2018-02-14
424
World War I destroyed both life and property and changed the face of Europe. In its wake three empires – the Austro-Hungerian, Russian and Ottoman (Turkish)—crumbled, and in their place the independent states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia emerged. In addition, the countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were born. The war also contributed to the overthrow of the Russian czar in 1917 by the Bolsheviks. The emergence of communism under the leadership of Vladimir I. Lenin produced a change in government and ideology that would have far-reaching consequences.
Despite its costs, the coalition consisting of Britain, France, Russia, and (later) the United States and Italy succeeded in defeating the threat of domination posed by the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and their allies). Moreover, the war set the stage for a determined effort to build a new international system that could prevent another war.
For most Europeans, the Great War had been a source of disillusionment. When it was all over, few remained to be convinced that such a war must never happen again. Among vast populations there was a strong conviction that this time the parties had to plan a peace that could not just terminate a war, but a peace that could change attitudes and build a new type of international order.
For the first time in history, broad publics and the peacemakers shared a conviction that war was a central problem in international relations. Previously, hegemony, the aggressive activities of a particular state, or revolution had been the problem. In 1648, 1713, and 1815, the peacemakers had tried to resolve issues of the past and to construct orders that would preclude their reappearance. But in 1919 expectations ran higher. The sources of war were less important than the war itself. There was a necessity to look more to the future than to the past. The problem was not just to build a peace, but to construct a peaceful international order that would successfully manage all international conflicts of the future.
World War I evoked revulsion for war and for the doctrine of realism that rationalized great-power rivalry, arms races, secret alliances, and balance-of-power politics. The experience led the policymakers gathered at the Versailles Palace in Paris to reevaluate assumptions about the rules of statecraft and to search for other principles on which to build a new world order. These deliberations led to policies rooted in liberal international relations theory.
The two decades following World War I were the high point of liberal idealism, as reflected in Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points," creation of the League of Nations, the Washington Naval Conference, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Nevertheless, the liberal idealists' proposals failed to deter the resumption of great-power rivalry. Another system-transforming global war was on the horizon.
The Second World war
Although it lost World War I, Germany did not lose its hopes for global status and influence. On the contrary, they were intensified. Thus conditions were ripe for the second great-power war of the twentieth century, as Germany again pursued an aggressive course.
Global in scope, World War II was a struggle for power. It pitted a fascist coalition striving for world supremacy—the Axis trio of Germany, Japan, and Italy—against an unlikely "grand alliance" of four great powers that united despite their incompatible ideologies – communism in the case of the Soviet Union and democratic capitalism in the case of Britain, France and the United States of America. The world’s fate hinged on the outcome of this massive effort to meet the Axis threat of world conquest and restore the balance of power. Success was achieved over a 6-year ordeal, but at a terrible cost: each day 23,000 lives were lost, as the war resulted in the death of 53 mln people worldwide.
