“A strange light” was Winston Churchill’s description of the crisis unfolding after Austria-Hungary issued its ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1914. Foreign Secretary Edward Grey completed the optical analogy on August 3, prophesying that the “lamps are going out” across Europe and would not be “lit again in our lifetime.” The next day, Britain and Germany were at war. Both Churchill and Grey sensed the changes war would bring. The Defense of the Realm Act authorized the government to expropriate property, censure speech, and inflict capital punishment at a scale unseen since the Glorious Revolution. A professional military of 80,000 men swelled to a conscript army of five million, or 25 percent of the adult male population. Some 880,000 men died in uniform. The war wrecked the Anglo-Irish union, the Liberal Party, Britain’s status as world banker, and its confidence as a world power. It unleashed inflation, recession, and strikes. All this was prelude. The First World War prefigured the Second, which threatened the lamps of civilization not for a lifetime, but for all time.

　　Later generations have asked whether all this misery could have been avoided, and whether they themselves risk similar calamities through similar follies. President Kennedy, for example, acknowledged that Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August shadowed his thoughts during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As great power relations approach a nadir not seen since the Cold War, some scholars are looking for cautionary lessons from the Great War. Among them are historian Odd Arne Westad, who worries the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) risk “sleepwalking” to war like their Anglo-German predecessors. Westad’s historically inspired fears are not misplaced, but they are incomplete. If Washington is to succeed today where London failed in 1914, it needs to not only manage rivalry with China better than Britain did with Germany, but also strike a better balance between the competing demands of credibility and flexibility in its global diplomacy.

　　Writing in Foreign Affairs, Westad fears “failures of imagination,” mixed with “avarice and ineptitude” could push Washington and Beijing to war. Westad follows scholars like Tuchman, Paul Kennedy, Niall Ferguson, and Graham Allison in pointing to pre-1914 Anglo-German hostilities as the height of folly and the root of catastrophe. Doubtless mistakes occurred in the diplomacy of both countries, and we have much to learn from their errors. Yet too often unexamined by observers like Westad is the context of early twentieth-century diplomacy which made these errors rational, and thus repeatable today.

　　Despite the title of his essay, Westad omits any mention of Christopher Clark’s 2014 history of the Great War’s origins, Sleepwalkers. Clark chronicles how a transformation in British global strategy unwittingly worsened relations with Germany as Britain became entangled in continental commitments. Clark helps us appreciate that peace between the United States and China depends on more than dampening great power antagonism. It depends on balancing diplomatic credibility and flexibility across multiple relationships. Britain failed to keep this balance in July 1914. Understanding why could spare the United States a similar fate.

　　Westad finds that decision-making failures that transformed war between Britain and Germany from avoidable to inescapable threaten the same for America and China. Westad faults Germany’s (and China’s) conviction that the dominant power cannot accept its peaceful ascent; Britain’s (or America’s) view of their rival’s growth as a security problem; war’s attraction as a short-term solution to long-term problems; and lack of communication about basic interests. These causes of war are not “structural,” based on indices of hard power or differences in ideology. They are “contingent,” reflecting interpretations of events by statesmen that worsen the risk of conflict. Therefore, Westad dismisses a “persistent myth” that the pre-1914 alliance blocs “ensnared governments in a conflict that became impossible to contain.”

　　Westad’s worries are reasonable but limited by missing context. Focused strictly on Anglo-German relations, he misleadingly presents an evolution of worsening relations as both sides refuse to understand one another. Westad does not explore why Germany, which threatened British interests less than France and Russia in 1900, became its enemy by 1914. He fails to explain why Germany and Britain, which had few serious ideological or colonial differences and were economically interdependent, failed repeatedly at rapprochement; like Churchill’s “naval holiday” in 1911 or Richard Haldane’s mission to Berlin in 1912. Though it ended with catastrophe, Britain’s pre-War diplomacy is neither illogical nor obsolete. Rather, it resembles how the United States is countering China’s strength and ambition in the Indo-Pacific region. Britain’s decisions are not only rational to us, but repeatable by us.

