The Next Great War?: The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict

316 Pages·2014·2.57 MB·English

by  Richard N. Rosecrance

The Next
Great War?
The Belfer Center Studies in International Security book
series is edited at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
at the Harvard Kennedy School and is published by the MIT Press. The
series publishes books on contemporary issues in international security
policy, as well as their conceptual and historical foundations. Topics of
particular interest to the series include the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, internal conflict, the international effects of democracy
and democratization, and U.S. defense policy.
A complete list of Belfer Center Studies appears at the back of this volume.
The Next
Great War?
The Roots of World War I and the
Risk of U.S.-China Conflict
Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, editors
Belfer Center Studies in International Security
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2014 Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any format by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording
or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing
from the publisher. For more information, contact:

The MIT Press, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209, USA
This book was typeset in Minion Pro and Scala Sans by Rex Horner.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-0-262-02899-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Barbara

Contents
Introduction: The Sarajevo Centenary—1914 and the Rise of China . . . ix
Steven E. Miller
Power Balances, Alliance Ties, and Diplomacy
1. Before the War: Three Styles of Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Alan Alexandroff
2. Respites or Resolutions? Recurring Crises and the
Origins of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Arthur A. Stein
3. Better Now Than Later: The Paradox of 1914 as Everyone’s
Favored Year for War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Jack Snyder
4. Allies, Overbalance, and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Richard N. Rosecrance
5. Economic Interdependence and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Richard N. Cooper
Debating the Thucydides Trap
6. The Thucydides Trap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Graham Allison
7. Thucydides Dethroned: Historical Differences That Weaken the
Peloponnesian Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
David K. Richards
8. Thucydides, Alliance Politics, and Great Power Conflict . . . . . . 91
Charles S. Maier
The Inside Story: Domestic Factors and the Roots of War,
Then and Now
9. War, Revolution, and the Uncertain Primacy of Domestic Politics . . .103
T.G. Otte
10. Domestic Coalitions, Internationalization, and War:
Then and Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Etel Solingen
11. European Militaries and the Origins of World War I . . . . . . . 149
Stephen Van Evera
A Century after Sarajevo: Taking Stock and Looking Forward
12. Inevitability and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
13. Lessons from Europe 1914 for Asia 2014: Reflections on the
Centenary of the Outbreak of World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
The Honorable Kevin Rudd
14. Contingency as a Cause (or Little Things Mean a Lot). . . . . . . 211
Richard N. Rosecrance
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
About the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs . . . . . . 287
Belfer Center Studies in International Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Introduction
The Sarajevo Centenary—1914 and the
Rise of China
Steven E. Miller
In the golden summer of 1914, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-
Hungarian throne in Vienna’s distant Balkan province of Bosnia-Herzegovina
triggered a sequence of events that within weeks had plunged Europe’s major
powers into war. What followed was a disaster of immense proportions. The
costs of this war were vast; for more than four cruel years, the great powers spent
lavishly in blood and treasure. Men were cut down in the millions and treasuries
were emptied. The consequences of this war were enormous and lasting. By war’s
end, four empires—the German, Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman—had been
destroyed. The map of Europe and the Middle East had been redrawn. Germany
and Russia had been wracked by internal revolutions, with fateful long-term impli-
cations for both those countries and for the world. Even the European victors,
France and Britain, had been weakened by a savage depletion that hastened
their declines as major powers. Out of the wreckage of World War I flowed
developments that were central to international politics for the remainder of
the twentieth century: the rise of Nazism, a second global war, and the Cold War
rivalry that pitted the heirs to the Russian Revolution of 1917 against the one
power that emerged from World War I unscathed and strengthened, the United
States. In the summer of 1914, history pivoted: the previous world would be
destroyed and the path that opened up was dark and dangerous. This was one
of the formative turning points in modern history.
It is not surprising, then, that even after the passage of one hundred years,
the events of 1914 remain compelling. Remarkably, controversy over the war’s
origins has continued unabated. Basic facts remain in dispute.1 There has been
endless debate about assigning responsibility for the war. There have been waves
of reinterpretation as new evidence has been discovered or new theoretical
understandings of international politics have been explored.2 As the academic