The Ultimate Sequel: Can Pre-1914 Europe Return? : Europe: With a unified Germany, Balkan nationalism and a declining Russian empire, Europe begins to look like its pre-World War I self.

Is a great wheel of history about to complete a cycle, returning Europe and the world to a political condition reminiscent of the late-19th and early 20th centuries? The answer, on the surface, seems to be yes. Will a unified Germany, for the fourth time since 1870, bully neighbors and break the peace? Will suppressed nationalists and ethnic minorities provoke escalating violence? Will a desperate Soviet regime, losing imperial control, seek salvation by the sword? Many in Europe and America are worried. The parallels of past and present are worth examining.

A century ago a unified Germany was the most powerful and feared nation in Europe--and reunification is now on the horizon. The collapsing Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, before 1914, proved incapable of containing political, nationalistic and ethnic unrest within their borders. The Ottoman (Turkish) Empire had collapsed altogether, leaving the peoples in southeastern Europe to quarrel among themselves and embroil other nations in strife. Eastern Europe, with the confluence of old empires in dissolution and new aspirations for political and cultural independence, was a vortex of instability and danger. Today Eastern Europe is also beyond the control of imperial powers.

Germany, in 1914, was the greatest force on the Continent, economically and militarily, but five other nations considered themselves major powers: Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Italy. They maneuvered among themselves, making and unmaking alliances, tempting or threatening each other to change sides in pursuit of political and military power. They employed secrecy both to confuse potential foes and to keep statecraft independent of public opinion.

The European nations were heavily armed on land and sea. Politicians, generals and admirals had nightmares of the foe suddenly acquiring numerical or technological superiority--a faster system of mobilization, more powerful artillery or a new type of battleship rendering all older ships obsolete. Such breakthroughs could, it was feared, change the balance of power, spelling instant doom for the inferior and unprepared.

The United States, about to become the world’s most productive economic power, played almost no role in the political affairs of Europe. But in the Western Hemisphere, Americans proudly proclaimed hegemony under the banner of the Monroe Doctrine, hypersensitive to real or imagined European intrusions--especially the sale of arms to any nation or group in the Caribbean or Central America not subservient to the United States. Today, the power of the United States is far greater than in 1914, but it has receded from the high-water mark of 1945.

In short, the world just before World War I was multipolar, reverberating with demands of ethnic and nationality groups, politically fluid, unpredictable and heavily armed. The United States was not a world power. Russia was in decline. Japan was ascending. In Europe all eyes were on Germany--strong, assertive, ready to pursue national interest at the expense of others.

These conditions erupted in August, 1914, into the hideous European war from which, in turn, flowed the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Hitler, World War II and so much of the death, suffering and waste of the 20th Century. If one believes that history repeats itself and that conditions similar to pre-1914 are about to reappear, then the outlook for the 21st Century is hardly happy.

But the differences between two eras are greater than the similarities. We have cause for hope--though not for euphoria. Look first at armaments and war. Before 1914, nations believed wars could be won quickly, easily and at great profit for the victor. The outcome would be determined by the weight and technology of weapons, the skill of strategists, the morale of troops and the effectiveness of diplomacy designed to isolate the foe. Germany over France in 1871, Japan over Russia in 1905 and, on a smaller scale, the United States over Spain in 1898 (“the splendid little war”) confirmed this. By 1914, the European powers, arrayed in two alliance systems and fearful that unpredictable change might lead to national destruction, were as tense as Olympic sprinters waiting for the starter’s pistol. The first side off the blocks would win, or so they believed.

The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne at Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 was the starter’s gun. One after another, European powers leaped into war. Germany and Austria-Hungary were allied in the center with Britain, France and Russia arrayed against them. Ultimately Japan, Italy, the United States and many small nations joined the fray. In spite of the carnage, some powers a generation later were still ready to gamble on war, on the blitzkrieg and the surprise attack, to win a profitable victory.

The sequence of two world wars--really one war in two acts--yielded the Europe we have known since 1945: two blocs, a divided Germany, communist repression east of the Iron Curtain versus relatively free, cooperative nations in the West, with the preponderance of military power in the hands of the United States and the Soviet Union. This was the dangerous and yet predictable Cold War. During those years the major powers avoided war with each other. They found “limited” wars frustrating and unprofitable. Above all, the nature of nuclear weapons--killing on a global scale--undermined faith in the utility of war. That is the most important difference between the two eras and the major reason why current changes in Europe, resurgent nationalism and the possible reunification of Germany need not be feared.

A second difference involves the relative disappearance of secret diplomacy. Democratization and modern communications have made it impossible for little groups of schemers to make commitments out of the public view. Woodrow Wilson exaggerated when he dreamed of a world made safe from war through universal openness and democracy. But he was not entirely wrong. War is much less likely when decisions are made in public and governments are responsive to the wills of their people.

The restlessness of nationalities in Eastern Europe may resemble that of a century ago, but conditions now are less volatile. In 1914, there was no Poland, Czechoslovakia, independent Hungary or Yugoslavia as such. Bulgaria and Romania existed, but with boundaries in flux. Today boundaries are relatively stable and nations, although dominated until this year by communism, have a long record of existence. It is true that national aspirations within the Soviet Union are intensifying and that no one knows how they will work out. Conceivably a post-Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union might risk international conflict in order to divert attention from internal collapse. It is more likely that Mikhail S. Gorbachev and successors will continue to seek international stability so that they may better respond to internal difficulties.

One huge uncertainty involves the future of ideology. The collapse of the 19th-Century European system bred powerful, sometimes inspiring, but more often malign ideologies: communism, Nazism, assertions of racial superiority, colonial liberation. These ideologies have been repudiated or have lost motivating force. But can large groups of people act together in great enterprises--for good or evil--without ideology? And must ideology be sustained by conflict with an enemy? After 1914, the human race did not find an answer. League of Nations liberalism was no match for xenophobic nationalism, racism and totalitarianism. What forms of ideology will develop post-1989? That is a more difficult, interesting question than simply asking whether history will repeat itself. It will not.