Volume 26, Number 21 & 22 · January 24, 1980
The Old Diplomacy
By James Joll
The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875-1890
by George F. Kennan
Princeton University Press, 466 pp., $25.00
In 1870, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian war, Karl Marx, always a shrewd commentator on contemporary international affairs, wrote, 'If Alsace and Lorraine are taken, then France will later make war on Germany in conjunction with Russia. It is unnecessary to go into the unholy consequences.' It was a remarkably accurate prophecy: by 1894 the Franco-Russian alliance was signed. In 1914 the existence of this alliance confronted the Germans with the necessity Bismarck had been so anxious to avoid of fighting a war on two fronts. After World War I it became fashionable to put the blame for the outbreak of the war on the European system of alliances. The conclusion of the alliance between France and Russia seemed in retrospect to be the moment when the division of Europe into two rival groups—Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one hand and France and Russia on the other—made war inevitable. This explanation had the advantage that it did away with the idea that the war had been the direct responsibility of individual sovereigns or politicians, and put the blame on the international system rather than on any particular person or group.
Review, 4047 words
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