West Europe's increased hubris
2,000 words
Apart from a few exceptions such as Ireland, it may be argued that, since January 1919, the West or Atlantic Europe has time and again overplayed its hand. For many years, the red lines of both Germany, in 1919 and thereafter, and Russia, in the 1990s and after, were ignored.(1) A pattern emerges from the West's post-war approaches of the continental other. Obviously, it went differently within the context of the post-Second-World-war constellation. Western actors conscientiously prevented any revival of diktats or scapegoats from the interwar period.
It thus appeared that historical and political intelligence have grown since the European West's strangling diktat of 1919 and the subdued nation's subsequent dictatorship (1933–1945). How come this growth receded completely in the 1990s? Historic failures, in particular the European West's intrusions over the second and third 1918 Armistice extension, early 1919, seem to be repeated during the post-Soviet era. The lead switched from the British Empire's imperialists and sub-imperialists to their equals in New York and Washington. In my German-language centenary book, the Britain's imperialist and sub-imperialist derailment of the Armistice Agreement was analyzed from a transnational perspective.(2)
The duration of an average human being's lifetime lies in between of the 1920s and the beginning of the present case study. In 1917, the third year of the Great War, the United States joined the war effort on the side of the Entente powers. Under the influence of a revolutionary regime, the allied Russians unilaterally abandoned the front against the Central Powers. Though Germany's exclusive pain of Zweifrontenkrieg was relieved, the Allied war effort was now shouldered by the American Expeditionary Force. Both at war and over the dictated peace order, the US weight turned out to be of decisive importance. Firstly, the horrifying deadlock on the western front was finally broken as a result of this fresh input from overseas. After the spring of 1918, the enemy could but retreat. Without American support, the Europeans' Abnutzungskrieg had almost certainly been protracted. In the context of this alternative projection, nobody would have been able to predict its outcome.
During the seven-month Armistice and the post-war order, the new relationship between Europe and the United States translated into political and strategic terms. The ceasefire was formally terminated with the signing of the Treaty and 'League of Versailles' (June 28, 1919). When the Treaty's half a year of ratification process ran, the US Senate decided to opt out of President Woodrow Wilson's League and Treaty. During the conference, while being under immense pressure of Britain's increasingly imperialistic delegations, Wilson's health deteriorated. While running the consecutive campaign for ratification, the returned president collapsed. He would never recover. Under the lead of British delegations twice the size of Wilson's delegation and having secured six votes in the League, against the US one, the newly created German Republic was forced to sign a dictated treaty. At the same time, virtually all of Britain's imperialist and sub-imperialist claims were realised.(3) On March 19, 1920, a US Senate vote on ratification mirrored the original refusal of November 19 of the previous year. Thus the global conflict's European identity was restored. The future would be shaped by the new order's protector states and the revisionist respectively revanchist states, i.e. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey. The Europeans were left to their own. Before attributing the main responsibility for this exclusive outcome to the American party, bear in mind that the British, first and foremost their colonial upstarts, secretly aimed at ousting Wilson's delegation.
A few months into US President Warren Harding's term, a German-American peace treaty was signed on mutually agreeable conditions. In contrast to the Versailles diktat, it may be regarded as the one and only sustainable. The victorious power negotiated on an equal footing with the underdog. Imperialism and sub-imperialism were left to the still dictating parties of respectively David Lloyd George, Britain's Prime Minister and his colonial upstart Jan Christian Smuts. Neither revanchism nor revisionism got a chance to develop.
In contrast to the Entente partner, Lloyd George and his radically nationalist Empire forces did not bother to be left alone. While the French position was shared by England's alarmed chief of staff at the time of continued deployment in Belgium and Northern France, the downfall of Wilson's peace programme was secretively taken for granted. In defiance of general William Robertson's criticism, the London government thought their interests, most notably the imperial ones, were better served without the Yankees' participation.(4) Exactly within this reduced, more or less Europeanized framework of treaty and league ratification, the conclusion of the state of war was forfeited. Casus belli thus lingered on. From the Weimar Republic's left to right, the diktat's reversion, if not its quintessential alteration, would be prioritised. Particularly from the German perspective, the peace treaty contained a substantial number of violations of the 1918 Armistice Agreement. As of 1920–1921, not a single actor outside of Europe could be held accountable to the rise of radically revisionist regimes. In 1923, the Turkish nationalists were the first to reverse the verdict of Sèvres (Versailles). At the same time, Germany's National Socialists were determined to rearm the nation and resume the war effort.
In alignment with this interpretation, Britain's colonial proxies, with South African Jan Christiaan Smuts as their figurehead, are regarded as European proxies. In contrast to the United States, the collective of Central and West Europeans, including Smuts' sub-imperialists, bore exclusive responsibility for the outbreak, if not the causes of another world war (1939‒1945).
Without the hubris from Britain and its rapidly adjusting Entente partner, the parameters of the post-war order could have been delineated in compliance with Harding's and his German colleague Friedrich Ebert's peace treaty. In contrast to this speculation, the events and developments of some seventy to hundred years later on indicate that the (pre-)history of an armed conflict with global dimensions seems to be repeated.