　　By 1900, the British Empire was overextended. France and Russia, allies since 1894, threatened British possessions. Using railways, Russia could strike sensitive frontiers—the Turkish Straits, Persia, Afghanistan, Manchuria—faster than Britain could reinforce them by sea. To protect India against Russia, the Royal Army estimated, required reinforcements of 200,000 men. The Franco-Russian Mediterranean fleet outnumbered its British counterpart and threatened the Suez Canal. The Boer War of 1899–1902 obliged Britain to empty garrisons and redeploy warships to South Africa, leaving it globally exposed. Today, Washington struggles to manage simultaneous wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Iranian-backed aggressions across the Middle East, and tensions between Beijing and Taipei. Like Whitehall, Washington’s rivals have worsened its problems by integrating their efforts, as seen with the Sino-Russian partnership, Iranian and North Korean support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, and China’s energy purchases from Iran. Chronic difficulties producing sufficient munitions for America’s allies and its arsenals uncomfortably resemble Britain’s military vulnerabilities during the Boer War.

　　Britain’s pre-War diplomacy is neither illogical nor obsolete. Rather, it resembles how the United States is countering China’s strength and ambition in the Indo-Pacific region.

　　Britain redressed its weaknesses with diplomacy. Rapprochement with France, Foreign Secretary Lansdowne celebrated in 1904, alleviated imperial burdens and “would not improbably be the precursor of a better understanding with Russia.” In 1907, Britain and Russia resolved persistent imperial frictions in Asia. By that year, Britain had embarked on extensive (if secret) military talks with France. The United States has also reinforced its weak points with diplomacy. On its most sensitive frontier, the Indo-Pacific, Washington has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity. Washington has facilitated trilateral agreements and dialogues with Britain and Australia, Japan and the Philippines, and Japan and South Korea. It has increased military cooperation with Japan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. Ties with non-traditional partners like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam have been upgraded. This burst of diplomacy aims to reduce American weaknesses and discourage Chinese adventurism, but, as the British case suggests, carries its own risks.

　　For Britain, the cost of geopolitical relief was European entanglement. Threats to Britains nascent friendships with France and Russia were perceived, by those in London, as threats to imperial security. On this assumption, Whitehall grew antagonistic to Germany, whose Austro-Hungarian ally feuded with Russia in the Balkans, and who pressured Anglo-French solidarity in the Morocco Crisis of 1905. Diplomat Eyre Crowe complained that Germany’s goal was “nipping in the bud” the fragile Anglo-French entente to isolate Britain. Supporting friends carried commitments that Britain would never have otherwise assumed. The problem erupted spectacularly in July 1914, when Britain faced continental war if it supported its allies or continental isolation if it abandoned them. “Whatever we may think of the merits of the Austrian charges against Serbia,” Crowe insisted, “France and Russia consider that these are the pretexts, and that the bigger cause of Triple Alliance versus Triple Entente is definitely engaged.”

　　Britain maximized its security by aligning with France and Russia. A break with these powers, even to avoid conflict with Germany, became exceedingly difficult. In Morocco in 1905, Britain judged France responsible for the crisis and encouraged the French to de-escalate. The Quai dOrsay retaliated by suggesting Britain threatened a “breach” in their relationship. Whitehall promptly repositioned itself to support France. The same surrender of judgment occurred in 1914. Grey responded to the Sarajevo crisis by stressing restraint to Russia and reassuring Germany of Britain’s “warm feelings.” Grey sought to mediate the crisis by building a coalition with France, Germany, and Italy. Yet Grey was unwilling to break with the Russians for fear of undoing in a week the strategic gains of a decade. Britain had outsourced its foreign policy to decisions made in other countries. It could have peace, or it could have its strategy, but not both.

　　The July Crisis of 1914 shows the virtues of diplomacy come with complications: diminished flexibility, generalized risk, and reduced margins for miscalculation. Contingent errors and complex diplomacy pushed Europe over a precipice in 1914. We are subject to complex diplomacy and contingent error today. Particularly, pre-War diplomacy stresses the dangers of losing diplomatic balance between credibility and flexibility and the escalatory threat of rogue states for great powers.

