
Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war - JumpCrisscross
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21591853-century-there-are-uncomfortable-parallels-era-led-outbreak
======
JumpCrisscross
“We show that the intuition that trade promotes peace is only partially true
even in a model where trade is beneficial to all, war reduces trade and
leaders take into account the costs of war. When war can occur because of the
presence of asymmetric information, the probability of escalation is indeed
lower for countries that trade more bilaterally because of the opportunity
cost associated with the loss of trade gains.

However, countries more open to global trade have a higher probability of war
because multilateral trade openness decreases bilateral dependence to any
given country.

Using a theoretically-based econometric model, we test our predictions on a
large dataset of military conflicts in the period 1948-2001. We find strong
evidence for the contrasting effects of bilateral and multilateral trade. Our
empirical results also confirm our theoretical prediction that multilateral
trade openness increases more the probability of war between proximate
countries. This may explain why military conflicts have become more localized
and less global over time.”

[http://econ.sciences-
po.fr/sites/default/files/martinp/CEPR-...](http://econ.sciences-
po.fr/sites/default/files/martinp/CEPR-DP5218.pdf)

------
zw123456
The parallel that was drawn in the article is that the U.S. is playing the
part of Britain (a waning super power), China plays the part of Germany (a
country with an emerging powerful economy and national pride) and Japan plays
the part of France. It is an eerie comparison. At that time, many thought that
the close trade ties of those countries would prevent war. The comparisons are
not perfect of course. It does seem like there is an approximate 50 year cycle
of large conflagration, perhaps because that is the approximate human
generation, just enough time for people to forget the futility of war.
Hopefully history will not repeat itself, but it often does.

~~~
marcosdumay
Also, by 1914 the world was recoveing (slowly) from a very deep depression,
and changing its energy sources.

But I'd argee that China does not feel the same pressure that Germany felt by
the time... And Russia didn't enter the analysis at all. Times are very
similar, but they are also quite different, depends on how one looks at it.

Anyway, I'm hating to see what I think at the headlines of the mainstream
press. I tought it was bad when they ignored all the problems, but it's worse
when they acknoledge them.

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npt4279
Thankfully, I don't see WWIII starting anytime soon...

But I've always strongly thought the "globalisation will make war unthinkable"
argument is naive. We're tribal creatures -Nationalism trumps economic
interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true.

As the author hinted at - Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and France were
each other's biggest trading partners - by far! Heck, a Belgium company built
both the Belgium fortifications... and the German artillery that eventually
breached them!

Nowadays, the entire world is trading... but Europe in 1914 was a good example
of this principle applying continent-wide.

Convince society the other side is evil and a threat; dismiss and degenerate
the peace-mongers as unpatriotic... and economic interest be damned.

~~~
nawitus
>Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows
this to be true.

I interpret history as "nationalism used to trump economic interests". A lot
of has changed since. Most countries are representative democracies, and it's
more difficult for leaders to go into a war.

As for the tribal argument, I think the "nation state" is dying. Tribes are
subcultures these days[1]. The internet connects me to my subcultures (like
Hacker News), and it matters less every year what country I happen to
physically live in. There's also the argument that the world is more united
these days (particularly thanks to the European Union and somewhat because of
United Nations).

1\.
[http://www.gwern.net/The%20Melancholy%20of%20Subculture%20So...](http://www.gwern.net/The%20Melancholy%20of%20Subculture%20Society)

~~~
npt4279
>Most countries are representative democracies, and it's more difficult for
leaders to go into a war.

I agree representative democracies are far less likely to go to war. I also
don't think war is likely anytime in the present era. On the other hand,
China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are not representative democracies. They
represent a fair portion of earth's landmass, population, and potential
destructive power. I'd say the trend towards democracy has already peaked, and
authoritarian governments are on the rise.

>As for the tribal argument, I think the "nation state" is dying.

I think we have very different worldviews on this subject, so a debate isn't
going to be productive. But from where I'm coming from, it's easy to be
idealistic when we're living in a golden age of peace and prosperity (despite
the great recession). I'm more pessimistic about humanity in times of
scarcity, disasters, and conflict.

> There's also the argument that the world is more united these days
> (particularly thanks to the European Union and somewhat because of United
> Nations).

I truly hope post-WWII institutions like these continue to have force for as
long as possible. I think the world is safe from major war as long as this
continues. But eventually, be it 50 years or 500 hundred years, they will
fall.

