to the late Tsarist regime. But by growing an urban-industrial sector relatively larger and more efficient than that of late Imperial Russia, Communist China has now also developed a military and naval power capable of challenging the United States in the way that Imperial Germany challenged Great Britain before 1914.

As allies, Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary became in effect one power once the First World War began. In reviving the attributes of both Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany, Communist China has combined both in one power before a world war rather than during one.

(4) Finally, I could have expected the United States to follow a path resembling in certain respects the path followed by Great Britain in the first repetition.

From the 1870s to the 1890s, Great Britain preoccupied itself with small wars along the Islamic periphery of Africa and Asia. The rise of German power and assertiveness in the 1890s finally compelled Britain to turn its attention to naval rearmament and great power rivalry. But instead of cementing ties to one of the two opposing alliances taking shape in Europe, Britain pursued a policy of shifting sides from crisis to crisis. While German and Russian expansionism were the principal causes of World War I, British policy of distancing itself may have made an unnecessary contribution to the insecurity that preceded the outbreak of war in 1914.

Like late Victorian Britain, from 2001 until the 2020s America preoccupied itself with small wars along the Islamic periphery. The rise of China's power and assertiveness by the 2020s has finally caused American attention to return to great power rivalry. The US may now try to rebuild its fleet just as the British tried to rebuild theirs before 1914. But if America also proves an unreliable ally, insecurity in the world may deepen and war could become more likely.

For the 1974 version of my essay, see here.

Although he did not draw the historical analogies that I did, I was impressed at the time by the Russian dissident Andrei Amalrik, whose 1970 essay predicted the collapse of the USSR in 1984 (he was off by only seven years). Amalrik correctly perceived the deadlock in the Soviet system but he mistakenly thought that a war between Russia and China would occur by the early 1980s. In fact, China moved in a more moderate direction after the mid-1970s, postponing conflict with other great powers to the more distant future. My predictions were partly wrong too.


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