Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Good evening. Welcome to Chatham House. It is – it’s lovely to see all of you on a Monday evening and what a wonderful reason to be here, for so many reasons, of which we are going to hear about. I am tremendously honoured, and I don’t say that lightly, to be introducing and welcoming, not for the first time, but for perhaps one of the most special occasions, two of the most distinguished speakers that have – that come to Chatham House. So, it really is an honour to welcome Professor Margaret MacMillan and Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman to Chatham House. They will be very well-known to all of you, not only for their speaking, but, of course, for their writing. Today’s discussion centres around the 100 year anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference and the many contributions that have been written in the current volume of international affairs, which, of course, is our journal here at Chatham House, of which we’re very proud and I think it’s actually quite unique.
One thing that I would say, before saying just a few words about the speakers, they don’t need introductions, is that 1919, of course, is a tremendously important year, but 1920 and therefore, 2020, is also a tremendously important year, because, of course, it marks the 100 year anniversary of the creation of Chatham House. So, our centenary is coming up and that is something that we hope to hear a lot from you about and that I know that you will hear a lot from us about. So, this is the beginning of something extraordinarily special. and what better way to begin the conversation.
Professor MacMillan is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She was formerly Warden of St Anthony’s College. She is a Public Intellectual Historian, as well as one of the most important Historians of the First World War. Her books are well-known to you, but I’ll just mention one: The War that Ended Peace, written in 2014. Professor Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. Anybody who’s been through King’s College London and studied political science, international history, international relations, if they were not unlucky, has had a class, or at least a lecture, with Lawrie Freedman and benefitted from of it. His most recent book: The Future of War: A History, was published in 2017 and he is, obviously, a very regular presence here at Chatham House. So, I won’t say anymore. I think it’s best to have both of you speak to us. I might come back with a few questions and then we’ll open it up to all of you. Thank you for joining us and thank you for joining us.
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
Well, thank you for such a nice introduction and great pleasure to be here with Professor Freedman. It is quite nice to see the issue finally out. As I needn’t tell most of you, doing these jobs takes a lot of back and forth and we had long discussions about it. There were three of us editing it, but two have fallen by the wayside, at least for this evening. One of our Co-Editors, Patrick Quinton-Brown, has just got off a, something like a ten hour flight from Vancouver and so, I think may get here, but we hope, and I don’t think I see him here. And Anand Menon, who of course, you will have been seeing involved much in the discussions of the current state of British politics and its relationship with the European Union, is, I think, at the moment, at Westminster. His life, he says, has been taken over by this and so, I will speak for the two of them, I hope do them justice.
It’s been a very interesting experience and it’s been wonderful to have such support from Chatham House and from the Editors of the International – of International Affairs. This was a special commemorative issue and I think anniversaries can be overdone, but they can be very important. There can be times when you step back a little bit and think about a longer picture and a bigger picture and think about the context of things that are happening in the present day. And we thought that 2019 was a moment to look at the whole century, since the end of the First World War, and try and see what had changed and what had remained the same. And I think we also had, as part of our purpose, to bridge what has sometimes been a rather unfortunate gap and sometimes a growing gap, between Political Scientists, who specialise in international relations, and International Historians. We don’t talk to each other enough. International Historians tend to think that Political Scientists have too much theory and Political Scientists think we don’t have enough, and I think we need to talk to each other. I think international political rel – international relations, done by Political Scientists, needs to have an awareness of history and Historians need to have an awareness of some of the great theoretical issues and some of the great debates that are taking place and so, we found this issue useful for that, as well as thinking.
And what we tried to ask, and we encouraged our contributors to do, and we tried to do ourselves, was look at what was comparable then and now, but also look at what is different, because, clearly, the world of 2019 is not the same as the world of 1919 and we want to try and get out of our thinking what – where it had changed, but where things had remained the same, and that’s always a difficult thing to do, particularly when you’re in the middle of events. But let me suggest some of the things that we thought, as we commissioned the articles and discussed them with the people who were writing them, we thought were perhaps the same as the period just before and after the First World War, great power rivalry. And this was something that was very much there and, I think, fuelled by nationalism, and I think we’re seeing something similar today. And if you look at the response of China, for example, to any criticism of what it does from other powers, you get a highly nationalistic response, you know, the response that China will not be told what to do by other powers. And if you look at the way in which the United States often responds to criticisms, or controversies, or opposition from other states, you will see something of the same.
We also had, in the period around the First World War, new powers emerging on the scene and the question always is, is how they fit in and whether they become disruptive or whether they become part of some sort of international order. Then it was Japan and the United States, today China and countries such as Brazil and India.
The period 100 years ago was also one of great globalisation. We tend, I think, naturally enough, to think that what we’re doing is new and exciting and has never been done before, but that period was a period comparable today, in terms of globalisation, including communications. In some ways I think you could argue that the development of the telegraph network around the world, that speedy, that network that made it possible to know what was happening on the other side of the world almost instantaneously, is as important as, or was as important, as the development of the internet is today. I mean, I think it’s hard to underestimate just how important the transformation in communications was and, of course, it wasn’t just telegraphs, it was steamships, it was railways, it was the possibility of moving peoples around the world, on a very large scale, and that was a period when there were huge movements of population, just as there’ve been today, huge development of international trade and a huge movement of investment around the world. And, as well, in that period and I think we’re seeing it again today, there was resistance to a lot of the change.