~~~
olefoo
You could make a fairly strong argument that these days the US is not much of
a representative democracy; and that it is more of an elite oligarchy which
performs a theater of democracy for public consumption. When overt criminal
activity by elite institutions goes unpunished (see NSA, HSBC, Goldman Sachs,
etc.) and popular movements for reform are crushed (Occupy) or coopted (Tea
Party); it's hard to claim the moral high ground for our form of governance.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You could make a fairly strong argument that these days the US is not much
> of a representative democracy; and that it is more of an elite oligarchy
> which performs a theater of democracy for public consumption.

To the extent that you could make such an argument "these days", you could
make an even stronger argument for the same thing at almost any time in the
past history of the U.S.

~~~
olefoo
Well, you could, but there are ebbs and flows. And right now the party of
money seems to be riding roughshod over the party of the people.

------
x0x0
Only morons like the economist would look at the US not being interesting in
getting involved in a war in Syria -- where we would have to choose sides
between an evil regime and al-qaeda -- and conclude "This betrays both a lack
of ambition and an ignorance of history." In fact, it betrays rather a good
grasp of recent history -- see both Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe America has
finally learned to beware Republican assholes volunteering your (but not
their!) children for war. One can dream, anyhow...

------
Houshalter
No nuclear armed country has ever been invaded and war between two nuclear
armed countries seems ridiculous.

On the other hand, as the article says, people in 1914 were making similar
claims about the interdependence of their economies and their new
technologies.

Still, it's quite a different situation.

~~~
jotm
yeah, I think if someone breached the borders of the US, Russia, China, India,
or any other nuclear-armed country they'd get a (small) nuke dropped on one of
their cities for sure.

Also, China makes most of the world's everyday stuff, I don't see how they
would drop all those customers for a war that would bring in less profits and
will leave them starving afterwards (cause no one would trust them with their
factories anymore). The pre-WW1 trade ties were peanuts compared to today...

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jusben1369
It's an interesting time to be writing articles like this. Afghanistan, Iraq
then the 2008 financial crisis. America lost prestige and the economy shrank
considerably. These factors, real and perceived, coincided with the ongoing
rise of China who for the most part avoided a real let down. I suspect that
when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013 as the last year
of this low point. The US economy is _finally_ rebounding - Q4 GDP looks very
impressive. With lowered deficits and an improving job market citizen interest
in politics will lessen. This will increase the ability of the US to play a
more proactive role internationally again. Secondly, there are very troubling
signs coming from China in terms of their own banking system. We know there's
a shadow banking system and many failed enterprises are propped up. And,
they're still a 1 party authoritarian state. I'm not sure how long the Chinese
people will be ok with that; especially as their population ages and their
middle class expands.

I wonder about the next 10 years or so and whether the US will rebound and
China will finally face challenges they can't simply overcome via spending.

~~~
marcosdumay
"I suspect that when we look back in 5 years from now we will really see 2013
as the last year of this low point. The US economy is finally rebounding - Q4
GDP looks very impressive."

I'm pretty sure one can find a similar quotation from 1913.

~~~
jusben1369
That is a fair point.

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maxtaco
I recently read a fabulous history of WWI (G.J. Meyer's _The World Undone_).
What struck me is that if you modeled Europe in 1914 as a distributed system,
you'd see incredible latencies between decisions being made and decisions
being carried out. Kaiser Wilhelm and King George (first cousins!) were
negotiating to stave off the war long after Germany's decision to mobilize,
and might very well have succeeded were it possible to reverse the
mobilization decision. The German generals insisted it wasn't. And even before
then, Germany's decision to mobilize was based on reports of Russia's decision
to mobilize, which also took weeks to carry out. If communication and military
latencies were shorter, maybe the war could have been avoided. It was like the
world's worst race condition.

