by John Cassidy
The New Yorker - June 6, 2013
At the start of the twentieth century, Britain, the superpower of the
time, was faced with a strategic dilemma: what to do about a newly
unified and nationalist Germany, which was rising fast economically and
building up its military. One school of thought held that Germany could
be accommodated within the existing international system; the other
argument was that it needed to be confronted and contained. The hawks
won out. During the Boer War, London threatened to blockade the German
coast if Berlin intervened in favor of the Dutch settlers in South
Africa. There followed a big arms race, as Germany, which had already
been strengthening its marine capabilities, rushed to catch up with the
Royal Navy, and Britain responded by constructing the dreadnoughts, a
deadly family of steam-powered battleships. In 1907, Britain joined
France and Russia in an alliance—the Triple Entente—against Germany and
Austria-Hungary.
We all know how the story ended: a devastating,
continent-wide conflict that lasted more than four years, killed over
nine million combatants, and facilitated the rise of Communism and
Fascism. And one of the worst things about the First World War was that
it could quite possibly have been avoided. Although the rise of
Wilhelmine Germany represented a dangerous challenge to the balance of
power in Europe, neither side wanted a full-scale confrontation. In
1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in
Sarajevo, the European powers blundered into war because of decisions
they had made, and commitments they had taken on, during the years of
heightening rivalry.
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