Echoes of 1914

...The atmosphere of perpetual crisis forced all European countries to rearm as speedily as possible...

...Germany had been born of war in 1871 and Soviet Russia emerged out of war and revolution in 1917...

...The railroad timetable dictated the German course...

...Likewise, the U.S...

...The room for diplomatic maneuver in a nuclear crisis will be even more restricted than it was in the crisis of 1914...

...Third, the Middle East region, the Balkans of the 1980s, should be put "on ice...

...The Schlieffen plan, a first-strike, counterforce strategy, did not permit time for Germany's adversaries to mobilize-or for Germany's diplomats to negotiate...

...The major Soviet threat derives not from its land army in continental Europe (which has always been there), but from its pretensions as a global power, symbolized by Gorshkov's "risk fleet...

...to ensure an orderly and expeditious Kremlin succession...

...According to the plan, German victory hinged on its capacity to deliver sufficient force rapidly enough to destroy its Western enemy's armies...

...The German naval challenge to Britain fueled an expensive arms race and brought Germany in as a participant in all the colonial conflicts...

...The geopolitical parallels with the Soviet Union today are striking-and frightening...

...Lines of communication between East and West on all levels must be reopened to encourage a reduction of tensions, to increase contacts among peoples, and to check the present war fever...

...The Great Power's foreign policy, impelled by the encirclement nightmare, was in the words of one historian, "a combination of abrupt forcing plays, attempts at blackmail, and the use of threats...

...Such reckless ' 'gunboat diplomacy," the end-product of Tirpitz's naval gamble, would have been unthinkable at the time of Bismarck...

...Second, the U.S...

...Both were parvenu states, intruding on a fragile balance of power...

...In early 1914, Von Moltke, the German Chief of Staff, could remark: "The moment is so favorable, from the military viewpoint, that, in all likelihood, there will never come another equal to it...

...In the end, the dreadnought "gap" also turned out to be a fiction...

...THE SITUATION in 1982 is distressingly similar to that of 1914 The advent of nuclear weapons has transformed strategic assumptions of the powers, but there are still lessons to be drawn from the 1914 analogy...

...War came in 1914 partly because so many people in important positions believed it was inevitable...

...Both Imperial Germany and the USSR had an overriding need to assert their political legitimacy...

...In both cases, the naval expansion program succeeded in antagonizing the major maritime power of the day...

...This is the essence of the infamous Schlieffen plan...

...The German rearmament program was the first to approach completion, thus providing Berlin with a "window of opportunity" which it would theoretically lose in subsequent years...

...The stakes in 1982 are even greater than in 1914, and the historical parallels between the two crisis situations are much too close for comfort...

...Both admirals exaggerated the importance of a large navy to the national interest...

...British public opinion became inflamed by the German challenge, and the public relations campaign in favor of dreadnought battleships ("We want eight-and we won't wait...

...Tirpitz's "risk fleet" was seen as a direct threat to British naval supremacy and thus to Britain's global strategic interests...

...Nevertheless, the German provocation and the British reaction had heightened tensions in Europe and throughout the world and made it increasingly difficult for the powers to settle crises by other than military means...

...Admiral Gorshkov's navy serves roughly the same purpose as Tirpitz's force before 1914...

...Imperial Germany's leap from continental to global power seriously destabilized the geopolitical balance before 1914 and increased tensions throughout the world...

...The British, like the U.S...

...Finally, the war psychology that is so pervasive on both sides (as it was in 1914) has to be mitigated...

...In both cases, internal social tensions were increasing appreciably...

...As a consequence, naval power embroiled imperial Germany and the USSR in dangerous overseas disputes which had never previously concerned them...

...Centuries of invasions and civil wars had bred an obsessive insecurity among this leadership...

...Neither admiral sought outright naval supremacy...

...For this reason, great prestige was accorded to the armed forces, in particular the army which came to embody the national spirit...

...The symbol of its Weltpolitik was Admiral Tirpitz's "risk fleet," a strategic escalation which could not be interpreted as defensive...

...One might draw similar conclusions for the Soviet Union...

...Every effort should be made by the U.S...

...The failure of the British and the French to spell out their political and strategic objectives to Tsarist Russia was one reason why the Sarajevo crisis was allowed to escalate to total war...

...In the July 1914 Sarajevo crisis, the civilian hierarchy literally lost control of its military machine...

...and the Soviet Union should enter into serious naval force reduction negotiations...

...Much like the situation today, every localized conflict involving the Great Powers automatically expanded to global proportions...

...The dispatch in 1912 of the German warship Panther to the Moroccan port of Agadir, ostensibly to protect German economic interests, brought Europe to the brink of war...

...should not permit itself to be drawn into a conflict of Chinese making...

...A war psychology developed among the general public throughout Europe and found its fictional expression in Britain in alarmist books like The Invasion of 1910 by William Le Queux, the General John Hackett of his day...

