not a revolutionary or rogue power. It was content to defend the new status quo that it had
won with blood and iron.
The challenge to German security, and the prospects for great power peace in Europe
over the longer term, depended critically on Berlin’s ability to keep France isolated.
Bismarck succeeded by adroit diplomacy, despite Austro-Russian rivalries in the Balkans
and the complication of Vienna’s multitude of Orthodox Christian Slav subjects. But once
the ‘pilot’ was dropped, as a famous British cartoon showing Bismarck’s dismissal by
the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, on 1 8 March 1 8 90 was captioned, it was all change, and
greatly for the worse for ‘the repose of Europe’. Berlin decided not to renew the secret
‘Reinsurance Treaty’ it had signed with St Petersburg in 1 88 7 in order to offset Russian
disappointment with the League of the Three Emperors, the (German, Russian, Austrian)
Dreikaiserbund of 1 88 1. It would be a mistake to condemn out of hand Germany’s
abandonment of the secret treaty. The secret itself, which amounted to a general German
promise to appease Russia, could be revealed at any time by the Russians, potentially
to the acute embarrassment of Germany, especially in Vienna, London and Rome. In
addition to the Dreikaiserbund, Bismarck had expanded his Dual Alliance (with Austria)
of 7 October 1 8 79 with a Triple Alliance which also included Italy. His dexterous and
cunning diplomacy was waiting for a fall, and it came soon after his enforced retirement
in 1 8 90. It took the long-dreaded, probably inevitable, form of an agreement between
France and Russia, initially in 1 8 91 with a diplomatic understanding and three years later
with a formal treaty of alliance. So, after twenty years of fancy footwork, Germany’s, and
therefore Europe’s, strategic nightmare became a definite possibility. The continent was
organized henceforth into two generally antagonistic and increasingly heavily armed
camps. Only Britain among the great powers remained formally uncommitted, indeed
isolated, with its freedom of diplomatic and hence strategic action as yet uncompromised.
That condition was to alter somewhat, however, as a consequence of the officially
unofficial ‘military conversations’ that soldiers at the War Office held with their French
opposite numbers, beginning in 1906.
As an overall judgement, it is plain to see that the Great War was copiously and
redundantly enabled. So many and potent were the diverse factors influencing events that
the historian, even the strategic historian, is tempted to regard 1914–1 8 as an accident
- or, more plausibly, as an intended event – that was bound to occur. In this view a large-
scale war was a certainty. All that remained in doubt was the timing of its outbreak, the
affiliations of Britain and Italy (the latter was not a happy camper within the Triple
Alliance) and, last but not least, its character, duration, outcome and consequences.
Strategic historians must take a broad, inclusive view of the civilian and military
transformations wrought by the long-term effects of the French and Industrial revo-
lutions. They take due note of a Europe-wide culture that accepted warfare as a natural
and even healthy activity for a dynamic society and rising state. Widespread militarism
was a potent source of cultural norms. In addition, strategic history records the ever-
greater rise of a new Imperial Germany intensely jealous of British global pre-eminence.
That jealousy pertained especially to Britain’s imperial holdings, possessions protected
and interconnected by the apparently magnificent, certainly enormous, Royal Navy.
London’s continuing grip on world finance was another source of German jealousy,
despite the relative slippage of Britain from its former primacy in science, technology
and industry. The first to industrialize was bound to be the first to fade. To complete this
72 War, peace and international relations