　　Washington’s allies and partners in the Pacific, unlike its NATO allies, differ greatly in forms of government, cultural values, and economic and security interests. They resemble Britain’s uneasy friendships with France and Russia. Fear of Germany united them, just as concerns over China bond Washington with its Pacific partners. Yet if the differences between Britain and its partners made it unwise for Grey to follow Crowe’s advice in fastening British security to an “Anglo-French coalition of arms,” it would also be unwise for the United States to stake its strategy on indefinite commitments to partners with whom its interests may conflict. Credible commitments, the essence of alliances, must be balanced with room for maneuver, the essence of crisis resolution.

　　The United States could recreate in the Pacific Britain’s dilemma of fighting a great power war or suffering isolation from invaluable partners.

　　Every time PRC coast guards harass Philippine fishermen, Indian and Chinese soldiers skirmish in the Himalayas, or CCP influence operations are unmasked in Australian politics, the United States faces the same crosscurrent pressures under which Britain succumbed in 1914. Fear of alliance defection, which drove British thinking in 1914, must not dominate Washington’s deliberations when similar crises arise. If American strategy is a binary choice between risking war to back partners in any and all circumstances or of suffering loss of face and friends, then our position is no better than Britain’s in July 1914.

　　The July Crisis between the great powers occurred thanks to the June outrage of a smaller power: the murder of Austro-Hungarian heir Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists. We know only fragments of Serbian intelligence chief Dragutin Dimitrijevic’s involvement in the Archduke’s assassination. Yet Serbia in 1914 met the modern criteria of a “rogue state,” employing terroristic tactics to advance irredentist ambitions. Linked to Colonel Dimitrijevic and other Serbian officers and politicians, the Serbian terrorist group “Unification or Death” butchered Serbia’s royal couple in 1903 before assassinating the Dual-Monarchy’s heir in 1914. Serbian adventurism was emboldened by Franco-Russian support. Their entanglement in Serbia made British strategy dependent on Belgrade’s tumultuous politics. Thanks to great power engagement, cords from the “Balkan powder keg” spread across Europe.

　　Thankfully, the United States is not committed to a rogue regime in the Pacific. But China is. Since 1961, the PRC has been treaty allies with North Korea. Pyongyang habitually launches shells, and more recently, feculent parachutes, at its neighbor in Seoul. A militarist regime animated by revanchist fantasies and linked to criminal and terror networks, North Korea resembles Serbia in 1914. Like Serbia, it is backed by a great power, and antagonizes a neighbor with great power backing. Having supplied Russia with munitions for its war against American-supported Ukraine, North Koreas actions globally also threaten Sino-American stability. Westad and many others rightly consider Taiwan a flashpoint in Sino-American tensions. Yet if we take parallels with the Great War seriously, then the Korean peninsula, like the Balkan peninsula 110 years ago, is the greatest danger to peace. Whitehall was unprepared for a Sarajevo contingency. Having fought once in Korea, the United States is less complacent about Pyongyang. As competition between Washington and Beijing evolves and encompasses new issues, however, we cannot forget the Korean powder keg.

　　War is a choice, and Westad considers whether British and German leaders would have chosen otherwise if their earlier decisions proved wiser. Clark also denies that great power diplomacy doomed Europe for war. The future in early 1914 was still open. Yet largely thanks to Europe’s transformation into alliance blocs, the future was open only just. Learning from the Great War’s origins means more than analogizing Anglo-German antagonism with Sino-American competition. Such learning must include analysis of similar conditions in fin de siècle Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

　　Contextualizing pre-War British diplomacy shows that British decisions that contributed to war were rational and repeatable. Risks of diminished balance and rogue states aggravating great power tensions are not historical curiosities but current problems. Most worryingly, the United States could recreate in the Pacific Britain’s dilemma of fighting a great power war or suffering isolation from invaluable partners.

　　Folly is not the only lesson we should draw from the July Crisis. The men who doomed Europe to war were no fools. We can best avoid their failures by understanding their decisions as not so foreign from our own, and by seeking the balance they could not keep.