Daniel Hannan is Director-General of the Institute of Economic Affairs
Countries do not slide into war. They collapse into it suddenly, unexpectedly, incredulously.
“I had grown up in the optimistic belief that major wars were a thing of the past,” the philosopher Bertrand Russell recalled of the 1914—1918 cataclysm. “When I heard the news of the war, I felt as if a curtain had been torn aside and the world revealed itself as a dark and terrible place.”
Most of his contemporaries felt the same way. “One hears the word ‘war’ whispered everywhere, but no one believes it,” the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig wrote. “It is as if the world has gone mad.”
I am becoming morosely convinced that a major global conflict is gathering head and that we will be caught as much off-guard as our ancestors were at the start of the 20th century.
Like them, we have been lulled by three generations of peace. Not total peace, obviously. Just as in their day, we expect occasional wars in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and sometimes, the remote parts of Europe. But, much as they had not known an all-out conflict since the end of the Napoleonic wars a century before, so we have not known one since the end of the Korean War.
Now, as in the early 20th century, we have people explaining, with apparently rock-solid logic, why wars will continue to become rarer. In 2011, Steven Pinker published The Better Angels of Our Nature, a study of why violence of every kind was in long-term decline and why taboos had grown up around the use of force. In much the same vein, in 1910, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, arguing that a major war was no longer feasible in an economically interconnected world.
Both men were, in their own terms, completely correct. Globalization is indeed a check on bellicosity. Free trade makes waging war both less rewarding (why fight to control assets when everyone can buy them at the same price?) and more costly (the disruption to a belligerent’s economy is more severe).
But then, as now, the consensus behind unrestricted commerce and open sea lanes was coming to an end. France, Germany, Russia, and the United States all turned to protectionism in the 1890s, leaving only Britain to carry the international economic system.
We are seeing a similar swing today. More trade barriers have been erected than removed every year since 2008. The difference is that, this time, the chief defender and beneficiary of the global order, the U.S., has itself turned protectionist, and in the most aggressive way. This time, the rush to autarky has come before the conflict rather than accompanying it.
Other ingredients are in place, too. We have been slow to understand the implications of President Donald Trump’s Putinism in Ukraine, but few observers now seriously imagine that the U.S. would go to war to protect Latvia from Russia, or Taiwan from China. Every country is therefore scrambling to arm itself, including, in some cases, with nuclear weapons.
Nor is representative government the pacifying force it used to be. It was once said that no two democracies had ever gone to war, although this was not quite true. Israel and Lebanon fought a war as democracies, as did Peru and Ecuador. Still, it was undeniable that democratic regimes were less likely to mobilize against one another than dictatorships.
Which is why we should be worried that, since 2012, the number of democracies in the world has steadily dwindled, while the number of dictatorships has increased.
Just like the generation of 1914, we ignore the early warning signs because we have been so habituated to resolving our differences through negotiation. Just like them, our very complacency is the problem.
Looking back, we can see several moments when the 1914 cataclysm might have been averted. Austria could have treated the assassination of its archduke as a criminal offense rather than a political attack. Serbia could have accepted Austria’s terms. Russia could have delayed its mobilization. Germany could have held off from issuing an ultimatum. Indeed, if they had been able to see what was coming, every participating country would surely have made different choices.
But, just as today, they could not properly imagine a world in which advanced nations fought each other directly rather than through distant proxies. And so they stumbled over the precipice.
We, too, have plenty of opportunities to step aside. But we, too, seem unable to grasp the immediacy of our peril. Throw up tariffs? Jeopardize NATO? End the dollar-based system? Stop backing democracies? Lose to the ayatollahs? Meh. What’s the worst thing that can happen?
IEA Interview: IEA Managing Editor Daniel Freeman speaks with Dr Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, about why Britain has struggled to build almost anything for decades, from housing to lab space to supermarkets, and how this shortage of building land helps explain the country’s weak economic growth, IEA YouTube
IEA Podcast: Callum Price, Director of Communications, Dr. Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, and Dr Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director discuss youth unemployment, state-run grocery stores in New York City, and the free speech controversy involving Reform and the Green Party, IEA YouTube
The author has chosen not to even mention the enemy within. The last time the British people were allowed to know there were over 40,000 Muslims on the terror watchlist. Given that 10,000s of unvetted illegals migrants have been flooding into the UK, I suspect that there are now more Muslims on the terror watchlist than there are soldiers in the British army. And the Telegraph is claiming that IRGC run some of the people smuggling gangs.
The armed forces have two fundamental recruitment problems. The first is that the white working class are becoming reluctant to flight for a state that is persecuting them and has turned them into second class citizens in their own country. And sensibly they will choose to stay home and defend their families. The second is that many of young are first or second generation immigrants who are not loyal to UK and would likely leave to avoid having to serve in the UK armed forces.
Lord Hannan needs to leave his ivory tower and go to a working class protest e.g. a Tommy Robinson 'United the Kingdom' rally, where Tommy Robinson is a working class hero. And Hannan should listen to the repeated chants of 'Starmer (and now Burnham) is a w*nker'. Much of the white working class hate the Progressive class that dominates the establishment with their luxury beliefs and their DEI.