A world of trade, dialogue and interdependence can still stumble into catastrophe. In 1914, fear, nationalism and miscalculation turned rivalry into war with alarming ease. Today, as the great powers grow suspicious of one another’s intentions, Odd Arne Westad, professor of history and international relations at Yale, sees troubling parallels. Uncertainty about the future, he argues, can make conflict look like the better option now.
Speaking to Phileleftheros about his book ‘The Coming Storm’, published in Greek by Alexandreia, Westad warns that talking is not the same as understanding. Washington and Beijing often view each other through a distorted lens, failing to grasp each other’s true strategic goals and red lines. Meanwhile, encouraging the idea that a foreign enemy is to blame for every problem at home stokes a hostility that leaders may find they can no longer contain once a crisis hits.
His message for Europe, and particularly for small countries such as Cyprus, is clear: defending sovereignty means closer cooperation and military integration. The days of Europe relying on the United States for its security are not coming back. That makes a strong European pillar of collective defence all the more urgent, since small states that look to a great power for protection are exposed to that power’s own decisions.
No war is inevitable, but Westad thinks it would not take much for one to break out. Today’s open conflicts, combined with an unforeseen crisis, could set off a wider conflagration. The key lesson of 1914, he says, is that leaders need to recognise what is really at stake before fear and short-sighted decisions put them on the road to disaster.
In ‘The Coming Storm’ you compare our own era with the world before the First World War. What parallels do you see?
As we are seeing today, the leading powers felt that they were not getting enough out of the system they themselves had put in place. Back then it was mainly Great Britain; today it’s mainly the United States. But the reaction was quite similar: doubt about the free market, free trade system that oversees global trade and international finance, which many people in the more advanced countries felt was not working for them. So that’s one similarity.
Another similarity, which is striking, is the rise of nationalism, the emphasis on the strength of individual nations and the rise of great power challengers to the leading power. Back then it was Germany and the United States. Today it’s China and, probably not far behind, India. And then you had all these additional issues that seem to have contributed to tension: very rapid technological change and a rise in forms of social unrest, often leading to terrorism. We have to remember that, in the end, it was a terrorist act in Sarajevo that set off the First World War. But these situations are not identical, and as I argue in the book, there are differences as well.
What struck you most in your research about why great powers go to war?
What I found most interesting, I think, when I was looking at the beginning of the 20th century, was that for all the powers involved it was a period of doubt, of uncertainty about the future and fear of the long-term consequences for them. The powers that went to war in the summer of 1914 were not self-confident, buoyant powers. They all felt, Germany included, uncertain about what the future would bring.
That strategic uncertainty, I think, was part of what led to a set of fatal miscalculations in the summer of 1914, when a lot of people, not only in Germany but especially in Germany, were saying: “If there is to be a war, it might as well happen now, because we are in a better position now than we might be in the future.” It didn’t come about because someone had a long-term strategic plan for what they wanted to do. It came out of a set of fears and resentments, and that’s what I worry about in today’s situation as well.
The parallel between today’s US-China rivalry and Anglo-German relations before 1914 is especially striking. We know how those two countries saw each other. How do China and the United States see each other now? Do they understand why the other side does what it does, what motivates it and, above all, where its red lines are?
That’s a really good question, and it touches on one of the things that worries me most, not only in the relationship between the United States and China but between the great powers in general. There is a lot of communication, there is a lot of talking, but there is very little understanding of the basic influences on the other side’s strategy. That again reminds me very much of the situation before 1914, because there was no lack of interaction then either. I say in the book that three of the heads of state in what became the warring countries after 1914 were cousins. They were closely related and they interacted all the time. So it wasn’t just that they didn’t talk enough.
People say, “Well, we don’t talk enough.” We probably don’t talk enough, in the US-China relationship for instance. But the problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a basic understanding of what the other side really wants to achieve, and that is maybe especially true of the China-US relationship. I spend quite a bit of time in Beijing, and when I speak to policymakers there, I am struck by how limited their understanding is of what happens in the United States. And when I’m in Washington talking about China, very often it’s a caricature of the China that I know quite well, particularly in terms of where China really wants to go.
