China Can’t Be Contained; It Has to Be Accommodated

At the start of the twentieth century, Britain, the superpower of the time, was faced with a strategic dilemma: what to do about a newly unified and nationalist Germany, which was rising fast economically and building up its military. One school of thought held that Germany could be accommodated within the existing international system; the other argument was that it needed to be confronted and contained. The hawks won out. During the Boer War, London threatened to blockade the German coast if Berlin intervened in favor of the Dutch settlers in South Africa. There followed a big arms race, as Germany, which had already been strengthening its marine capabilities, rushed to catch up with the Royal Navy, and Britain responded by constructing the dreadnoughts, a deadly family of steam-powered battleships. In 1907, Britain joined France and Russia in an alliance—the Triple Entente—against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

We all know how the story ended: a devastating, continent-wide conflict that lasted more than four years, killed over nine million combatants, and facilitated the rise of Communism and Fascism. And one of the worst things about the First World War was that it could quite possibly have been avoided. Although the rise of Wilhelmine Germany represented a dangerous challenge to the balance of power in Europe, neither side wanted a full-scale confrontation. In 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo, the European powers blundered into war because of decisions they had made, and commitments they had taken on, during the years of heightening rivalry.

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