There were those who felt that the change was pulling out the things from their lives that they felt were important. It was destroying things that they valued, and you got a number of populist parties, again, before and after the First World War, that played on those fears, the fears of rapid change, the fears that particular groups were losing their livelihoods. In Vienna, for example, there was a political party, quite often anti-Semitic, headed by Karl Lueger, who was the Mayor of Vienna, which really appealed to the small artisans and shopkeepers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by mass industrialisation and by the appearance of mass department stores. And there was, as now, a tendency to look for particular people to blame for the changes that were taking place and for the loss of livelihood and often for the, just simply for the loss of status, and so, you got particular groups, often immigrant groups, being demonised in the period before the First World War.
It was often Jews coming from Eastern Europe, moving into the big cities of Europe, moving to London, moving to Vienna, moving to Paris, who were blamed for some of the changes that were taking place, that people found so disruptive. And I think there was a lot of questioning in the period, again, around the First World War, about is all this happening too fast? What is happening to our society? Are the things that have kept our societies together, being destroyed, are we facing an enemy? Are we facing social disintegration? And you had political parties appearing, like the ones in Vienna, but elsewhere, socialist parties or parties on the right, which often had, I think, legitimate grievances, often had real concerns they’re expressing, but tended to attack institutions, such as representative Government. They attacked their own elites, they attacked capitalism, highly critical of the international order and I think these are things that we’re seeing today.
But as I say, one of the difficult things is always to work out what has changed and what hasn’t changed and what is really new and what is really something that we have seen before. Among the changes, and I’m not sure my Co-Editors would agree with me entirely, but luckily, they’re not here, among the changes I think we are seeing a world that’s perhaps even more globalised than the one of 100 years ago, a world that is certainly more diverse, just at the level of states. There are far more states playing a part in the international order than used to. There are far more players and there are also, probably, I would argue, more non-state actors.
The role of non-state actors, it seems to me, has become much more important and they’re far more organised NGOs. I mean, NGOs existed, international NGOs existed, of course, around the time of the First World. You think of the Red Cross or you think of the anti-move – the great movement against slavery in the 19th Century, but there are far more NGOs now, far more international organisations, both officials, official and less official. I think there was an international public opinion, again, 100 years ago, but I think you would ar – I would argue there is more international public opinion today and the possibility of mobilising coalitions across borders and around the world is much greater than it was in the past. And we’ve seen new forms of international political organisation emergence – emerging, both regional.
I mean, the European Union is unprecedented, really, I think, in European history, in a voluntary abdication of sovereignty, where people accept a limitation of their sovereignty. This is not something they were forced into in an imperial way, but simply, the limitation of their sovereignty. And among the articles we have is one by Anand Menon and Peter Jones, where they talk about the emergence of the European Union and argue that the tensions within the European Union today reflect a much longer history in Europe of oscillating between power politics as a way of managing relations or having relations managed, on the Continent, depending on the balance of power, for example, and more institutional arrangements. And look at the Congress, look at the Cong – you know, the sorts of things that came out of the Congress of Vienna and again, came out of – and were being built in the 19th Century, the Concert of Europe, for example, and I think, you know, we – they do trace a longer history for the European Union than simply the one of today and the tensions within it.
Another change, and again, this is a controversial one and I’m not sure if I entirely agree, but it’s certainly an interesting argument, is the one that is made in an article by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, where they argue on the lines of the book that they published, that war has effectively been outlawed as a tool of state, that with the Pact of Paris, in 1928 and with the subsequent victory of the allies in the Second World War, war was no longer seen as something that states could legitimately use to protect or enforce or promote their own interests. I’m not sure, as I say, I entirely agree with this argument, because we seem to have an awful lot of wars and it’s partly how you define it, but it seems to me a very interesting argument that we have, perhaps, developed international norms, which were simply not there 100 years ago.
The same could be said on the article we have on imperialism by Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper, who again, have argued that imperialism is something that simply has disappeared from the international order. I mean, there are vestiges of it, it certainly remains there in the vocabulary, and it’s used as a way of attacking institutions or arrangements that particular players may not like, but that imperialism as a type of – as a way of ordering the international order, has disappeared. Again, I think interesting and I think worth challenging, because it seems to me that imperialism takes many forms and it appears in different forms. And, you know, there is talk now of creditor cap – creditor colonialism, where a power will lend a great deal of money to a much smaller power and take, in return, national assets, such as harbours, ports, railway infrastructure, mines. And this seems, certainly when we were reading it and we raised this with them, it seems to us that this, in many ways, resembles an older kind of imperialism. You know, when we look at the way in which China promotes the One Belt, One Road, much of that seems to me a kind of – the sort of thing that the East India companies were doing in the 16th and 17th Centuries and using much the same rhetoric, that, “We’re only doing this to bring shared prosperity and for the benefit of all.”
As a Canadian, I’m rather conscious at the moment of the ways in which the Chinese are perhaps falling into older patterns and you may not have followed, but we arrested the head of a big Chinese company in Canada, at the request of the United States, and the Chinese authorities immediately arrested two Canadians. And when the Canadian Government and the Canadian press complained about this, the Canadian – the Chinese Ambassador to Canada responded in a way which could’ve come straight out of the Middle Kingdom. He told us not to be impertinent. He told us to “behave ourselves.” He told us to “be respectful of the Chinese” and told us that he was “very disappointed” in us. It’s very much like the letter that the Qianlong Emperor sent to George III, at the end of the 18th Century, and we felt properly rebuked.