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JeffL
It's really hard to see anything big starting up in Europe, since all the
countries are now officially democracies, and those that are at the corrupt
end of the spectrum are not the most powerful. R. J. Rummels arguments about
how democracies don't go to war against each other are pretty compelling.
[http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MIRACLE.HTM](http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MIRACLE.HTM)

I guess the biggest potential problem would be China, but do they really have
any allies for their side that would cause a "world war"? Seems to me like if
they started anything, then it would be them against the entire west, and as
long as we don't feel compelled to invade them, they don't have a lot of power
eh can project.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The concern isn't China bombing Germany. It is China pushing to establish
itself as the East China Sea's regional hegemon. This would involve displacing
Japan, a conflict likely to pull in the U.S. That risks drawing in, at a
minimum, the U.K. and Australia.

A U.S.-China conflict would shoot decades of progress in the head.

~~~
sliverstorm
Of course I would have to wonder what about Japan would be worth a war with
the U.S.

Logistical value perhaps, for example by denying the U.S. the bases they
currently have there, but certainly not for resources?

~~~
myrandomcomment
The Chinese in general still feel humiliated by their treatment at the hands
of the western powers and then their occupation by Japan in WW2. Furthermore
they have an issue of not having enough resouces to feed their growth. Who
ever owns the islands (more then one set - China is arguing with Japan, Korea,
Vietnam and Philippines) has the rights to exploit the oil/gas fields in the
ocean beds around them.

Now to the story. I can see the parallels to the run up to WW1 however there
is one large difference. In WW1 there was no real dominate military power
(i.e. has complete unmatched and overwhelming force). The fact is that the US
military so overmatches everyone else that it would be a very short war. Blood
and a mess but still very short.

~~~
VLM
"it would be a very short war. Blood and a mess but still very short."

You may wish to read up on attitudes immediately prior to WWI. And there were
three dominate military powers at the start of WWI, Germany the land empire
able to call up 5M men in days, Russia with infinite manpower but so
logistically messed up they never get to use them, and the British Navy
dominated the waves, which was a pretty big deal as this was toward the end of
the colonial era (although Germany didn't get to play colonialism which was
arguably part of the problem)

Seriously, the franco prussian war was only a couple months adn the
protoGermans won decisively. They really did expect to be done, one way or
another, by winter time.

WW3 will probably be something like NK implodes and tries to blow up SK and
.jp along with it (australia?), and China and "the west" argue very forcibly
about who will dominate the area in a post-NK, perhaps post-SK and post-.jp
world. At least if I was writing an Alt Hist type novel thats where I'd
generally go.

~~~
venus
> NK implodes and tries to blow up SK and .jp along with it (australia?)

I certainly wouldn't want to live in Seoul if (when?) that comes to pass but
wouldn't be too worried even in Japan - it's a good 1000km, and I don't think
NK has the tech to get much precision at those distances. Certainly they don't
have stealth missiles which would be able to evade JP's considerable number of
aegis equipped vessels. They could likely do some damage but I doubt it would
be catastrophic.

As for Australia, I wouldn't be worried at all - that's well into ICBM
territory, a whole different technological level and NK have never
demonstrated anything even close. Not to mention Hawaii is actually closer to
Pyongyang than Sydney - if they really can lob missiles ~8000km, why not go
for the Great Satan himself?

------
VLM
Not a very good analysis of the causes of WWI or application to today:

Problems:

1) Cultural attitude of "eh, war is not so bad and higher tech means we'll be
home by xmas". See franco-prussian war and the most recent "world war" being
Napoleon's activities in the decade after the revolution a century ago. I'm
not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena. Of course that can
change quickly, 90% of everything Americans see is from 5 media companies or
whatever, so they can turn on a dime.

2) Germany surrounded by rapidly growing and arming enemies and no allies but
Austria, paranoid lash out. But can you blame them? China surrounded by, um,
Japan on one side? Is NK threatening to invade? Who exactly is supposed to
invade China next decade if they don't invade today? Why would they be
paranoid? Yes, maybe NK could try this scheme, but...

