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Can the Impending Collapse of Russiagate Halt the Slide Toward a Nuclear 1914?
Can the Impending Collapse of Russiagate Halt the Slide Toward a Nuclear 1914?
In the period preceding the World War I how many Europeans suspected that their lives would soon be forever changed – and, for millions of them, ended? Who in the years, say, 1910 to 1913, could have imagined that the decades of peace, progress, and civilization in which they had grown up, and which seemingly would continue indefinitely, instead would soon descend into a horror of industrial-scale slaughter, revolution, and brutal ideologies?
The answer is, probably very few, just as few people today care much about the details of international and security affairs. Normal folk have better things to do with their lives.
To be sure, in that bygone era of smug jingosim, there was always the entertainment aspect that “our” side had forced “theirs” to back down in some exotic locale, as in the Fashoda incident (1898) or the Moroccan crises (1906, 1911). Even the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 seemed less a harbinger of the cataclysm to come than local dustups on the edge of the continent where the general peace had not been disturbed even by the much more disruptive Crimean or Franco-Prussian wars.
Besides, no doubt level-headed statesmen were in charge in the various capitals, ensuring that things wouldn’t get out of hand.
Until they did.
A notable exception to the prevailing mood of business-as-usual, nothing-to-see-here-folks was Pyotr Durnovo, whose remarkable February 1914 memorandum to Tsar Nicholas II laid out not only what the great powers would do in the approaching general war but the behavior of the minor countries as well. Moreover, he anticipated that in the event of defeat, Russia, destabilized by unchecked socialist “agitation” amid wartime hardships, would “be flung into hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be foreseen.” Germany, likewise, was “destined to suffer, in case of defeat, no lesser social upheavals” and “take a purely revolutionary path” of a nationalist hue.
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Is the Buildup to World War I Being Repeated for WWIII?
Is the Buildup to World War I Being Repeated for WWIII?
The great scholar of Turkish history, Taner Akçam, has described today’s geopolitics — the alliances and hostilities toward possibly another World War — as being not ideologically based like WWII, but instead greed-based (empire-grabbing) like WWI:
These are wars of power, influence, and control over the use of Middle Eastern energy resources and the “security issues” related to it. It is quite obvious that the sides in this war are not “those who want democracy and human rights” versus “those in favor of evil dictatorships.”
The axes that are now starting to take shape are proof of this: Saudi Arabia and Israel – openly supported by the United States (and likely Egypt over time) – are forming one alliance; Russia, Iran, and Turkey are establishing another.
A tableau reminiscent of 1918 power blocs.
Today’s alliances are modernized versions of WWI.
World War I was a mess of alliances on each of its two sides, the Central Powers, versus the Entente Powers. The aristocracies that were on the side of the Central Powers included (among others) the following: Jabal Shammar (Saudi Arabia allied with Turkey); Germany; Austria (including Croatia & Bosnia); Ukraine; Poland; Lithuania; Georgia; Turkey; Italy.
The aristocracies that were on the side of the Entente Powers included: China; Japan; Czechoslovakia; Russia; Serbia; UK; Canada; US.
Today, we instead have the West: US; UK; Saudi Arabia (UK-allied ‘Arab Revolt’ that ended in 1925 with Ibn Saud’s victory); Israel; EU led by Germany; Ukraine; Japan; South Korea; versus the East: Russia; Iran; Turkey; China.
An odd-man-out is North Korea, which will be supported by China if it stops developing its nuclear program beyond what’s needed for its self-protection (protection against repeating what had happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi), but which will be opposed by China if it develops an aggressive, conquest-oriented, imperialistic, nuclear capability (which would reduce security not only for Japan and South Korea, but also for China).
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The World’s Most Famous Case Of Hyperinflation (Part 1)
The World’s Most Famous Case Of Hyperinflation (Part 1)
The Great War ended on the 11th hour of November 11th, 1918, when the signed armistice came into effect.
Though this peace would signal the end of the war, it would also help lead to a series of further destruction: this time the destruction of wealth and savings.
