Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview of debates about the causes of the First World War
- Part II Structure and agency
- Part III The question of preventive war
- 5 Restraints on preventive war before 1914
- 6 The sources of preventive logic in German decision-making in 1914
- 7 International relations theory and the three great puzzles of the First World War
- 8 Was the First World War a preventive war?
- Part IV The role of the other powers
- References
- Index
- References
6 - The sources of preventive logic in German decision-making in 1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview of debates about the causes of the First World War
- Part II Structure and agency
- Part III The question of preventive war
- 5 Restraints on preventive war before 1914
- 6 The sources of preventive logic in German decision-making in 1914
- 7 International relations theory and the three great puzzles of the First World War
- 8 Was the First World War a preventive war?
- Part IV The role of the other powers
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
Preventive war is a familiar concept in the history and theory of international relations. It refers to the use of military force to forestall an adverse shift in relative power with respect to a rising adversary. Political leaders adopt “better-now-than-later” logic and calculate that it is better to try to defeat the adversary (or degrade its capabilities) while the opportunity is still available than to wait and risk the consequences of continued decline. Those consequences include diminishing bargaining leverage, the likelihood of escalating demands by an increasingly powerful adversary, the risk of war under worse circumstances later, and fear of the peace that one would have to accept to avoid a future war. In preventive logic, specific conflicts of issue at stake play a secondary role. The primary issue is power.
Historians and political scientists have described a number of historical cases as “preventive wars,” with the First World War getting more than its share of attention. The German military had been advocating a strategy of preventive war against France since the 1870s and against Russia since 1905, and Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf had been pushing for a preventive attack against Serbia and against other states as well. I focus here on Germany in 1912–1914. Much of the literature addressing the role of preventive war thinking in German decision-making uses the term rather loosely, however, and fails to specify the full range of factors giving rise to the preventive motivation for war or the nature of the causal logic. My aim in this chapter is to identify the sources of preventive thinking in German decision-making leading to war in 1914, and to specify the underlying military, diplomatic, and domestic conditions that increased the influence of preventive logic.
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- The Outbreak of the First World WarStructure, Politics, and Decision-Making, pp. 139 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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