3) The root cause of the war being the ottoman empire decaying and almost dead
and everyone wanted a lucrative piece of it. (edited to add, and no one wanted
a competitor to get a piece of it, and willing to go to war to prevent it)
Incredible trade opportunity. Maybe if you put the American Empire in its
place and position this in the latter half of the 2000s century and starving
people want our rice/corn? Anyway the sick man of Europe lead to crazy
allegiance switching in the years prior to WWI.

4) The article skipped several points WRT the German/British alliance thing,
Germany was a continental Army power and the UK had a spectacular navy. One
nutcase admiral on the German side got them all into navy building leading to
disaster WRT the natural alliance. Other than the crazy admiral (Tirpitz?)
they were natural allies and their royalty were related, something crazy close
like the Kaiser was Queen Victoria's grandson or something. Aside from the
obvious trade issue that was brought up.

5) The dangers of multiculturalism. Austrian Empire was a multicultural
nightmare basically think conditions in modern Iraq, no majority and everyone
hates everyone and the only thing holding it together is a strong empire. Then
the independent Serbians start going nuts so to prevent revolution spreading
into their own empire the Austrian's fight the Serbians and the game is on.
So, uh, who is the nervous feeling multicultural empire with the neighbor in
revolution? Gonna try for USA again? Maybe with a .MX revolution next door? I
think this is stretching it.

6) Speaking of revolution, Russia was falling apart internally and didn't do
so well externally against the Japanese but holy cow do they have resources
and manpower, so what better external distraction than a war? Again, I'm just
not seeing it. Another allusion to the USA?

7) Who plays the part of Italy? Decades of "we're your ally" "nope just
kidding". Another allusion to the USA maybe WRT having Japan's back?

Note if you have the USA play all the parts of WWI then its not much of a WWI
anymore, is it?

In groups men are by nature irrational not rational, there is nothing
inconsistent with the old quote about WWI being impossible because its
obviously futile, yet they had a war anyway. I'm sure WW3 would be completely
futile, we'll still have it anyway, but I don't think it'll be this decade and
USA vs China or whatever.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
_I 'm not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena._

In the U.S., perhaps not. But nationalism and remilitarisation are flaring up
in China and Japan, respectively.

 _Who exactly is supposed to invade China next decade if they don 't invade
today?_

China, with good reason, perceives itself as being surrounded by U.S.-allied
countries looking to suppress its growth. Since growth is the currency the
Communist Party trades for its seat of power, this is a potentially
existential issue to the elite.

 _The root cause of the war being the ottoman empire decaying and almost dead
and everyone wanted a lucrative piece of it._

The American Pacific alliance would be a loose analogue today. China may think
it can establish a suzerainty over, say, the Phillipines, betting the U.S.
will balk at another costly intervention.

The Economist's point isn't that we're going to have a war in a mold of WWI -
all the seats need not be filled. It's simply warning that while we're
watching the S&P 500 soar to record heights on the back of booming
productivity and resurgent globalisation we shouldn't ignore the fireworks
that are playing out over a handful of unmanned islands in the East China Sea.

~~~
Tloewald
Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering
going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the
prospect of bombing Syria.

Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents
for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country
ought to not be warmongering...

~~~
VLM
That's wimpy warmongering as in "police action" and far away. Psuedo-
colonialism.

Real USA warmongering would sound like, "We're gonna invade Canada and take
all the maple syrup as our manifest destiny or we'll die trying".

Even the attitude of the Italian-Ethiopian war would be more hard core than
the USA now.