So the question, of course, is how you overcome that. I think the best way is to concentrate more on understanding the most fundamental aspects of strategy on either side: not to be too confused by rhetoric or by individual actions, but to look at what is fundamental. That’s what we were not able to do in 1914, and it’s a very, very important reason why war broke out.
Does that apply to other relationships too?
I think it’s true between all great powers. Look at the relationship between India and China, where the lack of understanding of each other’s basic strategic approaches is quite fundamental. I see it in the relationship between Europe and Russia too. The Russian understanding, and for that matter the Chinese understanding, of what is happening within the EU in strategic terms is basically a caricature. It connects everything to the relationship with the United States, which is less and less true when it comes to Europe.
I think it’s very important to be able to think about two things at once. One is the need to support Ukraine in its war against the invading troops. The other is that there has to be a relationship between Russia and Europe after the war in Ukraine is over. One has to be able to think about both. If not, it’s not strategy; it’s just wishful thinking. Russia is not going to go away. It’s going to be there for a very long time. Sometimes, when I speak to policymakers in Europe, I get the feeling that, given the absolutely understandable condemnation of Russia for its current war, they don’t really need to think beyond that. I think that is wrong, and a mistake.
Your book explores how fear, nationalism and miscalculation can turn rivalry into catastrophe. Looking at the world today, which warning signs do political leaders seem to be underestimating?
I think probably the most important is the growth of popular resentment towards other countries. This is complicated, because these kinds of public attitudes do not usually lead to war or conflict by themselves. But if a real crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment were to come along, for the same reasons as in 1914, whether a terrorist act, some kind of accident or third-party involvement in a clash over, say, Ukraine, Iran or Taiwan, I think those relatively high levels of public resentment towards other powers will stand in the way of finding reasonable solutions. That was exactly the kind of thing that happened in 1914.
In China, in part through the leadership’s own propaganda, a view of the outside world has been created that is really quite antagonistic: that the United States, Europe and others are out to get China, to keep China down. Unfortunately, that is today a generally held view among the Chinese population. Just as in the United States, until recently, there has been a strongly held view that China is the reason for many of America’s problems, even though in reality these problems are to a high degree self-inflicted.
That’s the danger of the kind of nationalism that blames someone else for your difficulties. It might serve policymakers’ political purposes up to a point, but then it becomes unmanageable. So in terms of the rhetoric in China, the United States and not least Russia, there is a need to tone down this idea that others are out to get you, that this is a civilisational struggle. I don’t think it will do any good if we really get into a serious crisis.
And it’s usually the far right that is quickest to exploit that.
Absolutely. I think that’s true now, as it was before 1914, and it’s a significant problem. Nationalism in general is, of course, always best employed by the right, in the many forms of right-wing movements and attitudes we see on a global scale now.
Europe must take charge of its own security
Your book raises some hard questions for small countries such as Cyprus. How can they protect their sovereignty and their interests when the great powers are looking out only for themselves?
I think the only way that can happen is through integration and cooperation with others. I’ve just written a piece for The Economist that looks at Europe and Southeast Asia, which are really the most important regions when thinking about smaller countries defending their own sovereignty against quite acute pressure. The argument I make there is that one of the things we didn’t have in 1914, and which probably contributed to the disaster, was security cooperation among smaller and middle-sized countries through which they could jointly defend their sovereignty. Instead, these countries depended on one or other of the great powers to sustain their sovereignty as they saw it, and that is, of course, in part what led to disaster. Think of the Balkans especially, but also of Belgium in 1914.
