This is the second book of Kennan's I've read this year and I am slowly coming to understand how his insights, assessments, and the power of his pen could have had the impact they had on US foreign policy. The man was a genius, with the writing skills of a Dickens.
In this 1979 book, he looks into the background of what he calls the great seminal catastrophe of the century - the First World War, from which flowed Russian Communism, Nazism, and nuclear weapons. "It was clear to every thoughtful observer that the origins of the war lay on a plane far deeper in space than the policies and actions of any single government or group of governments, and deeper in time than the final weeks immediately preceding the outbreak of war." He claims that the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894 was one of "the major components" out of which the "fateful situation was constructed." Although the book has Bismarck's name in the title, it is sub-titled "Franco-Russian Relations, 1875-90". The successor book is "Fateful Alliance." He sees the seeds of future destruction beginning in the years after German unification and German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71.
Diplomatic history can be tedious, and this book is no exception to that rule. One can only be thankful that Kennan came before the era of word-processing that has led to 600+ page books as the norm. He plows back and forth endlessly between the three principal continental powers, their capitals, rulers, governments, armies, newspapers, gossips and diplomats. But, he always stays on point in terms of his core premises. First, France was determined to revenge its loss and recover its lost territories. He points out that France should not have fought the Franco-Prussian War and that, in the 19th century, nationalism had to lead to German unification. That said, he deplored the German military's insistence on humiliating the French and agrees with Bismarck that annexing Alsace-Lorraine was unnecessary. Second, Russia's obsession with the Balkans and possibly capturing Constantinople was misguided and self-destructive. "The Russian Empire of the final decades of the nineteenth century had no need of wars, of external adventures or the acquisition of satellites." "It was sheer folly.....to pursue the will-of-the wisp of a control of the Straits, to try to create a zone of influence in the Balkans, to launch a war on Turkey in 1877, and to promote a breakup of the Turkish Empire". Throughout most of these decisive years, Russia was led by a relatively unskilled Tsar, Alexander III. Third, Germany and Bismarck wanted to maintain the status-quo of the Dreikaiserbund, wherein the three Emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary secretly entered a defensive alliance. But, the inevitable rivalry in the Balkans between Russia and Austria-Hungary undermined his hopes. Kennan clearly admires the Iron Chancellor as a man of vision and skill, and as one who understood that there was no future in a two-front war for Germany. I suspect the follow-up volume will further indicate his lack of respect for Wilhelm II.
The one question that kept crossing my mind was answered in the last few pages. How could war seem to be such a plausible option throughout Europe's ministries and palaces? It was not yet understood "that all out war between great industrialized nations.....had become a senseless undertaking, a self destructive exercise, a game at which no one could really win, and therefore no longer a suitable instrument of national policy."
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