Depressingly, our war mongering looks more like serving an arrest warrant in
Detroit than being in a world war. Militarization of cops is the depressing
part.

~~~
Tloewald
Colonialism was mostly war as business as usual too. WWI was the exception.

------
dmfdmf
If we want to talk historical parallels a better one is the invention of the
printing press and the invention of the internet. The printing press destroyed
the Catholic Church's social and political power at its peak.

The internet has destroyed the traditional news media's ability to set the
political and social discourse and thus agenda. The NYT and ABC, NBC, CBS are
no longer able to set the political and social agenda, like everyone else they
are following the internet. Recall that the recent 60 Minutes puff job on the
NSA (and secondarily a hit piece on Snowden) fell flat and was generally
panned by independent voices on the internet. This gambit was telling in that
the powers that be are still playing by the old playbook. 25 years ago this 60
Minutes "news" report would have ended the discussion.

To echo the point of the Economist article, this is a dangerous time and
nuclear war is one very real possibility. We are living in the middle of the
greatest social revolution in the history of mankind, since the invention of
the printing press 500 years ago, and nobody can really say how it will play
out.

Read this article by Clay Shirky from 2009 for a better explanation;

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-
thinking...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-
unthinkable/)

------
forgottenpaswrd
The article is full of oversimplifications like WWI was "because of Germany".
Oh , yeah. Why thinking when you can blame someone else?.

An article about WWs in the Economist should talk about economic data, about
banks burning and destroying the savings of decades of the work of the people.
They need to talk about Oligopolies, about Roosevelt(Teddy) trying to do
something about that , but at the end the biggest of all(the Fed) being
created in 1913.

They need to talk about Africa and middle East, and India colonies and
commerce at the time.

But this has a problem: It is not as easy as "blame the Germans!"

"The second precaution that would make the world safer is a more active
American foreign policy. "

Oh yeah, again.

"Barack Obama has pulled back in the Middle East—witness his unwillingness to
use force in Syria. "

Wow, this is the better line of all. If something Syria has shown us is the
willingness of US to use force in Syria, only being stopped by China and
Russia.

"But unless America behaves as a leader and the guarantor of the world order,
it will be inviting regional powers to test their strength by bullying
neighbouring countries."

Today the US is the biggest bully of all. If any parallelism is to be
extracted from WWs to today is countries like China behaving like the US of
the past, as creditors of the world, while the rest of the world overspends
and get in as many wars as possible to protect their turf.

------
bayesianhorse
On some level I am quite glad that china, its neighbors and the US are arguing
over some rocks and some identification zone.

It looks more like an ritualistic show fight you sometimes see in the animal
kingdom than an eve of war.

For that matter I am quite glad that they are not rattling their sabers about
Taiwan...

Nothing about the disputed island would be worth even a very small scale war,
much less the risk of a bigger one. There's just no profit in it. On the other
hand, battles about islands (like the Falklands War) tend to cost a lot less
lives, especially civilian, than any land-based war.

No, this is more about China trying to harness nationalistic emotions on the
one hand and their "opponents" not wanting to present China with an
opportunity for actually profitable wars or threats.

If for example the US and Japan would back down, China might "negotiate" the
annexation of Taiwan in the near future, which would be profitable. There have
been rumors of such attempts already, and China's military buildup makes this
ever more realistic.

------
filbertkm
paywall!

"Once you've registered, you can read up to three articles each week."

pretty sure I've not been to economist.com in a while. :/

~~~
markvdb
New private browser window, or delete economist.com cookies. In firefox with
the pentadactyl plugin for vim-like keybindings: "<Esc>:cookies economist.com
clear" .

------
abalone
Is anyone else seeing a Breitling ad featuring WWII fighter planes and "sexy"
girls winking at the pilots?

Really unfortunate pairing.

(Really the sexing up of war is pretty distasteful under any circumstances but
this just takes the cake.)

------
fatca
There is one major difference: Since the Snowden affair, the United States no
longer have allies.

~~~
threeseed
The Snowden affair made ZERO difference to US alliances. Seriously zero. The
US will still be able to depend on UK, JP, AU, NZ, CA, SK etc.

Alliances don't get torn up because of a bit of spying.

------
kor4life
awesome!

------
lispm
Another weak article from the british Economist.

~~~
Theodores
Another weak article from the Daily Mail featuring the BBC's John Simpson:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530571/100-years-
Wo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530571/100-years-World-War-I-
I-believe-stand-crossroads-history-John-Simpson.html?ico=home^editors_choice)

I think that these right-wing organ-of-the-secret-state propagandists are all
fairly clueless.

