The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917
Philip Zelikow
Public Affairs
2021
352 pages

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The First World War is without a doubt the most under-appreciated event relevant to the shape of our modern world. It occupies a grey area in our collective cultural consciousness. Grey both in terms of indifference and in terms of confusion. This greyness can perhaps, in part, be attributed to the war’s apparent futility and its relative overshadowing by the more dynamic and comprehensible Second World War. It is often easier to view the First World War in a teleological manner, merely serving as an explanatory prelude to the better understood Second World War.

It’s clear that in the Second World War, National Socialist racial ideology and Japanese intransigent Jingoism meant that only the near total occupation of Germany and the morally repugnant use of nuclear weapons on Japanese civilian population centres or costly amphibious invasion could bring the war to an end. The Nazi-led holocaust in Europe and Japanese torture of civilians and prisoners of war in East Asia meant that one can easily, regardless of interwar grievances, retrospectively frame the war from 1939-1945 as a struggle of good against evil, one in which good could not afford to compromise with evil, that the very act of appeasement would serve only to embolden evil (as we see in the invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia). Despite the arguments of some revisionist historians like Max Hastings, such a dichotomy of good versus evil cannot be found in the Great War of 1914-1918. 

Unlike the many books dedicated to the causal factors that led to the outbreak of the Great War, Philip Zelikow’s new book The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917 focuses on why, once it became apparent after the winter of 1915/16 that no one side could break the trench stalemate and win total victory, the two alliances of belligerents did not simply reach a negotiated “honourable” peace, as had been the case in almost all wars hitherto?

Zelikow has had a long and illustrious career as a top-level security analyst and diplomat for a series of US Republican administrations towards the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s he went on to teach Public Policy in Harvard and later History at the University of Virginia. To date his published works have predominantly focused on Cold War diplomacy. 

This practical life experience and hours of research have certainly given him an appreciation for the impact that decisive leadership and back-channel diplomacy can play in shaping geopolitical strategy. Perhaps spurred on by the recent centenary of commemorations, Zelikow has applied his skillset to understanding the event that led to the true rise of the United States as a real economic and military Great Power: the First World War. He rejects narratives of Thucydides traps (a theory on the inevitable collision course of declining and nascent powers dating back to Ancient Greece) and of supposed great immovable forces shaping geopolitical strategy, rather espousing a “Great Men of History” approach to explaining how the US abandoned its previous “splendid isolation”, interjected into the affairs of warring European Great Powers and ultimately successfully supplanting the UK as the predominant global economic and military hegemon.  

The book adopts a transatlantic approach to examining the high sakes of international diplomacy amongst the Great Powers and delves into extreme detail on the constantly evolving calculations and predictions of the ever-shifting balance of power, each side delaying a peace move anticipating that their fortune in the war might improve in the immediate future and thus any conclusive settlement would be more favourable after the balance of war had swung in their favour.  

The author does a fantastic job of explaining strategic aspects of the war, such as naval blockades and credit lines needed to facilitate the war effort. Such elements of war are often less tangible than tactical developments on the battlefield. 

A good, but not exhaustive, list of key events leading up to the stalemate of 1916 includes: the UK imposed attritional naval blockade aimed at the German Homefront, Germany’s Schlieffen Plan advance towards Paris in the West and a crushing victory against Russia at Tannenberg in the East, the French miracle at the Marne halting the German advance before Paris, Germany’s submarine campaign in the Atlantic, Italy joining the Entente and thus opening up a new Alpine Front against Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria joining the Central Powers leading to the fall of Serbia, the first armed uprising of the war taking place in Dublin, and Romania joining the war on the side of the Entente.  

It is at this point of the war, the summer of 1916, that the book really takes off. The reader is presented with the difficult choice that faced all governments. Persevere to a final victory or cut their losses and sue for a negotiated peace. The UK War Cabinet, split into two factions, pondered its options. One group led by Lloyd George and encouraged by the influential Northcliffe press, wanted to achieve a “knock-out blow” at the Somme. The other group led by Prime Minster Asquith was more than happy to end the war peacefully if the Kingdom of Belgium would be restored and compensated for the violation of her neutrality, the very casus belli which had officially brought the UK into the war. 

Zelikow elegantly presents concurrent debates in Germany, specifically the pressure placed on the pro-peace German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg by the military establishment that wanted to intensify a campaign of unrestrictive submarine warfare that risked giving the USA a pretext for entering the war on the side of the Entente. The marginalisation of the more moderate German Reichstag, the subsequent coup d’état of the German high command in installing Ludendorff as de facto dictator of Germany, and the embracement of total war towards the end is dealt with well in the later chapters of the book. 

This continued near apocalyptic self-destruction of the Old World was viewed across the Atlantic with a wide variety of responses ranging from sheer indifference to bewildered dismay. As time progressed and the carnage intensified as man found ever more scientifically advanced methods of killing his fellow man, there were increasingly bold, and idealistic calls for unilateral global disarmament under the direction of new international institutions to arbitrate disputes and regulate war. The stage was set for a break in the status quo, either a US mediated peace agreement or US intervention. American president Woodrow Wilson saw his opportunity to make history.

Woodrow Wilson is a man with many images projected upon him by historians. In many ways he is a man of contradictions. There’s Wilson the idealist, and Wilson the pragmatist, Wilson the segregationist and Wilson the internationalist. Zelikow, however, too often casts an uncritical eye upon the US president and attributes any incongruity between his intentions and the de facto policy of the United States to the subtle Machiavellian plotting of his unofficial plenipotentiary and personal confidant Edward M. House. The author largely ignores the clear impulse which Wilson had that drove him to idealise the concentration of ever more power in the executive branch of government – a tendency both manifest in his actions as president, and his academic work as a political scientist decades prior to taking office. 

