The Real Reasons Behind World War I

It is also difficult to give notice Britain's own antidemocratic status, though its overt imperial ambitions were bug outside Europe--India, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. On the other hand, Sagan cites the failure of Britain to unequivocally state that it would come to France's uphold if Germany attacked as a contributing (though not necessarily decisive) component to continental instability in the wake of the assassination of Ferdinand (125).

exclusively just as it is possible, according to Sagan (125), to make too often of Britain's equivocation about continental intervention during the diplomatical crisis anterior the war, it seems possible to make too much of the power of res publica to forestall war. For one thing, even if res publica might be a superior form of governance, it is not necessarily the and kind of administration to be associated with a sense or a insurance policy of national duty. According to Trachtenberg (199), (antidemocratic) Russia saw itself as Serbia's protector, particularly against Austrian imperialism, much as France, a republic, and England, a constitutional monarchy, saw themselves as allies. Thus a nondemocratic government structure does not ipso facto mean that there would be no justification for going to war.

But the moral foundation for war, whatsoever form of government might be involved, is a liaison apart from the impetus toward war that appears to have dominated policy in the weeks leading

Sagan, Scott. "1914 Revisited: Allies, disrespect and Instability." Military dodging and the Origins of the First World war. Ed. Steven Miller, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Stephen wagon train Evera. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1991.

Van Evera, Stephen. "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War." Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War. Ed. Steven Miller, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Stephen Van Evera. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1991.

Van Evera argues that this mind-set, played out at the geo policy-making level, at minimum aggravated the beat toward war, including the "preemptive" mobilizations on the part of Germany, Russia, and France in 1914, and obscured sufficient gustation of "military and political obstacles to expansion" (68, 73-5). Indeed, Van Evera concludes that World War I was a "'preventive' war, launched by the Central powers in the flavour that they were saving themselves from a worse fate in by and by years" (85). That "worse fate" was the prospect of imperialist command by rival powers. This line of thought would be consistent, too, with Clausewitz's noteworthy dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means; there was little in the way of democracy to be associated with Clausewitz or his Prussian state. One could add that the totally picture of political and/or military offensives and strategic expediency seeking failed to include a scenario that took full account of possible consequences of mechanized warfare on a continental scale.

up to the Great War. Trachtenberg develops the argument that war came about not because of the dark forces of well-established contingent military plans that policy makers were powerless to overcome, but because of political decisions made by those policy makers. For example, Trachtenberg (204) characterizes the foreign minister of Austria as being aware and in control of events surrounding the diplomatic situation, and more generally develops the view that the statesmen of
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