Lessons from the Great War

John Derbyshire reminds us that 90 years ago this month saw the beginning of that watershed conflict variously known as the Great War, the First World War and World War I, "perhaps the great civilizational catastrophe of the past half-millennium." The generation that fought that war is, of course, long gone, with perhaps a few centenarians holding on here and there. So we are prone to forget that, for those who went through the war, nothing was ever the same afterwards. However, could it really be true, as Derbyshire argues, that the Great War "was an event like no other, from which nothing can be deduced"? Are there really no lessons to be learnt from it? I can think of at least two.

First, remember that the war was sparked by an act of nationalistic terror, viz., the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Serbian nationalist two months earlier. Austria-Hungary went to war to punish Serbia and defend its honour. Russia was persuaded, quite against its own interests, to enter the war to protect a "brother" Slav nation. Germany sided with a fellow Germanic monarchy. True, the world is not divided up amongst more or less equal powers at the moment. Yet I should think the lesson of the war is that, where nationalism -- and particularly ethnic nationalism -- carries the day, a stable international order becomes elusive. Nationalists make conflicting, absolutist claims incapable of being adjudicated peacefully.


Balkans '21

Map showing conflicting claims
of the various Balkan states prior to 1912

Second, and like unto the first, where raison d'état becomes the overriding consideration during warfare, everything becomes possible, including the sidelining of those principles limiting the conduct of war. It is no accident that total warfare co-incided with the rise of the totalitarian state. If no means are out of bounds for a state fighting its enemies, then no means are likely to be deemed improper for a state's domestic policies, particularly if they have been harnessed to one of the totalistic secular ideologies.