The Cause of War by Michael Howard
The Cause of War by Michael Howard
The Cause of War by Michael Howard
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wilson Quarterly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Wilson Quarterly (1976-)
by Michael Howard
:::
Michael Howard, 62, a Wilson Center Fellow, holds the Regius Chair of
Modern History at Oxford University. He was born in London, England.
Before receiving his B.A. from Oxford (1946), Howard served in the Cold-
stream Guards in Italy during World War II, was twice wounded, and was
awarded the Military Cross. He received his Litt. D. from Oxford in 1976.
Among his many works, he has written War in European History (1976)
and War and the Liberal Conscience (1978), and he has translated, with
Peter Paret of Stanford, Karl von Clausewitz's classic study On War
(1976). This essay is reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press
from The Causes of Wars and Other Essays (2nd ed.), © 1 983 by Michael
Howard. Enlarged edition available in the summer of 1984.
:::
Ever since the 18th century, war had been blamed by intellec-
tuals upon the stupidity or the self-interest of governing elites (as it
is now blamed upon ''military-industrial complexes"), with the
implicit or explicit assumption that if the control of state
affairs were in the hands of sensible men - businessmen,
as Richard Cobden thought, the workers, as Jean Jaurès
thought - then wars would be no more.
By the 20th century, the growth of the social and biological
sciences was producing alternative explanations. As Quincy
Wright expressed it in his massive A Study of War (1942), "Scien-
tific investigators . . . tended to attribute war to immaturities in
social knowledge and control, as one might attribute epidemics
to insufficient medical knowledge or to inadequate public
health services." The Social Darwinian acceptance of the inevi-
tability of struggle, indeed of its desirability if mankind was to
progress, the view, expressed by the elder Moltke but very
widely shared at the turn of the century, that perpetual peace
was a dream and not even a beautiful dream, did not survive the
:::
:::
:::
You can vary the names of the actors, but the model re-
mains a valid one for the purposes of our analysis. I am rather
afraid that it still does.
Something that has changed since the time of Thucydides,
however, is the nature of the power that appears so threatening.
From the time of Thucydides until that of Louis XIV, there was
basically only one source of political and military power - con-
trol of territory, with all the resources in wealth and manpower
that this provided. This control might come through conquest,
or through alliance, or through marriage, or through purchase,
but the power of princes could be very exactly computed in
terms of the extent of their territories and the number of men
they could put under arms.
In 17th-century Europe, this began to change. Extent of terri-
tory remained important, but no less important was the effective-
ness with which the resources of that territory could be exploited.
Initially there were the bureaucratic and fiscal mechanisms that
transformed loose bonds of territorial authority into highly struc-
tured centralized states whose armed forces, though not necessar-
ily large, were permanent, disciplined, and paid.
:::
ii!
:::
The naval race could quite easily have been ended on one of
two conditions. Either the Germans could have abandoned their
challenge, as had the French in the previous century, and acqui-
esced in British naval supremacy; or the British could have
yielded as gracefully as they did, a decade or so later, to the
United States and abandoned a status they no longer had the ca-
pacity, or the will, to maintain. As it was, they saw the German
challenge as one to which they could and should respond, and
their power position as one which they were prepared, if neces-
sary, to use force to preserve. The British naval program was
thus, like that of the Germans, a signal of political intent; and
that intent, that refusal to acquiesce in a fundamental transfor-
mation of the power balance, was indeed a major element among
the causes of the war. The naval competition provided a very ac-
curate indication and measurement of political rivalries and ten-
sions, but it did not cause them; nor could it have been abated
unless the rivalries themselves had been abandoned.
It was the general perception of the growth of German
power that was awakened by the naval challenge, and the fear
that a German hegemony on the Continent would be the first
step to a challenge to her own hegemony on the oceans, that led
Britain to involve herself in the continental conflict in 1914 on
the side of France and Russia. ''What made war inevitable was
the growth of Spartan power," to reword Thucydides, "and the
fear which this caused in Athens." In the Great War that fol-
lowed, Germany was defeated, but survived with none of her la-
:::
•■■
::::
::::