And one of the other things that the – we have a number of articles it looked at was, of course, the big question of what is the United States up to internationally? We come up with no clear answers and that’s possibly because the United States itself isn’t entirely sure in which direction it’s going, but I think we did – a number of our contributors did talk about US isolationism, are we seeing a resurgence of US isolationism, and if so, is it repeating the older forms of isolationism, or is it a newer form? And I think Joe Nye, for example, in his article, argues that there is something new about it, in that the old isolationism was really about turning America’s back on the world and trying to have as little involvement as possible, but continuing to maintain American values and American institutions and the new form of isolationism, particularly, I think, that expressed in certain parts of the Republican Party and on Fox News, is more than that. It involves attacks on democracy itself and on a liberal international order, so that it is, perhaps, a more aggressive kind of an isolationism and more, I’m trying to think, distractive kind of isolationism than you might’ve seen in the past.
Joseph Nye and [Yuen Fung Kong – 16:24], another contributor, also talk about the role of soft power and prestige international relations, and [Yuen Fung Kong – 16:34], who’s in Singapore, used to be at Oxford, looks at the ways in which the notion of prestige can be used as a tool in international relations and why certain powers would like to claim it and he looks, in particular, of course, at China. And China comes up quite a lot. What is China’s role going to be in the world? How has it changed? In what ways is it likely to behave? And this, I think, is something, of course, that we’re all worrying about.
Rosemary Foot, in her article, looks at how China uses and interprets its own history as a way of dealing with the world and sometimes, as a tool or a weapon for dealing with the world. She looks at the way in which the century of humiliation, which started with the First Opium War in 1839 and ended, according to the Chinese, in 1949 with the triumph of communism, is used by the Chinese Government as an instrument and is used rhetorically, when there is criticism of particular Chinese policy. And she looks, again in particular, at the way China was treated in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, when the Chinese, who were an ally and who had been given to understand that their contributions to the Allied victory in the First World War, which were significant, would get China what it wanted at the Peace Conference, which was the turn of Germ – return of German concessions in China. And instead, the powers in Paris decided that China was, basically, not going to amount to anything in the next century and Japan was and so they gave Japan, which was also an ally, the German concessions in China and that helped to spark a huge popular protest movement in China, which really led directly to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. A number of those protesting in Beijing, when the news came back from Paris about what was happening to China’s demands, went on to found the Chinese Communist Party. So, a very, very important moment in Chinese history, and Rosemary Foot looks at the way in which this story of humiliation is still used by the Chinese Government today and is still something that is taught very much in Chinese schools.
We looked quite a bit at the ways in which history can be used in international relations. It’s clearly used as a source of lessons. As an Historian, I tend to be very sceptical of this, but people will do it and states people will do it and my own article, which I wrote with Patrick Quinton-Brown, was about the way in which history was used very much in Paris and has been used since, as a basis for retribution, for claims, for justifying a particular course of action. We looked less at the lessons that the peacemakers drew on, although they did draw on lessons from the past, but we looked more at the way in which history became increasingly important as a basis for claims. Because there was so much territory suddenly up for grabs at the end of the First World War, as the result of the huge political changes in Europe and elsewhere, and colonies up for grabs and a sense that you couldn’t just go out and take territory because you wanted it. There had to be some recognition given to the people who lived in that territory and there had to be some basis for the claims and since other bases of claims had more or less fallen away, dynastic marriages no longer seemed to anyone a good basis for handing over one bit of land to another, as had happened so often in the past, and conquest no longer seemed a good basis for taking land. It was beginning to fall out of favour.
And so, history became increasingly important, history and ethnicity and the two were so closely intertwined that I think it’s very difficult to separate them. But a number of petitioners in Paris, from states, would-be states that were emerging on the map of Europe, or from older states like Poland, put in their claims on the basis of history. And so, history was dragged in as a justification for making claims and you could probably imagine that when people went back through their history, they didn’t choose the smallest possible amount of land that they could’ve had. And if you were Greece, you tended to go back to the Classical Period and you – if you were Italy, you went back to the Roman period and so, you went to your biggest possible borders, rather than the smallest. But it was something that was used, and we traced it through how history continued to be used, for example, after the Second World War, as the basis for colonial independence and as the basis for sovereignty and as the basis for certain borders and then it became something that was simply a part of the international vocabulary.
A number of our contributors also issued warnings. Lawrence Freedman issued many warnings, and I’m going to let him talk about them. He talks about, in his article, and he’ll say more about it himself, the future of war and raises, I think, a very interesting question about whether total war has really meant that we’ll have no more major wars and his answers, I should warn you, are not always very reassuring. Barry Eichengreen wrote on the failure after 1919 to build and maintain an international trading order and a stable banking system, and what that meant for the 1920s and 30s and again, drew lessons with the period after 1945 and today. And I think this – I like to think these articles, taken together, really help to show the value of looking at the history and helping us think through particular current problems.
And perhaps I’ll end on one of our more positive articles. I think I’ve mentioned them all, but perhaps we need a positive message to end on. Glenda Sluga, from the University of Sydney, wrote about the growth of international ideas and norms after 1919 and she accepts, and I think we’d all have to accept, that they didn’t always come to fruition in the way they were expected to. The League of Nations was an idea, which didn’t do all that had been expected of it, but it was an important idea, it helped to embed certain concepts in our international discussions. The idea, for example, that man – that former colonial territories should not be handed out as spoils of wars, but should be made mandates under the League of Nations. And you can argue that it was a completely cynical act, that the great powers: Britain and France, simply took what they had wanted, but they had to do so under the League of Nations. They had to, at least on paper, take into account the wellbeing of the peoples who lived in those territories and they had to file reports every year to the League of Nations. And so, she would argue that certain things began to be expected of international relations, which became part of our vocabulary and became part of our discussions and that this was a positive step forward.