This technocratic and at times authoritarian predisposition of Wilson is deemphasised and instead, House, who was indeed pro-Entente and sought to guide Wilson’s anglophile leanings towards a more active support of the French and UK war effort, is given the spotlight of the book. I would go so far as to say that he is unapologetically depicted as Hermes, Dolos, and Ares all in one. In short, a messenger, master of deceit and harbinger of war. 

It is to House, of whom many books have been written, that the now infamous US 14 points Peace Plan can be traced. He played a key role in convincing Wilson of the incompatibility of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires with a modern community of national democracies. It was this interference in the domestic politics of Austria-Hungary, agitating for the dismantling of centuries old Monarchies and the establishment of new multi-ethnic Slavic states like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that epitomised the contradiction and irony of Wilsonian logic. The ideals of “national self-determination” are treated as beliefs held in good faith and not mere geopolitical instruments for solidifying the new post-1918 world order in which the Central Powers ceded territory, were incorporated into larger novel states, or were entirely dismantled (against the popular will of local populations). The consequences of such thinking were not just felt in Central Europe of the interwar period but have lasting ramifications in the Balkans and Middle East to this very day. 

The more one studies Wilson, the more it becomes apparent that he displays cold and calculated realism disguised in a well-maintained façade of idealism. Furthermore, that he thought of himself as somewhat of a messiah across the Atlantic, benevolently bestowing his wisdom upon the Old World, first on the need for peace, then on the need for intervention, and finally then on the need for the total reordering of geopolitics. In short, the imposition of a “New World Order” to replace the Old Order that in Wilson’s mind had spawned the war.

The strength of Zelikow’s new book is its meticulous, if not at times excessive, attention to detail. Thankfully the book relies on an abundance of primary source material. As can be expected, much of this material consists of diary entries from relevant political figures and diplomats. Sadly, the dubious credibility and subjective nature of these accounts as a true and faithful record of events is not examined in detail and most statements are taken without a critical eye. 

His detailed description of the presentation of the November 1916 Lansdowne memo to the war cabinet towards the end of the battle of the Somme could be better complemented with an expansion outlining the reception of the letter in the national media later in the month. Worthy of more detailed examination would be how narratives of “defeatism” in contemporary UK media were weaponised to denounce those seeking a negotiated peace and how war propaganda was so successful that it would cultivate a misleading view of war progress in the public imagination. Elaborating on the pressure from below would, in this way, help in giving the reader a sounder understanding of both the war’s genesis and its unnecessary prolongation. 

Also helpful would be a brief contextualisation of recent trends in US foreign policy leading up to the First World War, such as the Spanish-American War of 1898 and subsequent military interventions in Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. This would have been valuable at highlighting the growing domestic acceptability of foreign military intervention in the name of national interest disguised as a civilising democratising mission. 

What contextualisation that Zelikow does offer could be better elaborated. At multiple points throughout the book the 1763 peace treaty of Hubertusburg (ending the Seven Years’ War) and the 1905 peace treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) ending the Russo-Japanese War are mentioned. These comparisons of historical precedents should, however be used solely in understanding how Wilson wanted to be perceived by the international community (his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt having won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at ending the Russo-Japanese War) and not the extrapolation of applicable strategic conclusions. 

Different from 1763 or 1905, I would argue that, the Great War  of 1914-1918 was, in the logic of Wilsonian idealism, seen through the lens of civilizational struggle, not dissimilar to the fifth century BC Peloponnesian War. The poor Belgians playing the role of the Melians having their homeland laid waste by the two surrounding warring factions, and the dominant Entente Athenian democratic alliance suppressing the nascent Spartan Central Powers under the yoke of Prussian militarism. Only until one side had been totally exasperated could the unbalanced Peace of Nicias be agreed, a peace so flawed that in a matter of years, war had broken out once more, and in the rematch only the complete defeat and occupation of one side would bring hostilities to an end.  

The idealised spirit of iron and blood militarism which had proved so successful in achieving political goals and contrastingly populist pressure typical of democratic societies had led to outbreak of war and were the catalysts making peace increasingly difficult to secure. Zelikow does not sufficiently highlight that it was the monarchs of Europe that in the July crisis of 1914 had sought to avert a war and later sought to secure peace, and it was in fact popularly elected political leaders and ambitious military brass that saw war as an unmissable opportunity to exploit, both for personal and national gain. Whatever about the blame attributable for causes of the war, there is no doubt as to what is to blame for the war’s continuation. In short, false ideas of honour, twisted logic shaped by the sunk cost fallacy (used to justify spending more blood and treasure due to sacrifices already made) and the desire of certain political actors to secure their public reputation.  

To conclude, The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917 is not a book for a novice reader not already familiar with a general outline of the First World War, but for the history enthusiast interested in transatlantic cloak and dagger high stakes diplomacy, this book has much to offer. The authors writing style skilfully conveys the tense atmosphere of overlapping debates in Berlin, Washington D.C., and London. While it does not present parallel peace efforts such as those of Pope Benedict XV and the Austrian Emperor Karl (Charles) von Habsburg, it does present a story worth telling. One lesson the reader is left with, even if not explicitly stated, is that the pen tragically does not always prove mightier than the sword in resolving discord between man and his fellow man, and once swords are drawn, they prove exceedingly difficult to resheath.