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Figure 1. Deaths in
World War I by country, Allied powers
Figure 2. Deaths in
World War I by country, Axis powers
Figure 3. Deaths in
World War II by country
first of all France and Russia, and then, and most seriously,
Britain.
Thus, the expanding conflicts of powerful national capitalist
states, seeking dominance within an increasingly integrated
global economy, formed the real basis for the accumulation of
geo-political tensions that finally exploded in the summer of
1914.
It is true that France and Britain did not necessarily want war
in August 1914. But that is not because they loved peace.
Britain, it should be remembered, had waged a brutal counterinsurgency war against the Boers in South Africa only a
decade earlier. If Britain and France did not necessarily want
war in 1914, it was because they were more or less satisfied
with the geo-political status quo that favored their global
interests. However, when confronted with actions by Germany
and Austria-Hungary that threatened the status quo and,
therefore, their interests, they accepted war as a political
necessity. War, from the standpoint of the imperialist interests
of France and Britain, was preferable to a peace that altered
the prevailing status-quo along lines sought by Germany.
Thus, in the final analysis, the cause of the war was not to be
found in the actions of one or another state that precipitated
the shooting. The causes lay in the essential nature of the
imperialist system, in the logic of the struggle of powerful
capitalist national states to maintainor achieve, depending
on the circumstancesa dominant position in an increasingly
integrated global economic order.
Despite the defeat of Germany, the war did not produce the
results that Britain and France had originally envisioned. In
the east, the war had led to socialist revolution in Russia and
the radicalization of the working class throughout Europe. In
the west, the war created the conditions for the emergence of
the United Stateswhich had suffered relatively few losses
as the dominant capitalist power.
Moreover, the Versailles settlement of 1919 set the stage for
the eruption of new conflicts. The vindictive terms insisted
upon by French imperialism did little to ensure stable relations
on the European continent. The breakup of the AustrianHungarian Empire resulted in the creation of a new set of
unstable national states, torn by deep-rooted and explosive
sectional rivalries. Above all, the Versailles settlement failed to
create a foundation for the restoration of the economic
equilibrium of Europe. Rather, the world capitalist economy,
as it emerged from the war, was riven by imbalances that led
to the unprecedented collapse that began on Wall Street in
October 1929.
Another major factor in the re-emergence of international
tensions that was to lead to a renewal of global war in 1939
was the new role of the United States in world affairs. Though
Wilson was hailedespecially in the aftermath of the US
entry into the war and the victory of socialist revolution in
Russiaas the savior of capitalist Europe, it was soon to
become clear to the European bourgeoisie that the interests
of the United States were not entirely in alignment with its
own. The American bourgeoisie was not willing to accept
European dominance in world affairs. It viewed the privileges
enjoyed by Britain within the framework of its Empire as a
barrier to the expansion of its own commercial interests.
The aftermath
The world that emerged in 1945 from the carnage of two wars
was profoundly different from that which existed in 1914.
Though the United States had replaced bankrupt Britain as
the pre-eminent imperialist power, it could not recreate, in its
own image, the old British Empire. The age of colonial
empires, at least in the form they had previously existed, had
passed.
In a historical fact pregnant with profound irony, Woodrow
Wilson delivered his war message to Congress, in April 1917,
just as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was making his way back to
revolutionary Russia. Two great historical lines of
development intersected at this critical juncture. Wilsons
speech marked the decisive emergence of the United States
as the dominant imperialist force on the planet. Lenins arrival
The lessons
The critical question that flows inescapably from any
examination of World War I and World War II is whether such
catastrophes could ever happen again. Were the wars of the
20th century some sort of horrifying aberration from a normal
course of historical development? Is it possible to imagine the
reemergence of international disputes and antagonisms that
would make the outbreak of World War III possible?
The answer to this question does not require far-fetched
speculation. The real question is less whether a new eruption
of global warfare is possible, but how long do we have before
such a catastrophe occurs. And, flowing from that second
question, the next and most decisive question is whether
anything can be done to stop it from happening.
In weighing the risk of war, bear in mind that the United States
has been engaged repeatedly in major military conflicts since
1990, when it first invaded Iraq. During the past decade, since