The world’s most famous hyperinflation event, which took place in Germany from 1921 and 1924, was a financial calamity that led millions of people to have their savings erased.
The Treaty of Versailles
Five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, officially ending the state of war between Germany and the Allies.
The terms of the agreement, which were essentially forced upon Germany, made the country:
- Accept blame for the war
- Agree to pay £6.6 billion in reparations (equal to $442 billion in USD today)
- Forfeit territory in Europe as well as its colonies
- Forbid Germany to have submarines or an air force, as well as a limited army and navy
- Accept the Rhineland, a strategic area bordering France and other countries, to be fully demilitarized.
“I believe that the campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible.”
– John Maynard Keynes, representative of the British Treasury
Keynes believed the sums being asked of Germany in reparations were many times more than it was possible for Germany to pay. He thought that this could create large amounts of instability with the global financial system.
The Catalysts
1. Germany had suspended the Mark’s convertibility into gold at the beginning of war.
This created two separate versions of the same currency:
Goldmark: The Goldmark refers to the version on the gold standard, with 2790 Mark equal to 1 kg of pure gold. This meant: 1 USD = 4 Goldmarks, £1 = 20.43 Goldmarks
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War, Big Government, and Lost Freedom
War, Big Government, and Lost Freedom
We are currently marking the hundredth anniversary of the fighting of the First World War. For four years between the summer of 1914 and November 11, 1918, the major world powers were in mortal combat with each other. The conflict radically changed the world. It overthrew the pre-1914 era of relatively limited government and free market economics, and ushered in a new epoch of big government, planned economies, and massive inflations, the full effects from which the world has still not recovered.
All the leading countries of Europe were drawn into the war. It began when the archduke of Austria- Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophia, were assassinated in Bosnia in June 1914. The Austro-Hungarian government claimed that the Bosnian-Serb assassin had the clandestine support of the Serbian government, which the government in Belgrade denied.
How a Terrible War Began and Played Out
Ultimatums and counter-ultimatums soon set in motion a series of European military alliances among the Great Powers. In late July and early August, the now-warring parties issued formal declarations of war. Imperial Germany, the Turkish Empire, and Bulgaria supported Austria-Hungary. Imperial Russia supported Serbia, which soon brought in France and Great Britain because these countries were aligned with the czarist government in St. Petersburg. Italy entered the war in 1915 on the side of the British and the French.
The United States joined the conflict in April 1917, a month after the abdication of the Russian czar and the establishment of a democratic government in Russia. But this first attempt at Russian democracy was overthrown in November 1917, when Vladimir Lenin led a communist coup d’état; Lenin’s revolutionary government then signed a separate peace with Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary in March 1918, taking Russia out of the war.
The arrival of large numbers of American soldiers in France in the summer of 1918, however, turned the balance of forces against Germany on the Western Front.
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Lessons from the German Hyperinflation of the 1920s
Lessons from the German Hyperinflation of the 1920s
The German hyperinflation episode in the early 1920s is often quoted as an example of the dire consequences of excessive money printing – a leading industrial economy succumbing to the dangers of currency debasement promoted by incompetent central bankers.
Alas, the reality is more complex than that, particularly when certain geopolitical and economic constraints of that time are taken into consideration. And as we shall see, we can draw some important lessons from that episode that can help us gauge the effectiveness of our very own currency debasement in the 21st century.
Setting the Stage
Europe radically changed in the aftermath of World War I. Gone were the big empires of Central Europe, and the fragmented states that emerged from them had to cope with a much more modest and uncertain modus operandi. There was a new power emerging farther out in the East, after the Bolsheviks took over Russia, boldly proclaiming that they would not stop there. On the other side of the Atlantic, America demonstrated that it could muster the necessary resources to prevail in a major world conflagration, and that it could become a power to be reckoned with.
Great Britain retained its dominant superpower status, no longer challenged by the once mighty German forces. Because it had security, its major concern henceforth was economic, especially as a countermeasure to the rising Bolshevik threat. France, on the other hand, remained exposed to a resurgent Germany, particularly because the latter had come out of the war with its industrial capability largely intact. Consequently, its concerns were mainly political.
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