Could the Ukraine Crisis Spark a World War?
The rapid slide from lawlessness to violence that has claimed the lives of more than sixty people in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Slovyansk, and Odessa in the past week sounds alarms that should be heard more clearly in Western capitals. The strategy Washington and the Europeans have chosen that focuses on the villainization of Putin (much as he deserves it), calls on him to withdraw support for the separatists, and threatens further sanctions if he does not is bound to fail. It will not stop the killing. It will not prevent the de facto dismemberment of Ukraine. It will not deter Putin from continuing whatever role he and Russia are playing in this process. And it fails to address the risk that what happens in Ukraine does not end in Ukraine.
Mark Twain observed that while history never repeats itself, it does sometimes rhyme. In the combination of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the collapse of authority that is destabilizing Ukraine, can we hear echoes from a century earlier when the murder of an Austrian Archduke sparked a great European war?
The thought that what we are now witnessing in Ukraine could trigger a cascade of actions and reactions that end in war will strike most readers as fanciful. Fortunately, it is. But we should not forget that in May 1914, the possibility that the assassination of an Archduke could produce a world war seemed almost inconceivable. History teaches that unlikely, even unimaginable events do happen.
If those making fateful choices in Washington, Berlin, and Moscow today were to pause to reflect on what was done—and not done—in 1914, they would recognize that the current crisis poses much greater danger than they now imagine. This would stir them to think well beyond their current conceptions of events and to stretch to much bolder, preventative initiatives than we have seen thus far.
The storyline of events 100 years ago is well known. Then, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian imperial throne by Serbian terrorists led European elites (many of whom were cousins) to grieve. But for several weeks essentially nothing happened. Then, on July 23, Austria delivered an ultimatum to Serbia with ten demands. Serbia capitulated, agreeing to nine of the ten. But having secured a “blank check” of support from their German patron in the meantime, Austria rejected the Serbian reply, mobilized its forces, and declared war on Serbia. In response, the Russian Czar mobilized his forces. Kaiser Wilhelm then mobilized Germany’s military. Within a week, the major states of Europe had declared war against each other.
Could this sequence of events have been prevented? In the century since, historians have identified a number of opportunities. Most have focused on failures to recognize trend lines that were heightening risks that a spark would ignite a larger fire. But even after the assassination, it was still possible that statesmen could have acted to prevent what happened. One major opportunity occurred in the last week before war, as Luigi Albertini, one of the most insightful historians of these events, has explained. On July 28, when the Kaiser saw the Serbian response to Austria, he recognized that his Austrian client was out of control and sought to reign him in. He wrote to his foreign minister that this is “capitulation of the most humiliating kind, and as a result, every cause for war has gone.” The German Chancellor, however, failed to communicate this message clearly enough to stop the Austrians in their tracks. Two days later, when the Chancellor finally realized that events were driving to a war Germany did not want, he sought an off-ramp. But by then Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, had concluded that the risks of Germany’s not mobilizing were too great to bear. When he discovered that the Chancellor was chairing a meeting on July 30 to authorize a proposal to defuse the crisis, he crashed the meeting and stunned the Chancellor with the news that he had already obtained the Kaiser’s approval for German mobilization to begin.
The framework for an agreement short of war that the Kaiser outlined on July 28, and the Chancellor embraced on July 30, was basically the same concept the British Foreign Minister Grey had been discussing several days earlier in London. Serbia would be required to destroy the Black Hand terrorist group that had assassinated the Archduke. To assure that it complied with this demand, Austrian troops would be allowed to occupy Belgrade until that was accomplished.