{"id":43862,"date":"2018-11-27T10:49:41","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T23:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=43862"},"modified":"2018-11-27T10:49:41","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T23:49:41","slug":"the-lost-lessons-of-world-war-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-lost-lessons-of-world-war-i\/","title":{"rendered":"The lost lessons of World War I"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

It has been 100 years since World War I ended and the centenary was commemorated this month with great pomp in Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom. Germany sent high-level authorities to France to mark the occasion, reaffirming the reconciliation between the two countries. But the fact that Franco-German reconciliation did not occur until Europe had suffered another devastating war demonstrates how fragile peace can be, especially when political leaders are as shortsighted as they often are.<\/p>\n

The Cambridge historian Christopher Clark aptly titled his 2012 book on the origins of WWI\u00a0The sleepwalkers<\/a><\/em>. Through a combination of wilful blindness, utter complacency and intense stubbornness, Europe\u2019s leaders subjected their countries to a conflict that shattered an entire generation.<\/p>\n

By the time WWI erupted, it should have been clear that industrialisation and the transportation revolution had transformed warfare. The Crimean War of 1853\u20131856 had over a million casualties; the American Civil War of 1861\u20131865 resulted in more than 600,000 deaths.<\/p>\n

Despite these experiences, Europe\u2019s leaders clung to the 19th-century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz\u2019s dictum that \u2018war is the continuation of politics through other means\u2019. So politics continued in the form of war, resulting in 20 million military and civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

Yet not even that was enough to wake up the sleepwalkers. In the years following the Armistice, Europe\u2019s leaders failed to transcend the divisions that WWI had laid bare, with the tensions between the French and Germans being particularly destabilising.<\/p>\n

This failure was reflected in the Armistice itself, which imposed excessively harsh requirements on Germany, including billions of dollars in reparations payments, due at a time when the country faced a deep economic crisis. Meanwhile, international oversight was too weak. The League of Nations remained largely silent in the face of dangerous developments, such as Adolf Hitler\u2019s remilitarisation of the Rhineland. The US Senate\u2019s rejection of the League of Nations in 1919\u2014and thus of the principles of internationalism and multilateralism that President Woodrow Wilson had promoted\u2014certainly didn\u2019t help matters.<\/p>\n

More fundamentally, World War II erupted because nationalism was allowed to continue to fester. French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, for one, remained deeply nationalistic and, in particular, vehemently anti-German. But while behaving like Clemenceau might win the war (especially if a power like the United States shows up to offer crucial help), it cannot win the peace; hard nationalism naturally leads to conflict.<\/p>\n

Yet, today, a major world leader, US president Donald Trump, is behaving very much like Clemenceau. This holds serious implications not just for the US, but also for Europe. To be sure, French president Emmanuel Macron embraces the \u2018Wilsonian principles\u2019 that Trump rejects. But, as the interwar period starkly showed, if core rules and principles are not accepted by all, the institutions they underpin cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n

WWII accomplished what even WWI could not: it ended the era of European global dominance. While Europe has grown and prospered since 1945, it has not regained the global leadership status its major countries once possessed. This leaves today\u2019s European Union at the mercy of a US that has rejected multilateralism and embraced nationalism.<\/p>\n

Of course, plenty of the risks Europe faces lie within its own borders. In France, for example, many are brushing off the warnings issued by Macron\u2014or, more concretely, by their history books\u2014as they push back against their president\u2019s efforts to take up the mantle of multilateralism.<\/p>\n

The risk today is that generations that have not known war will reproduce the chain of events that lead to it. This risk is exemplified by the recent \u2018yellow vest\u2019 protests in France against an environmental tax on fuel. The protests were also intended to be a broader rebuke of Macron, whom many blame for their declining spending power.<\/p>\n

The protesters probably think that they are acting in the spirit of the 1789 French Revolution, a spirit that the French periodically revive in their country\u2019s politics. But they are actually re-enacting the 1930s, with its right-wing protest movements and militias.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that French citizens\u2014and, in particular, young people\u2014have nothing to complain about. Unemployment has remained too high for too long, and while France has largely escaped the spike in income inequality seen in other countries, such as the US, systemic inequalities are pervasive.<\/p>\n

But the fact is that the emotional rejection of any person or institution even remotely associated with established \u2018elites\u2019\u2014including mainstream political parties and trade unions\u2014lends itself to exploitation by populist demagogues. And history could not be clearer about the risks generated when such demagogues secure power.<\/p>\n

The world has changed profoundly over the last century. Our economies are more deeply intertwined than ever before, and the sheer scale of destruction that could be wrought by today\u2019s weaponry may invite some semblance of restraint.<\/p>\n

But, as Trump\u2019s erratic presidency\u2014including his challenges to longstanding alliances and reckless nuclear posturing\u2014starkly demonstrates, the structures we have created to preserve peace are far from foolproof. With populations across the West embracing nationalistic and populist ideas, we are again dancing on the rim of a volcano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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