As it was demonstrated by the all-American WWI centenary party on June 28, 2019 in Paris and Versailles, the American age began a (mere) hundred years ago. In 2014, history and memory awkwardly coincided. On the one hand, a five-year period of First World War anniversaries commenced. On the other hand, an armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation broke out. Following several waves of eastward extension by the United States leadership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine's membership were to be programmed next. Simultaneously, an increasingly isolated Russia expressed on numerous occasions, having more or less accepted consecutive rounds of this military's expansion toward its borders, that this would mean crossing the red lines in terms of national security concerns. President Joe Biden continued to fuel the proxy war against the main USSR successor state and to ignore this adversary's justified concerns. Through the invasion of Ukraine, a 25-year period of Russia's profoundly diplomatic involvement with US unilateralism and expansionism came to an end. A then eight-years long armed conflict escalated.
The Europeans of 1914 were said to sleepwalk into a major war. The subsequent crisis of civilization lingers on. The entirely new developments of 2025 seem to justify a comparative thesis of its own: when the Americans walk away, and a conflict is left to the Europeans, things tend to grow essentially worse.
When the proxy war in Ukraine entered its second decade, the United States presidency was retaken by Donald Trump. In contrast to Biden's Democrats, Trump announced a policy of turning away from the Cold-War-times Atlantic Alliance's war effort against the Russian Federation. This was met with indignation by the European Union leadership and Keir Starmer's Great Britain. Under the lead of this Prime Minister, the West, Central and some of the East Central Europeans reaffirmed the decommissioned US president's unconditional support for Ukraine's war against the invaders. Starmer heads what may be termed the world's most undecolonized country. At the same time, the European Union was unilaterally led by western and ardently anti-Russian personnel. The first East European access to the lead occurred in December 2024. Through Kaja Kallas' common foreign policy, Brussels' outright hostility toward Europe's largest nation was taken to the next level. When Estonia, her country of origin, was occupied by the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, Kallas' mother was deported to Siberia.
Three years after the proxy war's escalation in 2022, the Kremlin and White House returned to a pre-2020 mode of being on speaking terms. Trump's first administration was known for this. After Biden returned the keys of the Oval Office, the now experienced president did not show much interest in conceding a seat to the European allies. At some time in the near future, his government may well opt for a policy in alignment with his predecessor Harden's successful relationship with the Germans. Particularly from the European perspective, the transatlantic relationship is suffering from distrust. The continuation of the war effort, if not stepping it up, was agreed between Great Britain and an equally sidelined Cold-War core of EU Member States. These parties seem prepared to challenge the enemy within a uniquely trans-European context. Just like in 1919, from Western Europe (now including Germany), any diplomatic approach seemed to be ruled out.
Historical and political intelligence have certainly grown since the West European display of hubris in Versailles. The present warfare and the collective remilitarization are showing, however, that mainstream media as well as the political elites went the other way.(5) London and Brussels headquarters may display even more hubris than Paris and particularly London in 1919 and thereafter. Even when the American army were to join another war among Europeans East and West, such as in 1917 or 1941, the present developments are likely to end up in a ruin eclipsing the one of the 1940s. At the time of high imperialism, our Russian, German, French and British forefathers were definitely less prepared. In contrast to the 1919 generation, the present one can be held accountable for having failed to apply major history lessons.
The number of alleged parallels between then and now keep growing. In 1913 or 1914, very few politicians and others acknowledged the growing tendency towards a war of unprecedented proportions. Sleepwalking was an appropriate term to be attributed to the majority of people and its leaders. Eighty to a hundred years following these sleepwalkers, repeated warnings against a similar tendency – now including open conflict with a nuclear super power – originated from the feather of individual experts. In quite a lot of cases, the academicians among them are to be found outside of university walls. In defiance of century-old lessons, mainstream politicians in and out of the international organizations seem to sleepwalk and follow in the footsteps of their hopelessly naive predecessors. When war broke out in August, it was widely thought that mission accomplished would be hailed before Christmas.
If the theater of war is being left to the Europeans, it cannot be said that history offers any model for proper results. Again, their exclusive interplay may well end up in full-scale escalation. Without the States' active participation, the worst seems yet to come.
Peter de Bourgraaf
Footnotes
1. Glenn Diesen, Jeffrey Sachs: NATO and Russia on the Brink of Nuclear War, G. Diesen's Substack / Youtube interview, June 3, 2025, final couple of minutes.
2. Peter de Bourgraaf, Hundert Jahre Urkatastrophe. Der Kolonialvertrag 1919, Göttingen 2018.
3. Thomas Gidney, An International Anomaly. Colonial Accession to the League of Nations, Cambridge 2025, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009584432, p. 13–14, 20, 70, 81, 84, 107–108 and 114.
4. De Bourgraaf, Hundert Jahre Urkatastrophe, S. 92, 98 und 144.