And so, I think, on the whole, if you read the issue, you won’t find it full of optimism, but I think you will find a sense that we have moved, in some ways, a long way and in some ways, into a better world, that there are very important things that have changed and that we need to now, as we look ahead, remember what those things are and continue to ask ourselves how we maintain the things, which we have a value from the past, at a time when there is considerable turbulence and considerable number of question marks over where the world is going. And so, I will now turn to Professor Freedman, who will cheer us all up by talking about the future of war.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Lawrence?
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
Thank you, yeah [applause]. So, I want to talk a bit about the issues I discussed in my article, which is entitled The Rise and Fall of Great Power War. But I first wanted to, sort of, pick up the issues of international relations in history, because the – this period, with which we start, in the aftermath of the First World War, was really the start of the study of international relations as a discipline. It – the idea for Chatham House was discussed at Versailles, as were the idea for the Council on Foreign Relations. The first Chair of International Relations at Aberystwyth was a direct response and it was based on the idea that if only we understood all of these things better, then this sort of thing shouldn’t happen again. And of course, when you hear that you think – I’m always reminded of Peter Cook’s observation when asked for the inspiration of the satire boom of the early 60s, he pointed to the clubs in Berlin during Weimar and added, “Which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler.”
So, we can start with a degree of humility about our own profession. Interestingly, students of international relations can’t get enough of the origins of the First World War. They return to it time and time again, partly because it just isn’t settled enough yet.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah.
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
So, there’s endless possibility for experimentation with new theory. They spend very little time on the aftermath. There aren’t great international – I mean, there are works, but – other works of international history, but not of IR theory. IR theory is dominated by the origins of the First World War, Munich, the Cuban Missile Crisis and now, post-9/11 and there’s a, sort of, poverty of case study because unless you – all of these things, there’s lots of information now, so you can go back to them. But what you don’t have, and I think what this volume of – this addition of international affairs is good at, is a sense of the stream of history, of context, how one things leads to another, how you can’t understand these issues, without knowing what went before. And that the – which are issues of causation, but the complexity of causation, because there’s never one simple thing that leads you to where you are, and Historians, of course, always like to point out the factors of chance and personality and so on, that make a difference, but it isn’t just that. I think unless – for the reasons that Margaret has just given in looking at the arguments that took place abou – around self-determination at the time of Versailles and afterwards, history is very important in shaping people’s sense of what is right and proper and also, the question of norms.
The – and Margaret also mentioned and makes this point strongly, in her concluding essay with Patrick, there’s a particular feature of the end of the First World War, which when one goes back to try to understand the rise of Hitler, obviously, Versailles is often blamed for this in reparations and the determination to put blame on Germany. It’s – I didn’t – it’s one factor, obviously not the only. Another factor is the fact that Germany wasn’t conquered. The – there was no real sense of defeat in – which gave rise to the stab in the back theories and it – one of the features of the First World War, and in reference to one of the points I try to make in my essay, is that it didn’t make as much difference as you might think it should’ve done, to thinking about how to conduct war.
The pre-war – pre-First World War thinking about warfare had been dominated by the idea of a decisive battle. I think very shaped by the German victory in 1870, somewhat forgetful about what happened after the German victory, in terms of the French Resistance, but very concentrated on von Moltke’s achievement in getting a decisive battle and a decisive battle should lead to a decisive victory. You’ve had political consequences and that’s clearly what the German General staff was banking on, at the start of the First World War. It’s equally clearly what they didn’t get. But the War ended, you could argue, with a decisive battle, it just wasn’t a German victory, it was an Allied victory. German – the German forces surrendered, ‘cause they’d lost, because the Allied offensive was too much for them, after their own offensive had failed. So, the idea that war – that great issues could be decided on the field of battle was not killed off by the First World War, it carried on.
Now, of course, what also came with this, but I don’t think it was fully appreciated quite at the time of Versailles, though the papers were being written and the books were being written at the time, was the influence of air power, because that had made brief appearances, but significant appearances, during the First World War, and most important appearances had been in tactical uses. And to me, it remained an interesting question of the tactical role in scouting an occasional supp – combat support, had dominated air power thinking at the time. We might have been avoided quite a lot of distress later. But the idea that enemy morale was a quick route to victory became the founding belief of air power. Interestingly, not as strong in Germany, but they were the first ones to try it in the Second World War, as it was in Britain and the United States, not to mention Italy, which was the first country to have actually used air power to try to defeat and opponent.
So, you have, as a result of the First World War, a lingering belief in the idea that you can win these things by military means, combined with an un – a growing belief that winning now may involve civilian targets as much as military targets. Interestingly, when the Second World War came along, it actually, in many respects, once it had got going, obviously it took a while to get going, but once it did, it was, sort of, the way that the Gen – German General staff wished it to have gone in 1914: quick victories in the spring of 1940 that took out key members of the opposing alliance. With the same problem that probably would’ve emerged had they had the same experience in 1914, though one can’t be sure, which is other allies were still there and hadn’t yet given up, which is all – one of the problems with getting a decisive victory. That was the point at which the Germans turned to air power and reinforced the idea that this could be the way to break morale, though they failed to do it. Nonetheless, the British and Americans still took up the idea, partly ‘cause there wasn’t much else they could do in – until Operation Torch and then D-Day. So, I was a way of doing something to show that the enemy was being attacked. But it was still – wasn’t by itself bringing victory.
