110 years later, peaceful meditation through the Olympic fireworks
2024-07-30
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The opening of the Paris Olympics has attracted global attention. The Olympics has always been seen as a hymn to peace, and there is also an "Olympic Truce Wall" in the Paris Olympic Village. A few days ago, hundreds of athlete representatives issued an appeal here - "Give peace a chance."
Under the five-ring logos that are scattered throughout Paris, people can contemplate war and peace. However, how many people still remember July 28th 110 years ago?On this day, World War I officially broke out.“Triumphant before the leaves fall"MisjudgmentThe collapse of history often happens in just a moment.On June 28, 1914, the gunfire in Sarajevo drastically deteriorated the international situation. A month later, World War I officially broke out, and peace came to an abrupt end. German Emperor Wilhelm II made a promise to the soldiers going to the war: "You will return triumphantly before the leaves fall."The commanders in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, and Vienna all hoped for a quick victory, planning a Franco-Prussian War or Russo-Japanese War-style decisive battle. However, the war, full of death and terror, lasted for more than four years, sweeping across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and claiming the lives of nearly 10 million people.The First World War was a test for humanity, but 110 years later, humanity has not been able to give a satisfactory answer on how to avoid the recurrence of wars and conflicts. As a result, humanity can end a war and confrontation but cannot eliminate its root causes, and can only allow it to strike again and again.After World War I, there was another even more brutal world war. After World War II, although there was no world war, local wars and proxy wars continued to occur, which also brought disaster to the world. The key is that the hegemonic countries seem to be more fully prepared for the war in terms of material and psychological preparation than in the past. Don’t you see that the global Cold War that lasted for 40 years once shrouded the whole human race in the shadow of nuclear winter, and the current "new Cold War" countercurrent in the United States and the West is also trying to tear the achievements of 30 years of globalization into pieces.It can be seen that "learning from history" is not easy, and sometimes even extremely difficult.The First World War was a long and bloody world war. All the European powers involved suffered tragic losses, and people's confidence in Western civilization and even human reason itself was seriously shaken. The problem is that although the terrible pain is enough to shock people, the once unknown high-level decisions are no longer a mystery with the publication of memoirs and the declassification of archives. However, there are still many different opinions on what lessons should be learned from the First World War.Why the peace came to an abrupt endThe tragedy of World War I has attracted the attention of many historians and international relations theorists, and a large number of prestigious monographs on the subject have been published. There are roughly two opinions on why "peace came to an abrupt end" in 1914 and what lessons should be learned from it.The first opinion is that all major powers are responsible for the outbreak of the war.Although the power and ideological confrontation between Britain and Germany was an important clue to the outbreak of World War I, it was by no means the only important factor, nor was it even the fuse of the war. The imminent and irreversible impulse to fight, the alliance commitments that locked each other and transmitted conflicts, the surging and self-defeating nationalism, and Germany's fear of the war potential that Tsarist Russia continued to realize, all these made the assassination case in a corner of Europe eventually evolve into a full-scale war that "no country wanted".As Lloyd George, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the outbreak of the war and later the British Prime Minister at the Versailles Peace Conference, said, "Nations slid from the brink of war into a boiling cauldron." British historian Christopher Clark used the term "sleepwalking" to describe the various judgments made by decision-makers in various countries before the outbreak of World War I, and pointed out that they all originated from the common political culture and strategic psychology of Europe at the time. In a nutshell, the war was a tragedy staged by all countries, not a crime committed by Germany alone.The second opinion is that Germany should bear most of the responsibility for the outbreak of the war.According to the German historian Fritz Fischer, the reason why Germany joined the war was not because it was implicated by its fragile and reckless ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, nor because it was overly frightened by the siege of foreign enemies and had to launch a "preventive war", but because its conservative political elites deliberately pursued an expansionist hegemony policy. In terms of the root causes of the war, there is no difference between the two world wars, both of which are the end of the same expansionist policy. If other countries have any major responsibility for the outbreak of the war, it is that they "did not contain" Germany and failed to deter Germany firmly enough "before the event". For example, Britain was unwilling to formally ally with France and Russia before Germany invaded Belgium. Of course, this responsibility is at most an error in judgment, not a moral or legal injustice or guilt.Doesn't make senseThe Thucydides TrapMany times, some people "turn to history" not really wanting to learn lessons, but rather to find reasons to package decisions that have already been made.For more than a hundred years, the above two opinions have been debated endlessly. Whenever the relationship between major powers becomes tense again, the debate becomes more intense, and each participant tries hard to find evidence to support his or her own views in the history of World War I. In the past few years, some people in the US and Western policy and academic circles have been clamoring in comparisons, wondering whether China today is "similar" to Germany in 1914, and whether Sino-US relations will be a "reproduction" of the German-British relations at that time.We Chinese are generally aware of the absurdity of this connection, but we might as well take a closer look at it patiently.In fact, World War I is not the only "mirror" to measure the relations