Bismarck understood that a potentially dominant power at the center of Europe faced the constant risk of inducing a coalition of all others, much like the coalition against Louis XIV in the eighteenth century and Napoleon in the early nineteenth. Only the most restrained conduct could avoid incurring the collective antagonism of its neighbors. All of Bismarck’s efforts thereafter would be devoted to an elaborate series of maneuvers to forestall this “cauchemar des coalitions” (nightmare of coalitions), as he called it, using the French phrase. In a world of five, Bismarck counseled, it was
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