So, there’s an interesting speculation to be had about what might’ve happened, had the nuclear – the atomic bomb not been developed right at the end of the war. If you look at some of the initial commentary on the atomic bomb, it becomes clear that whatever the lessons people thought had been learnt from the Second World War, they were pushed to one side by the atomic bomb, not actually in terms of the practice of what peo – there were very few nuclear weapons around until the end of the 40s. Didn’t so much affect immediate plans, nobody expected the war, but the sense that grew, especially with the hydrogen bomb and thermonuclear weapons in the early 50s, that the next war really would be devastating, really would be too much, seemed to me to be what, in the end, killed off the idea of a decisive battle. The more it became impossible to see how you would survive a nuclear war, the condition of mutual assured destruction, which follow – I mean, that was recognised, following the attempts to work out how you could have a decisive victory in nuclear war, and they were never credible and still aren’t, I don’t think, that credible. That seems to me as important as anything else, and one reason why I’m cautious about the idea of Hathaway and Shapiro, that it’s norms that did it. I think it – common prudence did it, may – or maybe a combination of the two. War just became too dangerous for the great powers and if you couldn’t conquer anyway and there wasn’t any – I mean, because of decolonisation, which again, seems me to me as important, again, as norms, there wasn’t much you could conquer and conquering had gone out of fashion, was unprofitable. Where’s the gain?
So, that’s why I think you end up without major war and we still, amazingly, after so long after the Second World War, have not had another major war, though we talk about it a lot. What, of course, Versailles, also remind and the aftermath of Versailles, is the potential for conflict arising out of these claims of self-determination and the contest, the contests over territory that were evident, that had been – we’ve been reminded about was it four million who were killed in the period after the end of the First World War, in the various conflicts that went on? Horrific numbers and this was a comparison with the period after the end of the Cold War. It certainly wasn’t that that created the conditions, I don’t think it created the conditions, for yet another ma – for another major war, because of the way the end of the Cold War was handled, but certainly, the breakup of states created conditions for a lot more violence. So, war is kept going by that means, rather, we hope, by the urge of major powers to fight it out for global domination. Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you [applause]. So, you’ve both done a tremendous job of putting so much on the table for discussion. I’m going to just make one quick point and then open it up, because, really, there’s an array of arguments. I almost wish that Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro were here, so that we could disagree with them in the room, because I think so many – they put such an interesting argument out there, but I find it almost impossible to take it very seriously and yet, it’s a very serious argument.
Nonetheless, I want to come back to something that both of you said, which – and I guess you didn’t say it specifically, but you got at, you know, we haven’t had another major war and I was struck when you were talking about some of the similarities, that one of the things that, you know, we now go back to, not only in 1919, but the whole interwar period for us, thinking about the lessons, but also, all the new things that happen because there had been a major war, the new ideas, the new laws, the new institutions, even the ones that failed, and a lot of that’s discussed in the volume. And so, it seems like that the difficulty in talking about today, in light of 1919 and the interwar period is that – it’s that, you know, this is the international relations thing, right? It’s that fact of major systemic war, which makes the bubbling of all these new possibilities likely to happen and it’s, you know, we are, kind of, stuck with these incremental adjustments and actually, despite all the similarities that you’ve set out: sovereignty, geopolitics, populism, or liberalism, or a, sort of, backlash, it’s harder to grab at the positive things. I mean, one might say, you know, democracy’s been recharged as a result of some of the populous politics. If you look at the ACLU or different, sort of – you know, Soros’s injection of money into democracy across Europe, but nonetheless, it doesn’t look like we have that cons – that positive wellspring of things that one saw, even the failed ones, and the very successful ones, like Chatham House. But it doesn’t seem like that’s really there and I guess Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro in some ways, you know, it’s, sort of, an interesting argument to bounce off.
But rather than having you to respond to that right now, I’ll have you come back to that, maybe. I think, since we only have about 20 minutes and we have a lot of very well educated people in the audience. If you say your name and your affiliation and the gentleman, we’ll start with the gentleman here.
Nick Westcott
Thank you. Nick Westcott at SOAS. Now, that was fascinating. I wonder if you would agree that one thing that has stayed the same is human nature and unless constrained by rules, it will get out of hand, and that is a risk? And one thing that has changed is the role of ideology, which around 100 years ago, was primarily nationalist, which meant wars were between nations. Now there is a different ideological driver, which means most wars are within nations or on an ideological basis, as you see in the Islamic State and even political conflicts, you know, like Brexit is an ideological movement, it’s anti-materialist, whatever. But so, there is a significant change and that means the nature of war has changed. Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And then one more just over here on the front.
Spencer Shia
Spencer Shia, currently an undergraduate at University College London. So, China right now is a country that is, actually, acquiring their own sphere of influence. They also are perceived as a growing threat, an oversized threat, by the current hegemon, the US. A 100 years ago, a little bit more than 100 years ago, Germany wanted its own place in the sun. It was – it had a sense of nationalism and was perceived by the hegemon, the UK back then, as, you know, a growing threat. So, in this case, could we make the comparison and if so, what lessons can we learn to, let’s say, prevent a second, you know, First World War style situation?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right.
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
Now, let me…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Margaret?
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
…start with that second question first, if I may. I think, yeah, there is this theory, the Thuc – I never can pronounce it, Thucydides Trap. I just got it out, but – and there’s this whole project at Harvard University, which argues that it is more than likely, almost not foreordained, but pretty close, that a rising power will fight a hegemonic one and they use history. I disagree a lot with it, because I think that the case studies are all open to interpretation. I mean, I looked particularly at the case study of the First World War and – because I knew that one best and it can be simplified, but I think dangerously so, and I think we can think of examples where powers that were potentially in states where they might’ve come to conflict, didn’t.