between major powers today. Some people use the Peloponnesian War to compare the current Sino-US relations. The most well-known derivative concept is the so-called "Thucydides Trap". In Thucydides's writings, the root cause of the ancient Greek war was Sparta's fear of the rise of Athens. The United States has never been afraid to admit that its foreign policy is to maintain its hegemony, so it applies this logic to the current Sino-US relations. But the problem is that when describing the political system, the United States compares China to Sparta and regards itself as Athens. It can be said that whether comparing China to Athens or Sparta, it is quite awkward for the United States.For those who try to use history to promote anti-China policies, World War I is obviously a better material. In the eyes of these people, if we use Britain and Germany before World War I as an analogy, the identity "dislocationTherefore, as the US strategic competition with China continues to intensify, many people have begun to repeatedly list the so-called similarities between China and pre-World War I Germany. Their predetermined conclusion is very clear. Just as Germany must bear all the blame for the outbreak of World War I, China must also bear all the responsibility for the outbreak of the so-called "new Cold War"; the US can only make one mistake in containing China, that is, its attitude of containment is not firm enough, and its stick is not strong enough.The golden bell was destroyed and the earthen cauldron thundered. In Washington, Brussels and many other famous Western cities, many real lessons revealed by the heavy war disasters were abandoned. To this day, crisis after crisis has not only failed to make decision makers more vigilant, but has instead given them a blind confidence that they can "create crises at will and control crises at any time."Just as the Biden administration, which on the one hand shouts that it will "compete when it is necessary and confront when it is necessary" with China, on the other hand wants to "prevent the derailment of Sino-US relations", it has repeatedly created huge risks that may provoke conflicts in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. The worst of them is still fantasizing about defeating China with a Ukraine-style "limited conflict".A deep study of the history of World War I shows that an overly close and complex alliance will not only spread the flames of conflict quickly, but also spiral tensions and make the flames of conflict more easily ignited. However, whether in Europe or the Asia-Pacific, the United States is now making its security commitments more rigid and multilateral under the banner of "alliance modernization."Since the Biden administration took office, Washington's newly built multilateral security architecture in the Asia-Pacific has reached the point of "dazzling". Terms such as the United States, Japan, India and Australia, the United States, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the United States, Japan and South Korea, and the United States, Japan and Australia have been introduced one after another like permutations and combinations. The leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have also participated in the NATO summit for two consecutive years. The alliance-based US "Indo-Pacific Strategy" is breaking the natural geographical division and trying to turn the two ends of the Eurasian continent into a whole "powder keg".Not "The fate of history”"What experience and history teach is that nations and governments never learn any lessons from history and never act according to the lessons they should have learned."As Hegel said, the current discussions on World War I on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be heated and sharp, but a closer look reveals that they are full of narrow prejudices and selfish fallacies.Looking back at history, the outbreak of World War I coincided with the so-called "rise and fall" of Britain and Germany. However, the reason for the war between the Allies and the Central Powers was not that the contradictions between Britain and Germany were so acute that they could not be reconciled. In this regard, the outbreak of World War I may not be the result of the transfer of power among major powers, let alone the rise and fall of major powers will inevitably lead to war.In a nutshell, using the origins of World War I to argue that "the rise and fall of great powers will inevitably lead to wars" and using the Anglo-German relations 110 years ago to make a far-fetched analogy with the current Sino-US relations do not stand up to scrutiny.The most important lesson we should learn from World War I is that we must not be irresponsible fatalists, or even repeat the same mistakes under the banner of learning from history. Before the outbreak of World War I, decision-makers in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Paris all believed that their countries had no choice but to embrace an "unwanted war". In the current West, especially in the United States, there are also quite a few people who promote similar fatalism, advocating that the history before World War I is repeating itself and a new world war is difficult to avoid. For them, frequently mentioning history is not to hope that all countries, especially major powers, can learn lessons from it and avoid war, but to try to create an atmosphere that war will always come against human will.War was by no means inevitable, either then or now. War is not the destiny of history and mankind, but merely the irresponsible choice of a few people. We have reason to be confident that we will never repeat the mistakes of history.Compared with 110 years ago, political progress has made rapid progress worldwide; the bloody two world wars and the coldness of a global cold war have made the concept of peace more deeply rooted in people's hearts than ever before; the collective rise of developing countries and China's increasing proximity to the center of the world stage have injected new concepts and new thinking into people's view and handling of international affairs. Compared with any previous period in history, today's era has more factors conducive to maintaining peace. Peace and development are still the themes of the times. It is our responsibility to keep the light of peace for all mankind burning forever, and we will surely succeed.
Text/Xiao He (Researcher at the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Researcher at the National Institute of Global Strategy）
Editor/Yamayu
Editor/White Book, Qianli
Image source/Internet
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