War, Aberration and WWI

Karl von Clausewitz, the author of On War, famously wrote that "war is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means." The anarchic structure of the world system, the rise and fall of different ideologies, and the political nature of many international conflicts suggest that war is simply another extension of regular human behavior. The influence of elites and leadership personalities on the politics of particular groups and states has a decisive effect on the decisions of war and peace, making violent conflict simply a matter of politics not easily suppressed by the liberal conscience. Ultimately, it is not the humanist liberal tradition, but instead, the cold hard truth of self-interest and elitist pursuit of power which determines the affairs of state. Indeed, war is not an aberration of human nature, but just a matter of politics.

One needs to look no further than Russia in terms of inequitable distribution of political and economic power. The Russian serf, even after hundreds of years of bondage, had developed no further ability to express political power. To even show political awareness was an ability only few peasants of the 19th century were able to develop. In contrast, the autocratic Imperial government held absolute supreme power over the rest of the country since the stand on the Ugra River in 1480.

In Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia, Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia writes, "that whatever goal a peasant entertains, be it merely the acquisition of a pint of vodka or a pair of galoshes, it is beyond his reach, no matter how hard he works." [1] Despite the efforts of radical socialists and anarchists to create a popular desire for change, there existed little economic improvement, as village life remained petty. Against the backdrop of a rapidly industrializing West and a growing cosmopolitan middle class in urban Russia, life for the peasants, who constituted, in 1897, 79 million out of a total population of 93 million, had improved little.[2] Semyonova depicts the Russian peasant as mentally underdeveloped, morally susceptible, with few able to perceive political inequality.[3] In the country villages, the power of the nobles and the government was virtually absolute, with the corrupt town supervisor commanding a large personal wealth and economic control over the direction of the village.[4] Nobles and landowners were perceived as inherently superior, but also scorned because of their seeming foolishness in giving peasants assistance.[5]

With the plight of the lower classes in mind, socialists took a bold step after the February Revolution. In the ABC of Communism, co-authored by Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky, the Communist ideal held the torch for massive social reform, replacing the elite-led society with a dictatorship of the proletariat. The removal of religion, racial, and ethnic divisions, as well as universal education, were expounded and extolled, yet the actual practice of socialism, implemented so rapidly after the October coup, resembled more of the old order than the new.

In fact, "the Bolsheviks consolidated their success by dissolving (since they did not control) the only freely-elected representative body based on universal suffrage Russia ever had until 1990".[6] The new Russia, led by the absolutist, Tsar-like figure of Lenin promised many rewards for the masses, including land, factory ownership, and the right of self-determination for ethnic minorities, in pursuit of political victory and popular approval. While Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky enjoyed the private retreats once owned by exiled, imprisoned, or executed nobles, the conditions within the country improved little with mass famine and plummeting economic output. While the New Economic Policy was a concession of failure of socialist national policies in granting economic liberalization, political consolidation of power increased in the hands of the Party elite. This also was a concession of defeat in economic aspects of socialism and the reinforcement of the autocratic, elite-centered Russia under Communism. The one-man rule of Lenin was replaced by Stalin after the formers death, and subsequently, as J.M. Roberts notes, "Stalin presided over a state machine far more effective and totalitarian than the old autocracy had been."[7] As Stalin's abrupt abandonment of NEP and the institution of the Five Year Plans show, he was "perhaps best understood as that very Russian figure, the autocratic tsar, an Ivan the Terrible, or Peter the Great."

With Lenin and Stalin, Russia became even more politically polarized, despite the actual political ideologies they supposedly represented. Despite the claims in Communist literature about the abolition of military action and pursuit of peace, the Soviet Union had exercised military strength against Poland, Finland, Mongolia, China, Japan, and Persia all before World War II. Soviet troops, led by Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, also brutally crushed the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921, shooting down, executing, and imprisoning those who mutinied in hopes of actual equitable power redistribution.[8] These wars were not fought in the interests of a country, but pursued by the Politburo, in the interests of preserving power and Party sovereignty over Russia. While the peasants suffered, and Pravda heralded the glorious triumph of socialism, little had actually changed. Though there had been a brief period of hope, absolute tyrants in the mold of Lenin and Stalin had even increased the power of the autocratic regime, using brute force whenever the interests necessitated it.

In Germany, the dominance of an authoritarian rule proved even more pervasive in diplomacy and politics. In exploring the causes of both world wars and the leadership who had the reins of power in those times, there is a direct correlation of the factors that affected the elites who held the power, and the corresponding decisions of state. Despite the existence of a parliamentary, constitutional system of government, the Prussian federal system placed absolute power in the hands of the Kaiser and the Chancellor, termed "a Prussian domination cloaked in federal forms".[9] Otto von Bismarck best demonstrated the influence of individual leadership, as he masterminded successful wars against Denmark, Austria, and then France on a course to German continental hegemony and the Second Reich.