I’ve just been reading a book on the Congress of Vienna and there was very serious talk towards the end of 19 – 1814, rather, so I get my centuries mixed up, 1814 that they might resume fighting, that possibly Austria might go to war with Russia, and they didn’t, and I think it was simply recognised that this would not benefit either of them and did Britain and Germany go to war because of rising German power? You know, I think it’s really debateable. I think there were a lot on both sides who said it was a natural alliance, not just because of the royal families. In fact, the family thing was the least important. But because they – you know, the – one was the, well, Europe’s greatest land power, the other was Europe’s greatest and the world’s greatest naval power, that they had a lot in common. They were not predominant – well, in the case of Britain, predominantly Protestant, but certainly the dominant power within Germany was predominantly Protestant. They shared values – four members of the British Cabinet in 1914, when Britain issued the ultimatum to Germany, had been educated in German universities, you know. So, there was – there were these personal links, I think, which were very, very important, but also, links of trade, links of shared values and links of shared strategic interests. And so, it is quite possible, and there were people certainly talking about it right up, almost, to the day that war was going to break out, about how Britain and Germany might sink their differences and actually come together.
And there’s a very interesting case, which I think people don’t pay enough attention to, of the United States and Britain, because United States was also a rising power before 1914 and there was seriously talk about war over the Venezuela border issue. You know, it may have been loose talk, but loose talk can lead to war and both Britain and the United States pulled back from the brink and came to a deal, and I think it is quite possible for great powers, you know, and I also find tricky. I mean, if you look – and I’ve been reading the Peloponnesian War again, you know, it’s very difficult to actually say which is the rising power and which is the declining power. They were powers in different ways. You know, power is not something you can measure like measuring baking ingredients for making a cake. You know, what is it, what’s it consist of? So – anyway, I’m sorry, I’ve gone a bit long, but I’ll let Lawrie say more about the drivers of war and human nature.
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
Well, I’ll stick my knife into Graham Allison a bit as well. So, there’s very – there’s a lot of reasons to worry, and Margaret gave some of them, about the implications of a rise in China and China’s policy. The Thucydides Trap is not one of them. It’s a misreading of Thucydides, a serious misreading of Thucydides, the case studies don’t help. They’re not of nuclear powers, so they don’t address that aspect of the issue, and why China and the United States, why not China and India, why not China and Japan? And as you mentioned the US and the UK, [Cori Sharker – 43:56] has written an excellent book on why it didn’t happen with those two countries and she traces it and partly, this will – leads into the other question, due to common values and the more alike they became, the less likely it was that they were going to war.
Now, that has been turned into some sort of great international relations theory, like all great international relations theory, becomes undermined almost at the moment it’s propounded, that democracies don’t go to war with each other. Then turns out – but, well, it depends if the democracy’s in transition or not. But the ideological element, the values element, does seem to me important and I think what it is, is a tension between the universalistic values, liberalism, if you like, but socialism, in its own way too, and nationalism, which however you try to present it, is obviously going to be somewhat narrower, and there’s a – that’s a continuing tension. I don’t think it’s gone away, because, you know, a lot of – and that – it keeps on coming back and coming back at the moment in an even stronger form. It is one of the most powerful ideologies going and therefore, poses the challenge of how you respect that and understand that without succumbing to it all the time.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We did have John Mearsheimer here today, talking about nationalism, so we’re well-schooled.
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
Yeah.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
A gentleman here in the front and if you wait for the mic, and then right at the very back?
John Preston
My name is John Preston. Oh, sorry, the microphone. My name is John Preston, European Section, Chatham House. A phrase we’re hearing a lot of now, but I think was used a lot back in 1919, was that of national sovereignty, to such an extent that Japan and Germany and others left the League of Nations, and I don’t know quite what they did about the Paris Conference, because they said it stopped their national sovereignty, but then they went on to do something pretty horrendous. We’ve now got, you’ve mentioned China, but we’ve got the democratic, highly regarded, United Kingdom suddenly getting very sensitive about its national sovereignty. Is there something naughty going to happen after the 29th of March?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Don’t answer that yet.
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
No, well…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right at the very back?
David Schofield
Ah, David Schofield, Murray Court Consulting. It’s a truism, I guess, that history can give warnings to the present and I was just wondering, what warning you might draw from the events of 100 years ago, if you were able to give a warning to, for example, the leadership of the United States, to name one country, if you could find anyone to listen? What warnings, seriously, would you offer to the American administration from the events of 100 years ago? And I don’t speak specifically about what Woodrow Wilson did or didn’t do. I was thinking of more general messages, if you could find someone to listen, that you might give to the current US administration.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And then a third one right here in the front, and everybody will listen, because we are on the record and I believe we are livestreaming. It’s livestreamed, so we have plenty of American listeners.
Ivan Sedgwick
Thanks, Ivan Sedgwick, Member of Chatham House, sometime Historian, but not in a very distinguished way. Arguably, 1919 ended the legitimacy of the dynastic state of the empire, you’ve, sort of, referred to that, and the only real legitimacy after that, and it took a while to unravel, was the ethnic nation state, and that process is still going on. The glass shattered and it just kept shattering and arguably, now sometimes with a religious guise, that continues shattering. Have we reached the end of that process, or is it just going to continue, are we going – just going to see more and more claims of smaller and smaller groups to that? Obviously, the EU’s been an attempt to stop it and we know how that’s going here.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you. Lawrie?
