Europe 1914-2024. Sleepwalkers Again?

In recent weeks, we’ve returned to talking about Christopher Clark’s 2013 book on the origins of World War I, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, in which the leaders who dragged their countries into war are labeled sleepwalkers. In other words, actors who were unstoppable in their pursuit of a goal they didn’t fully realize. The study analyzes the dynamics that led to the outbreak of the Great War by countries, whose societies, up to the highest levels, remained tied till the last to the topos of “the improbability of degeneration” in the general conflict of the serious Austro-Serbian crisis.

Today, the Russian-Ukrainian war risks provoking a similar dynamic, because throughout the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of this century, there was a widespread belief, that is, a topos, about the impossibility of a conflict between countries fit with nuclear weapons of enormous power because of the devastation it would entail, which even a hypothetical victor would not be able to avoid. Concluding his analysis of the origins of the war, in which the forces of the Entente, France, Britain, and Russia confronted the forces of the Triple Alliance, overshadowed by the defection of Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, Clark quotes a symbolic phrase of topos of improbable, uttered in 1936 on the balcony of Sarajevo’s city hall by Rebecca West, the Anglo-Saxon opinion leader of the day: “I shall never be able to understand how it happened.” A phrase that confirmed more than twenty years later the widespread and prevailing opinion in all circles responsible for the powers that later became involved in the war.

In fact, this belief remained dominant among both the political and military leaders of these countries until the Vienna ultimatum to Serbia was issued. Before that, these circles, even after the attack on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, remained optimistic about the development of the crisis and did not abandon the traditional summer vacation and routine of international exchanges. German Chief of Staff Helmut von Moltke, for example, did not interrupt his spa treatment in Karlovy Vary; Kaiser Wilhelm II went to Norway on July 21, at the height of the crisis, thus showing that he excluded the possibility of the crisis escalating into a major conflict. Similarly, in the opposite field, French President Poincaré, returning with Prime Minister Viviani from a state visit to Russia, considered it inappropriate to recall certain military units from Morocco to France. The English Prime Minister Asquith, however, devoted the entire month of July to the Ulster question.

At the same time, far less optimistic and essentially prescient was a very credible outside observer, such as Colonel House, a trusted advisor to American President Wilson, to whom he had indicated as early as May 1914 that the European land and naval arms race would lead to conflict. (1)

It is well known how the declaration of war on Serbia and the Russian mobilization initiated a dynamic of military measures that could not be postponed for the high command of the two camps, negating the topos of improbability that held out, despite the persistence and worsening of the Austro-Serbian crisis. Since 1945, after the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, a belief has spread, in a sense similar to the topos of improbability of the early twentieth century – the “topos of impossibility” of nuclear war. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it became firmly established in the most responsible scientific circles, as well as in diplomatic and senior political circles, culminating in the famous declaration of Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva in 1985: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

In the Ukrainian crisis, the topos that seems to waver is the impossibility of a nuclear conflict, even if from the first outbreak of war the American president has ruled out any hypothesis of direct intervention by American troops precisely to avoid escalation that could lead to a nuclear confrontation. Complicating this linear position is the different shape of other NATO countries’ commitments to support “defending Ukraine.”

The forms and dynamics of this support have evolved in a continuous escalation of measures and supplies of means, whose characteristics have tended to gradually move from defensive to offensive – with developments whose limits are declared uncertain, just as well as Russia’s potential response remains uncertain, although on several occasions Moscow has not ruled out the extreme use of nuclear weapons.

But in addition to the progress of ground operations and the type of supplies being sent to Kiev, the statements of some Western leaders about the unacceptability of the defeat of Ukraine states a position analogous to the one of St. Petersburg in 1914, in which, rejecting a priori that Serbia could be fully defeated, gave rise to the measures that led to the outbreak of the Great War.

The hypothesis that there are no limits to assisting Ukraine to prevent its defeat and welcoming the resulting strategic ambiguity implies acceptance of a similar position of ambiguity on the part of the opposing side, whose arsenal also includes nuclear weapons.

Therefore, it’s impossible to avoid concern over triggering the same unstoppable mechanism of 1914 that drove European leaders to enter the war like sleepwalkers.

The hypothesis of introducing military units from Atlantic countries into the Ukrainian theater of war would increase this risk, adding another fragment to this fragmented world war condemned by the Roman Pontiff, and runs unfortunate chances of uniting these parts into an open global conflict.

Regardless of the tasks these contingents could perform, if some of them came under Russian fire, there would be a situation always excluded from the “topos of impossibility”: a direct clash between Russian troops and Atlantic forces.

In addition to these risks, there is the intention to start a real arms race in Europe – the drift that, as we have seen, had already, at the beginning of the 20th century, led such a keen observer as Colonel House to correctly predicting the inevitable outbreak of war, in open contradiction to the prevailing opinion of the time.

There is a very common saying: “History is a teacher of life.” However, for life to take advantage of this, the lessons of history must be understood by those responsible for our destiny. At present, this does not appear to be the case.

(1) We know very well that the “topos of improbability” was refuted by the unstoppable dynamics caused, after the military measures of Austria and Serbia, by the determination of St. Petersburg to prevent the defeat of Serbia at any cost by starting the mobilization of its forces. This event, in turn, allowed the German armed forces to demand similar preventive measures, which was necessary for the security of the Empire. This dynamic was dictated by military strategy rather than by the peace concerns of civilian authorities, who found themselves unable to make choices inspired by those very concerns.