But perhaps more notable was the influence of factors on simple men, which effected in them the decisions of war. While one cannot discount the major causes behind the First World War, such as Social Darwinism, nationalism, and militarism, the personal characteristics and the belief systems of those who made the decisions deserve an equal, if not greater, mention as factors to be considered. The personal pursuit of glory and imperial expansion of the young Kaiser Wilhelm II as he first ascended to the throne saw a radical abandonment of the more conservative foreign policies of von Bismarck in favor of "Weltpolitik" and Germany's own place in the sun. Supporting him were military and civil professionals in the ruling elite who shared the same social backgrounds, "a homogeneous and ancient aristocratic class".[10] For example, in the diplomatic service of the Reich, of the 545 Imperial German diplomats who served in a 30 year period, 69% bore titles of nobility.[11] This homogeneity in career and social background brought a common approach to foreign policy and susceptibility to social forces.

The decisions to go to war for the European powers, particularly Germany, were determined by the leadership. Hamilton and Herwig's explanations for the "big causes" lie in the influences that these greater trends don't affect popular opinion as much as they do to the aristocracy in power, that these ideas ultimately have a major impact on the thinking, and thus, the decision-making, of these leaders. Indeed, in an age where broad democratization has not been fully realized, national leaders "weigh the options, calculate the risks, and then decide for war as their best choice."[12]

For Germany's leadership, several "big causes" had deeply affected their outlook and political attitudes, as these were transformed by the Germans themselves into a "'home-made' fatalism that eventually turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.[13] In Germany, many elites hoped for a revisionist foreign policy, hoping to change the status quo power relationships by surpassing Britain, heavily influenced by the rise or fall ideology of Social Darwinism and the self-imposed inevitability of the military's demand for timetables and mobilization organization. Indeed, many Germans felt entrapped and besieged, even if only regarding prestige and reputation, and with war with Russia becoming more and more of an inevitability.[14] Despite the risks that the leadership already were, no doubt, well aware of, Bethmann Hollweg and Wilhelm II, among others, continued on the road of diplomatic destabilization, combining internal bickering and indecisiveness with a brash, reckless, and inexperienced attitude towards foreign affairs. Even von Falkenhayn himself admitted that "'all governments' simply had 'lost control' of the July Crisis", demonstrating the leadership's susceptibility to pressure and imminent loss of control in their decision-making processes.[15] German leaders were influenced by a "now-or-never" attitude, fatalism, and desire to redress the existing balance of power in Germany's favor in the desperate weeks before World War I. In evolving what was a Balkan conflict into a general continental war, they represented the authoritarian, elite control of the state and its military mechanisms, with all of its faults and human errors.

Although America is commonly seen as a bastion of democracy and a protector of republican ideals, the leadership and decision-making coterie were just as dominant in the control of the buildup to World War I as any other power. While Woodrow Wilson's real influence on modern history is up to debate, no one can doubt his political power both before and after the war. Assisted by Colonel Edward House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing, President Wilson demonstrated that "the American system gave primary, at times exclusive, responsibility for the response to the European war to a single person."[16] While popular opinion remained divided throughout the war, particularly in the communities of German and Irish Americans, President Wilson himself gradually and quietly changed the American policy towards the war virtually single-handedly. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania and the Sussex, Wilson never decisively acted to sanction or sever ties with Germany when public opinion was most belligerent. Belatedly, towards the end of the war, 2 months after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare (itself decided by a coterie of supreme war leaders), only after he had secured electoral victory on a questionable campaign slogan, did Wilson ask Congress for a declaration of war. He did not, in the years prior to 1917, directly make the connections to war immediately after German actions, and vacillated on crucial state decisions, even including rearmament of the United States military.[17] In the first official Lusitania note to the Germans, the US leadership asked for a respect of neutrality, and a mutual understanding of American property and lives, yet in Wilson's appeal to Congress for a declaration of war, he condemned "submarine warfare against commerce as a warfare against mankind", having dramatically shifted his perspective to match the political realities.[18] Link, his most renowned biographer, indicates that even on the eve of asking Congress for a declaration of war, he was privately unsure about the wisdom of propelling his country into the fire. Ultimately, he brought America into war, well aware that he himself, the chief executive alone, could determine the decisions of war and peace.[19]