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
Okay. Gosh, so, I think just taking the last question, multi – I mean, part of the story of the 19th Century is that bits of state coming together to form greater states and then, part of the story of the last century was the pressure on multinational states, which hasn’t – I mean, it’s still there, because there are still multinational states, including ours, around. And we’ve seen, in this country, that these points don’t go away and there is a good argument that multinational states weren’t that bad at all, as ways of managing relations between different groups and minorities and often, particular minorities got quite frightened, with good reason, when somebody much closer to home was going to be in charge of them. But nonetheless, it was in a – it was always a – once you’ve got that idea of self-determination in your head, it doesn’t go away very easily and, of course, you know, it led – leads also to decolonisation, which I think is the bit of 20th Century history about which we tend to be most forgetful, though in some ways, is most important. So, it doesn’t – so, there is a problem, which is still continuing and even China, it’s an issue for China. For India, it’s an issue for – the big states that we have, it’s still an issue. In the United States it works out in different ways, so – but, obviously, they’ve been through that before and that is relevant to the question of sovereignty. I think it’s also a question of democracy.
I mean, I think it’s a question of who is – to whom are you – who is accountable to you? And that is an issue with Brexit that has to be addressed. I think if you have a sense that the people doing things to you, or for you, or about you, are not accountable to you, it is undermining and however much one might try to demonstrate the democratic character of the European Union, it doesn’t quite work. So, while there’s a lot of mythology around sovereignty, in particular the idea that being independence means you can impose your will with others, on others, which turns out not to be the case, as we may soon find, nonetheless, I think that there’s an aspect of it which isn’t just about nationalism, but is also about accountability.
Two points, I think, just to conclude. First, in trying to work out – I mean, like Margaret, I’m very wary of the lessons of history, despite having spent seven years of my life trying to find lessons out of our last war. Because, as Mark Twain didn’t actually say, but it’s a good phrase, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes,” and I think you asked to be very careful, so I’m always nervous about the lessons of history. I think one point that we tend to forget, we’re trying to give all the reasons why the Third Reich appeared, and I think it’s very hard to understand it without the Great Depression. And that therefore, if we’re looking at our own recent history, the financial crisis of 2007/8, I think is easily passed over by people in our fields, who are often, with the exc – notable exception at the moment of Adam Tooze, not – often not very good at taking account of the economic dimensions and the effect that has. So, I think, you know, one of the reasons why we’re still feeling a bit miserable and anxious at the moment is because the elite, the establishment, haven’t had a very good time, their record isn’t great at the moment and that’s important and that partly explains why Trump is there.
Perish the thought that I should ever be asked to give advice to President Trump, and whether I could find the right language to convince him of anything, I don’t know. Yes, but just end on one note, I think Trump’s instinct in international affairs, though I think as far as alliances and tariffs go, are really quite dangerous, are actually following a tendency in the American opinion and do reflect a reluctance, I think, to get involved in overseas wars. That doesn’t mean to say he won’t get involved in them, because of the way it – pride and saving face, and so on, may matter to him. But I think it’s – you can see this in a lot of the left wing commentary on Trump at the moment, as they think he’s terrible and vile and evil and corrupt and so on, but he does have a point when it comes to Syria and Afghanistan. And I think it’s just important to keep in mind that even someone like Trump is a product of his time and is reflecting tendencies and therefore, the hope that you find in Europe that when he’s gone it’ll all go away, it seems to me maybe a little bit optimistic, and I know I’m supposed to be optimistic, but I’m not very good at it.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay. Margaret?
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
Well, I think your point, I mean, we’re talking about two things here: the, sort of, basis – what makes the basis of a state? And there was an idea, certainly very powerful idea, in the course of the 19th Century, that there was something called the Nation, which was separate from the state, but founded what became – was the underpinning for it. And a lot of very bad history was written to show that there had always been something called the German Nation, which was the only people capable of defeating the Romans, for example, you know, the whole – one passage, tiny passage from Tacitus, was taken to suggest this, and lots of bad history is written to show there’d always been an English, or a British, or a Welsh Nation. I mean, it’s very possible to go back through history and pick out the things that make your case. But there was always a countervailing argument that the basis of a state was not ethnicity or not race, and the two were often used interchangeably, then. And, in fact, this was a very dangerous idea that the basis of the state was the acquiescence, wiling acquiescence, of the people who lived in it and a certain acceptance of some shared values, but not all, and I think we still see that tension today. I mean, there is the argument that, you know, only Hungarians can be part of the Hungarian state and it’s being defined very narrowly at the moment by Viktor Orbán and Co to mean only Christian Hungarians and I think we can all see where this has led in the past and is likely to lead again.
But I think there is another basis for a state and it’s the one that France has often had, and I think my own country, Canada, has, that if you come to this country, you accept the democratic procedures, you accept the Constitution, you accept the rule of law. You can eat whatever you want, you can speak whatever language you want, although you are expected to know one of – you know, the official language. But you can continue to have your own ethnicity, but you will be part of a greater whole, but you don’t have to choose, and I think that is a much healthier basis for a state.
And I think national sovereignty is one of these ideas which also has tensions in it and I think it had a certain origin in the 17th Century, where it was agreed, finally, in the agreements that made up the Peace of Westphalia, that states would not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and that was because of what had been happening. And I think we then began to breach that, certainly we always did breach it, but in the 19th Century, with humanitarian crusades, with the attempts to stop the Ottomans, for example, from oppressing their Christians, we recognise that national sovereignty was not absolute and invaluable, and I think we have this question here today. I mean, where does national sovereignty begin and end and where do other values come in and where do we have other things we ought to be doing? The way that the discussion, certainly it seems to me, has been – it’s – national sovereignty has been used, in the whole debate over the fate of Britain and Europe is, it’s posited as something that is good, but nobody quite knows what it is. You know, it’s something people want, it’s a nice shiny object, but when I talk to people who are for a hard leave and they say, “Well, we’ll get back our national sovereignty,” and I say, “What exactly do you mean?” Because even North Korea doesn’t have complete sovereignty. It has to deal with international agreements, and it has to worry about its big neighbours and so on, you know. So, it seems to me that it’s become a sort of shorthand for what people think they want and I’m not sure they really know what they want.
