By Brian C. Chao
China may unwittingly find itself facing a similar string of events to those that confronted Germany in 1914.
This summer’s 100th anniversary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination has ignited debate over the parallels and lessons that 1914 Europe affords the world today, particularly with regard to the question of whether such an all-consuming war is possible in the Asia-Pacific. Much ink has been spilled on economic interdependence, the role of nationalism, the chafing of a dominant power at the rise of another, and a naval arms race and its subsequent security dilemma. While very important, these preconditions and precipitants as Aristotle would call them, risk overshadowing a discussion of the specific triggers for the First World War, incidents that, however discrete or small, could draw in neighboring countries through their multilateral character, thus setting a fire far greater than the spark would suggest.
It is in the origins of World War I that the analogous triggers for a major conflict in the Asia- Pacific, particularly between the U.S. and China, are worryingly manifest. The U.K. declared war when Germany violated Belgium’s neutrality, which had been guaranteed by the Treaty of London in 1839. The mistake Britain made in the July Crisis of 1914 was that it did not send clear, timely signals to Germany that the U.K. would indeed intervene on behalf of Belgium; this was in light of previous crises, such as the Tangier Crisis and the Agadir Crisis, in which Berlin’s bellicosity went substantively unpunished. What Germany saw, therefore, was precedence for getting away with aggressive behavior against major powers in discrete incidents; facing another crisis caused by the archduke’s assassination, one can see why Berlin would choose to give itself the benefit of the doubt when considering the Schlieffen Plan’s strategic consequences. Had Germany understood the true import of its offensive through the Low Countries, history may have turned out very differently.
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