In his idealist, visionary, zealous pursuit of a new world order after the war, Wilson displayed again the cold arrogance of the liberal elite, with a less than favorable reputation of military intervention and nation-building in Latin America on grounds of Pan-Americanism. Because he was a diplomatic neophyte, Wilson, like most US Presidents of that era, drew heavily on his own experiences to deal with foreign affairs.[20] This experience, forged in American academia and legal practice, led to an aloof approach in not only domestic but foreign policy. While seeking to redress the European and worldwide balance of power, Wilson also pursued the irreconcilable ideas of self-determination and global liberalization. The contradictory nature of his policies and his own inability to judge between his own interests and that of others led to ultimate failure of his new world order and the League of Nations. Diplomatically outmaneuvered at the Paris Peace Conference and politically uncompromising in front of a hostile US Senate, he sacrificed many of the central tenets of his Fourteen Points simply to save the League of Nations, yet ultimately fell short of either goal.[21] President Wilson, in these attempts, is perhaps best described by Ambrosius, who writes that "both unilateralism and universalism characterized his diplomatic style".[22] His approach "never adequately confronted the inherent dilemmas of national self-determination".[23] Whereas Wilson had a much different idea of international politics, and sought the redistribution of power in a much different manner than the "Old World", he still represents an excellent example of the social and political elite who were deeply influenced by multiple outside factors, who acted unilaterally yet indecisively in the crucial hour of war and peace.

The nature of the common citizen throughout the 19th and 20th centuries supports the claim of elite-dominated political decision-making and rejects the liberalist tradition of humanism and morality. In the Dreyfus Affair, many attribute Emile Zola and Georges Picquart as national heroes, each of them as a "crusader for truth, justice, and toleration."[24] On closer examination, however, both men had anti-Semitic tendencies. Picquart had taught Dreyfus in General Staff training, and during his sentencing, even observed that "there is not a Jew who doesn't have a few convicts in his family."[25] Zola, likewise, had written extensively about the Jewish international conspiracy, mentioning such racial determinism in L'Argent and La Debacle bringing down the well-being and honor of France. Both men, in restarting the controversy, had their own political motives. Picquart, understandably, was torn between his career and honesty, and Zola sought to gain from J'Accuse! not as a work defending Jews or justice, but rather as a political tool against the reaction.[26] Indeed, the issue becomes not of anti-Semitism or justice, but the manipulation of these social forces and events to gain or preserve political power.[27] To some, even including Dreyfusards, many of whom possessed anti-Semitic beliefs themselves, the matter had become more than an issue of "guilt or innocence...when weighed against the prospects that so horrified them: a ruined homeland, irresponsible and corrupt politicians triumphant..."[28] Moreover, even the political middle had become involved in the pro-Dreyfusard side of the case with their concern regarding public stability and the security of the regime from a possible revolution or reactionary coup d'etat.[29] In Russia as well, the elites had sought to discredit an innocent man, Mendel Beilis, who was brought to court on trumped up charges, seeking to preserve their own power against what they saw as a Jewish conspiracy against authority.[30] For all sides involved in these cases of national honor and supposed Jewish conspiracy, political interests supplanted justice for the leaders who sought to preserve or gain influence and power.

In War and the Liberal Conscience, Michael Howard writes optimistically of the future with regards to war. Throughout the ages, liberals have faced the difficult problem of war, men who "believe the world to be profoundly other than it should be, and who have faith in the power of human reason and human action so to change it that the inner potential of all human beings can be more fully realized."[31] Liberal thought holds war to be "both unnatural and irrational", yet have been shown to be repeatedly wrong in their assessment of human nature.[32] After the First World War, Britain hoped for cooperation with Germany. Despite disarmament agreements, Nobel Peace Prize winning international conferences, and general appeasement, the National Government in the 1930's still put off rearmament and security measures in favor of general "balance" and the return of prosperity.[33] Combined with the ignorance of basic security needs in hope of a greater liberal understanding, the pursuit of an international framework and the abandonment of traditional postwar measures laid the foundations of an even greater war. Liberal ideology challenged the conservative view of foreign affairs and international relations in postwar Europe by suggesting that the nature of collective security, in conjunction with rational self-determination and broad democratization, can eliminate what they saw as an aberration.[34] While admirable in its intent, the same programs' authors had facilitated appeasement, having changed directions repeatedly in the last 2 generations. In fact, liberals themselves have held the lion's share of responsibility in cultivating many of these forces which have affected the decision-makers and leaders. In the half century before the First World War, they have "underestimated the true dangers...the balance of power which they had for so long denounced, and those new forces of militant nationalism which they themselves had done so much to encourage."[35] Yet when the guns of August boomed, most of these socialists and liberals willing went to war, with the attitude of Victor Adler, who noted that "it is better to be wrong with the working classes than right against them."[36] In the years following the great seminal tragedy, the liberals had again labored to redefine their values and justifications, seeking appeasement and collective security, almost an opposite reaction to the statements of before. This same pattern was to be repeated in the following, inarguably, greater conflict that followed, and similar power relationships have emerged since. Even if such high ideas achieved more success in preventing and ending war, one must still note that "'the man of the Clapham omnibus' did not run the country".[37] Indeed, in the execution of these broad theories, it was still the aristocrat, the elite, the small coterie who held the actual authority and power to implement this, each, of course, with his own power interests in mind.