Advice to President Trump? I mean, I think as an Historian, what I would say is that it is important to maintain your alliances and alliances are not just pragmatic things that you happen to be going down the same path for two inches. Alliances depend on a lot of contact. They depend, actually, on a lot of history. They depend on personal relationships, but they depend on a certain amount of trust and they are difficult to build and easier to destroy and rebuilding them is not going to be easy. I think also, what we’re seeing, and this always happens, is we’re seeing, with the passage of time, what people are remembering differs. I mean, one of the reasons we built up very strong international, like, we in the West, built up very strong international institutions after the Second World War, economic and political institutions, was because the people who were building those institutions remembered what had happened in the 20s and 30s and why they needed them. And a very strong motive behind the European initially coal and steel community and then the Economic Union and finally, the European Union, was people remembered what had happened when Europe had been divided up by – into competitive states.
Those generations, generations pass, and generations go, and people tend to forget why it was we wanted particular institutions and so, what we’re remembering now is more recent and I think what we’re remembering, partic – in the United States what they’re remembering is, unsuccessful military adventures. They’re remembering Afghanistan. They’re remembering Iraq. They’re forgetting perhaps earlier times when they exerted their power with rather more success and so, they’re remembering, as people do, they’re remembering the more recent history. And I think we’re getting now – of course, I think you’re absolutely right that what happened in 2008 was far more important politically and socially than we – we are just beginning to realise what that meant. And the loss of faith that peoples around the world had in their own institutions and their own elites and their own leaders, I think is profound and I think we’re seeing a cynicism now and a willingness of people to – you know, I think – I may be wrong, but it struck me as one of the reasons people voted in the Referendum for leave, was they were just fed up with London. I mean, it wasn’t Brussels so much, it was London and it was Westminster and they just wanted to show they were cross, and I do think that was an important part of it, and I think you see it and I think there’s a corrosive cynicism, which sometimes reminds me too much, as an Historian, of what it was like in Weimar, Germany. And, you know, the – if you don’t trust your own institutions, then you will be at the mercy of those who are prepared to use that mistrust for their own ends.
And so, I think, you know, we are living through a period in which a number of things have happened to make people less confident in their own institutions and in their own futures, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not capable of renewal. I mean, this has happened before and it seems to be one of the good signs is that we are now debating these issues and we’re talking about them. And there is real concern, not just at an elite level, not just in fora such as this, but I think a real concern about where are we going, where should we be going, and how do we make our democracies more representative and more responsive? So, and just modified optimism, so…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
We are right at the end of time. I know we had one gentleman who really wanted to ask a final question, so maybe it – I’ll take two more questions and then really – and then we’ll let everybody go, because it’s been tremendous. But the gentleman right here in the second row, right at the front, and then the gentleman right there, and keep your – if you keep your questions contained, that would be really great. Right here.
Gordon Wilson
And thank you, Madam Chair. Gordon Wilson, Fellow at RUSI and a Member here. Could you discuss the importance, or otherwise, of the Washington Treaty and which really was seen to control the super weapons of the day, because of the battleship race leading up to First World War? But it didn’t last very long before it began to fall apart. The post-war treaties have gone along, but now are we beginning to see, the INF Treaty, for example, are we – those treaties, falling apart? Is there a parallel to be drawn, or not?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right, thank you. I think we’ll just stop with that, unfortunately, ‘cause we’re right at time, so who would like to go?
Sir Lawrence Freedman KCMG
Well, the Washington Treaty, the Naval Treaty, is really interesting, because it had this ratio of appropriate numbers of capital ships for levels of power and it caused more trouble than it was worth, because it didn’t take account of submarines and aircraft carriers and the Japanese felt slighted. So, it didn’t really help very much. It’s why, you know, the famous pocket battle – well, you know, Gordon, better than anybody, the famous pocket battleships appeared. But it’s a good example of why disarmament and arms control often have perverse effects. I don’t think that’s actually the case with the INF Treaty. I think it was problematic for different reasons. But you can look at other examples of arms control, say the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which barely – I mean, which was dead almost as soon as it was signed because of the breakup of the Soviet Union, and it – I think it just – the lesson is just to be very careful thinking through the political implications of arms control efforts.
One of the thin – I mean, the point about the Washington Treaty is just there’s a direct relationship between the ratio of armaments and your standing as a great power. And you see that in the strategy arms agreements, and it bears no relationship to the actual operational issues behind the weaponry and so, it actually distorts programming and procurement as a result. It’s not to say there aren’t good arms control agreements, there are, but that certainly wasn’t one of them.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
No.
Professor Margaret MacMillan CH CC
No, I’ve often – so, if I can just to add to that. I mean, with nuclear weapons there is a, sort of, mystique about them, that possessing the bomb means that you count in a way that you wouldn’t count otherwise, and North Korea is a very good example. But I think so is India and Pak – so are Indian and Pakistan, that, you know, they – India and Pakistan are perfectly capable, and they have done so, fighting each other with all sorts of armed forces, but somehow, it’s something about your ranking. It’s what [Yuen Fung Kong – 63:54] is talking about in his article, this idea of prestige and it’s not something you can measure, but if you have it, others are more likely to listen to you and I think it really is something that is very difficult to control.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
There’s a lot there. It’s been tremendous to have both of you with us tonight, as you can see from the audience and their questions and just the fact that we’re all here. Thank you very much and please join us in thanking our speakers [applause].
