[October 06, 2014] The War to End all Wars is largely fixed in our minds as one of trench warfare and rigid militaries. While this is taught to us in the most basic history courses, WWI was also marked by continuous maneuver warfare, technical innovations, and complex politico-military relationships that resonant today. From these complexities, we can derive a few key strategic leadership lessons from World War I – the war that was never supposed to happen.
At the end of the 19th Century, intellectuals and senior political figures all agreed that war on a massive scale among the European-Asian empires was impossible. Due to the ability of each to mobilize and field huge armies with massive levels of destruction, it was unimaginable that they would clash with each other. Those armies were primarily for defense but were used extensively to expand each empire to unheard of sizes, greatly economically benefiting each empire.
As we commemorate the centennial of this horrific war, there has been a surge of books detailing the intricacies of WWI. Renewed interest in the war has helped expand the scholarly study pre-war and the battlefield itself. At a later date I will put some of these studies into my recommended reading list (see my master reading list at this link).
The first key lesson from WWI was how to beat an ever adapting enemy, and how to integrate and employ a surge in new technologies on the battlefield. WWI was a clash of empires that altered societies, forced government change, and created emergent nations. Sadly, the upheaval left by WWI has been largely forgotten by most as well as the lessons of the causes and events that triggered the war. The complexity of the battlefield and diplomacy of alliances made for a brew of an ever evolving war. Despite the stereotypical trench warfare, the war changed at a pace that no senior leader of the day could master. For example, today we find it difficult to master the ever changing and complex nature of the radical Islamic threat.
The second key lesson was that preventing the Great War was within the grasp of the empires’ leadership. International relationships may have experienced a regional war occur, but a world war on a massive scale could have been prevented if Britain has made clear its foreign policy about their desire not to allow an invasion and occupation of Belgium. The German plan was based on the assumption that Britain was neutral regarding Belgium. While Britain did not want Belgium conquered, there was no congruent foreign policy that explicitly made this distinction. Senior Western leaders today are struggling with communicating clear foreign policy goals in the face of Islamic, Russian, and Chinese aggression.
The third key lesson was that national leaders can be naively distracted from more important foreign affairs by popular issues. Prior to WWI, both France and the United Kingdom were preoccupied by domestic events and because of this, missed the events of July 1914 crisis. For example, the French press and citizenry took little notice of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and even less notice of the growing political crisis that culminated in the war. Most Western political leaders today are largely obsessed by internal challenges and while these are important, to overlook major events that are pushing nations toward war cannot be ignored.
If these lessons from World War I are somewhat new, we can thank the recent study and analyses of the Great War. We can also thank the new attention being paid to a war that had more far-ranging influence on the world than any other since the Christian Crusades.
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