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Sir, In his exemplary review of three new books about the first world war, Tony Barber asks: “Could the immense tragedy of 1914-18, in which 65m men fought and about 8.5m were killed, have been avoided?” (“The warmakers”, Books, Life & Arts, October 5.)
To provide an adequate answer, we need to go beyond those causes and conditions that are, consciously or otherwise, created by human action and are amenable to some degree of control (for example alliance commitments, territorial ambitions, threats, ultimatums, mobilisations, train timetables), and deal with the dynamic processes that are generated by those causes and conditions that are difficult, if not impossible, to control (for example arms races). The lead-up to war may include both causes/conditions and dynamic processes. However, once a dynamic conflict reaches a certain point of escalation, it may not matter who threw the first punch. The conflict has become, at that point, a self-stimulating, self-perpetuating system.
This corresponds to the classic work on arms races – including that which led to the first world war – by British physicist and peace studies pioneer Lewis Fry Richardson: beyond some critical point of no return in the escalation of a dynamic conflict system, a stable equilibrium, expressed as a balance of power, can shift to an unstable equilibrium that tips over to either, through positive feedback, a runaway arms race and the outbreak of war or, through negative feedback, a condition of total disarmament, which Richardson likened to “falling in love”.
This seems to be the main lesson of the first world war; that human decision-making, even of an apparently “rational” nature, can unleash processes that take on a life of their own – what the Germans call Eigendynamik – which are neither a function of voluntaristic choice nor easily capable of being managed. Food for thought as the US, EU, Israel and others contemplate further responses to, among others, Egypt, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and China.
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