The liberal tradition, over the past couple of hundred years, has boldly attempted to achieve the removal of humankind's most endemic, self-inflicted problem. There has existed little doubt as to the horror of war and genocide, and the need to minimize these things. However, ultimately, it comes down to the decision-makers who possess the power to cooperate and prevent interstate violence. For many of these elites throughout history, and especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, war was nothing other than a continuation of national politics. For Germans and Russians in the pre-WWI era, many of them did not possess the necessary basic education, nor ascribed social status and wealth to modify or reject such an assumption. In the buildup to World War I, the traditionally championed "big causes" of Social Darwinism, militarism, and nationalism were significant, not just because of the social impact, but perhaps, more crucially, because of their impact on the elites who held the reins of power. The small decision-making groups who possessed the inherited or elected privileges of deciding state policy were affected enough by these broad social changes to enact personal decisions in order to not only defend their nation's relative position in the game, but also their own positions of status and authority which these winds of change threatened. Even in the United States, where the system of checks and balances ostensibly limit the power of any one body, and the democratic tradition was intended to bring about a higher morality, Woodrow Wilson unilaterally assumed full wartime command as a chief executive, and led the diplomatic effort in Paris himself, regardless of the actual public opinion at home.[38] The supremacy of power politics even in the domestic arena is justified by the multi-faceted composition of both sides in the Dreyfus case, each looking beyond the immediate issues of treason, justice, and anti-Semitism to the greater question of national party politics and the ideological future of France. Added to factors both internal and external, the dominance of elites and their virtually absolute capability to decide the affairs of war and peace reject the idea of the liberal conscience and abolition of war, as these same leadership figures are nothing other than humans themselves, acting nothing out of the ordinary in their behavior during desperate times. Indeed, war is not an aberration of humanity, but simply a magnification of basic human conflict.

[1] Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1993), 169.

[2] David Moon, "Estimating the Peasant Population of Late Imperial Russia from the 1897 Census," Europe-Asia Studies, January 1996, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3955/is_n1_v48/ai_18105618, accessed November 29th, 2007.

[3] Tian-Shanskaia, 168.

[4] Ibid., 166.

[5] Ibid., 146-7.

[6] J.M. Roberts, The Penguin History of Europe (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 517.

[7] Ibid., 531.

[8] Ralph Zuljan, Onwar.com, December 2000, http://onwar.com/aced/nation/ram/russia/index.htm, accessed December 1st, 2007.

[9] Roberts, 409.

[10] Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 72.

[11] Ibid., 73.

[12] Ibid., 73.

[13] Ibid., 75.

[14] Roberts, 508.

[15] Hamilton and Herwig, 88.

[16] Ibid., 203.

[17] Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, Shane J. Maddock, Deborah Kisatsky, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations, Volume 2, A History - Since 1895 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 79-81.

[18] Woodrow Wilson, "President Woodrow Wilson Asks Congress to Declare War Against Germany, 1917," in Thomas G. Paterson & Dennis Merrill, eds., Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. II: Since 1914: Documents and Essays, 6th Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 36-7.

[19] Hamilton and Herwig, 221.

[20] Ibid., 204.

[21] Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 116

[22] Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonianism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 44.

[23] Ibid., 134.

[24] Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 115.

[25] Ibid., 111.

[26] Ibid., 115.

[27] Robin W. Winks and R.J.Q. Adams, Europe, 1890-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2003), 40.

[28] Lindemann, 122.

[29] Ibid., 117.

[30] Ibid., 128.

[31] Howard, 11.

[32] Ibid., 16.

[33] R.J.Q. Adams, British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 6

[34] Howard, 94.

[35] Ibid., 72.

[36] Ibid., 69.

[37] Adams, 157.

[38] Paterson, Clifford, Maddock, Kisatsky, and Hagan, 91-3.