...It is highly conceivable that the Soviets, in a future war, would attempt to triumph quickly on one front (the West) and then, operating on similar assumptions as the Schlieffen plan, turn on the enemy that took longer to mobilize, i.e., China...

...To a large extent, this fatalism explains the paralysis of diplomatic initiative during the crisis days of July...

...This heavy-handed diplomacy, in addition to some rather murky imperialist ventures, succeeded in bringing together the Great Power's principal antagonists, all of whom suspected its designs for global hegemony...

...It has also developed from a continental to a global power in recent years...

...No action should be taken to provoke the Soviet "Junkers," the Communist party hierarchy, into a dangerous bit of "gunboat" adventurism resembling the Agadir affair of 1912...

...today, reacted by trying to maintain their margin of supremacy through a furious-and expensive-naval shipbuilding program...

...The Sarajevo assassinations only served as a pretext...

...The political structure was distorted to perpetuate control by a ruling minority, a minority which was growing less and less responsive to the economic and social realities within its borders...

...Germany's major policy failure before 1914 was its alienation of Britain and Tsarist Russia, driving both powers into alliance with France, its undeniable enemy...

...Though nominally under civilian control, the German General Staff, like the Soviet General Staff, exercised great latitude and independence...

...The Soviets have built a "risk fleet" at tremendous cost and have engaged in "colonial" wars in Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Afghanistan...

...Fourth, Western policy following Leonid Brezhnev's departure should be worked out in advance as much as possible...

...Similarly, the timetable of nuclear delivery systems now threatens to overwhelm efforts at negotiation...

...In the end, the Great Power found itself saddled with weak and faithless allies, its fears of encirclement self-realized...

...The Imperial German-Soviet analogy is instructive because contemporary historians have a good idea why Europe broke out in war in 1914...

...The power struggle in Moscow should not be allowed to spill over into the international arena, especially in Eastern Europe...

...The naval competition, today as in 1914, is the most dangerous and expensive element in the arms race...

...Both the U.S...

...Neither state had natural geographic boundaries...

...The "freeze" on the Middle East might be translated into diplomatic terms by an American recognition of the Karmal regime in Afghanistan in return for a significant Soviet withdrawal from that country and a Soviet guarantee of Saudi Arabian sovereignty...

...Neither the British nor the French wanted to go to war over the political condition of the Balkan Slavs, a particularly Russian obsession...

...THE PRECEDING description sums up Imperial Germany's situation in 1914...

...SOVIET STRATEGY & IMPERIAL GERMANY Echoes of 1914 ROBERT RUDNEY THE great power was a militarized state with the strongest and best-equipped army in the world, an aggressive naval expansion program, and a rigid ruling clique with important military affinities...

...The demand for "a place in the sun'' ran contrary to the Bismarckian principle of a Europe-centered strategy, based on the power of the German army...

...First, the U.S...

...All these insecurities reinforced the isolation and belligerence of the ruling classes and their dependence on the military sector...

...The Soviet Union also faces the ominous specter of war on two fronts, and its globalist strategy has drawn the United States and China, previously irreconcilable foes, together in an informal entente, not too different from the understanding between Britain and Tsarist Russia in 1907...

...Despite its armed strength, the Great Power was constantly fearful of encirclement by a coalition of other powers, and it was especially preoccupied with its populous, rapidly developing, and increasingly hostile neighbor to the East...

...Both realized advantages in concentrating their naval forces against a prospective enemy with worldwide commitments...

...Because naval forces are so costly and relatively easy to survey, they constitute the most promising area for significant arms reduction...

...Internally, the Great Power was constituted as a federal system, though it was dominated by one state...

...An English observer at the time described the dreadnought "gap" as "one of the most portentous pieces of Parliamentary humbug ever practiced on the electorate...

...Only in the last war had the Great Power successfully asserted its supremacy in Europe by force of arms...

...Under these circumstances, Germany could only triumph if it could launch a pre-emptive, "knock-out" attack on one front and then settle accounts on the second front...

...should make explicit the terms of its understanding with China, specifying the amount of support it will provide Beijing under various crisis scenarios...

...and the Soviet Union should acknowledge that the chronic political instability of the region makes it the most likely point of nuclear conflict between them...

...was impossible for politicians to resist...

...The German warship construction rate had been drastically overestimated, and Britain still commanded the seas...

...The analogy serves as one guide on how to prevent war in 1982...

...Democratic institutions in both countries were effectively powerless, though Germany had a much more open society...

...This "diplomatic revolution'' assured that, in event of conflict, Germany would have to fight a two-front land war and face a sea war with Britain, the foremost naval power...

...Colonel House, President Wilson's roving ambassador, described the atmosphere in 1914 as "militarism run stark mad...

...History may not repeat itself in perfect patterns, but it does teach lessons which politicians, diplomats, and soldiers cannot afford to ignore...

...The weapons may have changed, but the human beings operating them have not...