So I’m a great believer, in the European case and that includes Cyprus, that you have to find European solutions for European security, not necessarily outside the NATO alliance. But you would have to be blind not to see that the transatlantic relationship, in strategic terms, has been weakened over the past decade. I think the kind of arrangement where Europe depended on the United States for its security is never going to come back. So the sooner European countries, and especially smaller European countries, find arrangements for collective security, with a European leg of the transatlantic alliance that is much, much more integrated than what we have now, the better.
But how realistic is that?
On the one hand, it’s a difficult question to answer. On the other hand, it isn’t. If you look at the historical record, Europe has failed again and again and again to do things in security that are blatantly obvious. But when there is a real crisis, Europe has shown an ability to pull through in a way no one would have foreseen. Back in the 1950s, very few people thought the Coal and Steel Community was going to work. Then came the common market and the introduction of the euro. You had the same idea that they were bound to fail because the countries were pulling too much in different directions, and still it worked somehow. It didn’t work perfectly, but it worked, and it only worked because there was a crisis, or several crises, that demanded it.
The sovereignty and independence of individual countries cannot be sustained, in my view, not even in the relatively short term, without a much higher level of military integration. I think that is the view now coming through in the leading European countries. We already see a sea change in Europe, particularly in military production and procurement, compared with the situation before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So I’m hopeful. Am I certain? No. But I’m more hopeful now than I have ever been that Europe will try to find solutions to its own security situation.
Economic interdependence did not prevent war in 1914. Today, do trade, economic ties and supply chains draw countries together, or have they become tools of coercion?
I think the situation in that regard is very similar to the one before 1914. Integration levels in 1914, in trade, employment and technology, were very, very high. It would take almost until the end of the 20th century before we reached the same level of global economic interaction as we had in 1914, and it didn’t prevent war. The argument could be made that if the leading powers hadn’t started to turn away from globalisation, then maybe we would have stood a better chance. I’m not sure even about that. They belong in different realms, in a way, and security and territoriality always trump economics in these kinds of situations.
If you look at the relationship between Germany and Britain before the First World War, it was a very close relationship in economic terms. It reminds me of the relationship between China and the United States. They didn’t like each other, but they were deeply economically integrated. And even if that were to lessen today, and there are some signs that it will between the United States and China, I still think that looking only to economic interaction is not going to work.
Focusing on what matters
Your book is a warning rather than a prediction. If you could persuade today’s leaders to act to head off the coming storm, what would you tell them?
The most important thing is to end the ongoing wars. The wars and conflicts over Iran and Ukraine, and the heightening tensions in the Taiwan Strait, are dangerous under any circumstances, but they are even more dangerous at a time of increasing great power tensions. By themselves, in my view, these wars are probably not going to produce a global catastrophe. But if a world crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment were to come along, and these things can happen very quickly, these ongoing wars could contribute to a global conflagration. What we need at the moment are ceasefires. We need a pullback. We need to move from the active phase of a killing war to a period in which the great powers and other countries can talk to each other.
The second is to make better use of international organisations. One of the big differences from the world before 1914 is that today we have international organisations, first and foremost the United Nations, that were built to prevent the kind of disaster we had in the early part of the 20th century. They have been neglected and underutilised for more than a decade, but they are still there. And if the great powers decide to use them to regulate great power interaction, the purpose for which the UN was set up in the first place, then I think we have a better chance.
And finally, there is this issue of understanding that we talked about. One thing that puzzles me, and may have something to do with the quality of leadership, or the lack of it, is this inability to understand the basic approaches to strategy of each of the great powers. It’s more the overall political sentiment, I think, that constantly takes attention away, in the United States for instance, from what the big issues for the country’s own national interest actually are. Look at the war in Iran. In my view it is a war that should never have happened, both because it was the wrong move in regard to the Middle East and, more importantly for the United States, because it deflects entirely from the most important issues for America’s own national security in the longer run. Focusing on what matters is also a really important lesson of the origins of the First World War. It was the inability to see through the fog of everything else that was happening, the other crises and challenges, and focus on what really mattered that contributed to it.
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