Lecture 11: Structure, Agency, and the Causes of War Pt. 2

Question 1

Triggering cause of WW1

Answer 1

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo

Question 2

What happened after FF was assassinated?

Answer 2

July crisis

Question 3

July crisis and the events that occurred after

Answer 3

~ Austria-Hungary affirms alliance with Germany and mobilized against Serbia
~ Russia affirms alliance with France and partially mobilizes in secret in support of Serbia
~ Germany declares “preventative” war on Russia
~ German troops cross into Belgium to invade France, triggers British alliance with Belgium, Britain enters the war on the side of France and Russia
~ Japan enters the war against Germany following German invasion of Russia
~ Ottoman Empire enters war on side of Germany and Austria-Hungary
~ US joins the war in 1917 on the side of the Allies
~ Russia signs Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Central Powers

Question 4

Triple Entente

Answer 4

Alliance group made up of France, Russia, and Britain

Question 5

Central Powers

Answer 5

Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire

Question 6

Structural cause of WW1

Answer 6

Rise in German power and hardened alliances led to systemic disequilibrium

Question 7

Van Evera’s argument

Answer 7

“Cult of the offensive” caused WW1

Question 8

Cult of the Offensive

Answer 8

European leaders’ and militaries’ shared belief that offensive solutions to military problems were the most effective and the offense had the advantage in warfare
~ false belief
~ belief created and magnified the dangers associated with the assassination of FF

Question 9

Theoretical expectations when the offensive has the advantage

Answer 9

~ States adopt more aggressive foreign policies and tighten alliances
~ Risk of preemptive war increases
~ Windows of opportunity/vulnerabilities increase
~ States adopt more competitive styles of diplomacy (brinksmanship)
~ States tighten political and military security (secrecy)

Question 10

Schlieffen Plan

Answer 10

Evidence of the Cult of the Offensive
~ Rapid, decisive attacks on France, Belgium, and Russia
~ Germans believed that if they attacked Russia, France would attack them (this led to the plan)

Question 11

Lebensraum

Answer 11

German expansion rested on beliefs that German security required a wider empire and that empire was readily attainable via coercion and conquest

Question 12

Causes of war v. causes of a particular war

Answer 12

Experimental manipulation, statistical causal inference, comparative analysis of a small number of similar cases, process tracing, counterfactual experimentation

Question 13

Experimental manipulation

Answer 13

Not possible for historical events
~ cannot intervene on the structure of the international system in 1914

Question 14

Statistical causal inference

Answer 14

Event only happened once
~ cannot generate a dataset of WWI to identify correlates and control for other possible causes

Question 15

Comparative analysis of a small number of similar cases

Answer 15

sometimes possible, but cases are rarely independent
~ cannot isolate candidate cause while holding all else equal, because all else is not equal

Question 16

Process tracing

Answer 16

works best with lots of evidence of actors’ reasons and motivation
~ only sometimes available

Question 17

Counterfactual experimentation

Answer 17

How can we be confident in our results? Lots of examples of bad counterfactual reasoning

Question 18

Counterfactuals

Answer 18

Causal arguments rely on counterfactual claims: if X had been different, then Y would be different
~ To say that the assassination of FF was the cause of WWI is to say that if FF had not been assassinated, WWI would not have happened or happened as it did

Question 19

Plausible world counterfactuals v. miracle counterfactuals

Answer 19

Both useful, but for different purposes

Question 20

Lebow and plausible world counterfactuals

Answer 20

~ They don’t violate our understanding of what was technologically, culturally, and temporally possible
~ Must have a significant probability of leading to the alternative outcome (Had FF not been assassinated, it is likely AH would not have declared war on Serbia)

Question 21

Challenges of plausible world counterfactuals

Answer 21

Compound probabilities: more counterfactual steps, more tenuous links to an outcome of interest
Interconnectedness and rendering the outcome moot: changing the cause may make the consequence not just different but implausible
Second-order counterfactuals and returning history to its previous course: many causes are not necessary for a particular outcome, could end up in the same place through an alternative pathway

Question 22

Miracle counterfactual

Answer 22

If you change one thing, it will change the whole outcome