Key Features of Today’s World Rooted in World War I, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 11 – World War I, the centenary of whose end the international community is marking today, continues to define the shape of the international system and even set the agenda of its key players, Sergey Shelin says, raising the question as to whether the world can escape that legacy or will continue to live by it.

            The Rosbalt commentator says this inheritance is visible almost everywhere one looks. First of all, the majority of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East emerged during and immediately after the war as the result of the collapse of overburdened empires during it (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/11/11/1745054.html).

                Not everyone accepts this redivision of the world and some are even nostalgic for parts of the earlier one, such as the Austro-Hungarian empire, Shelin continues; but while some “corrections” to the post-1918 map may occur, any “restoration” of the past will not.

            Second, the United States assumed a global role in World War I. It provided enormous material aid to the anti-German coalition and some modest military assistance. Its contribution “didn’t look enormous, but its support proved decisive.”  The US retreated into isolation afterwards but then resumed its position in World War II.

            That position has lasted at least until the emergence of Donald Trump, Shelin says.  “He has become the first American president in many decades who has openly expressed isolationist ideas, but in practice this too is only a correction and not a revision” of the role the US began playing a century ago. 

                Third, the first world war gave rise to modern pacifism in the broadest sense, undermining those who viewed war as a legitimate means of national assertiveness.  Now, as a result of that conflict, even aggressive countries have to pose as peacemakers rather than celebrating their militancy as was true of many powers up to 1914.

            Talking about war is no longer good tone, Shelin argues; and “in this sense, the head of Russia with his increasing discussions about universal nuclear destruction looks like an innovator ideologically, someone who is working on the revision of notions that have not been questioned for a century.

            Fourth, the first world war led to the civic emancipation of women;  and, fifth, it opened the way to mass government intervention in the economy  During the war, this was true everywhere; but even afterwards, governments had overall a much larger role in economic life than ever before.

            Given all these generally positive developments, Shelin says, one might even call that conflict “progressive” were it not for the direct costs of the war and other trends it caused or accelerated, including totalitarian revolutions, revanchist wars, primitive radicalism, and the manipulation of public opinion as a near constant phenomenon.

            But the fact that all these things continue to define international life means that the world still lives in a post-World War I world: it has not yet found a way to  go beyond that.