What Napoleon and Bismarck Teach Us About Preventive War
Stanley Kober, at he website of the Cato Institute (Sept. 18, 2004):
[Stanley Kober is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. ]
The decision to go to war is the most fateful one political leaders ever make. At what point does one decide non-military measures for resolving a dispute are exhausted, and that further delay in initiating hostilities is too dangerous? Winston Churchill, who led Britain in its finest hour, understood this tension."Those who are prone...to fight whenever some challenge comes from a foreign Power, have not always been right," he warned in his history of the Second World War."These are the tormenting dilemmas upon which mankind has throughout its history been so frequently impaled."
The dilemma is illustrated by the different approach to preventive war adopted by Napoleon and Bismarck. By 1811, Napoleon had decided to initiate war with Russia, having been convinced by reports that Tsar Alexander I was preparing to attack France. His former ambassador to Russia, General Armand de Caulaincourt, was dismayed."The Emperor repeated all the fantastic stories which, to please him, were fabricated in Danzig, in the Duchy of Warsaw, and even in the north of Germany -- stories the accuracy of which had been disproved time and again," he recounted in his memoirs. But Napoleon, convinced of easy victory, could not be dissuaded.
Initially, the war justified Napoleon's confidence. He crushed the Russian army in the battle of Borodino, and his army proceeded to occupy Moscow. The tsar, however, did not surrender. Worse, the Russian people did not respond to Napoleon's promise of liberation but instead resisted the foreign occupation; the people of Moscow even burned their own city. With the specter of disaster looming over him, Napoleon ordered a retreat. As his army disintegrated, his allies deserted him, and ultimately he was forced to surrender and submit to exile.
Bismarck's approach to preventive war was far different. In his memoirs Bismarck addresses"the question whether it was desirable, as regards a war which we should probably have to face sooner or later, to bring it on anticipado before the adversary could improve his preparations," and concludes that"even victorious wars cannot be justified unless they are forced upon one." Perhaps most important, he stressed the uncertain outcome of the processes wars set in motion, writing that"one cannot see the cards of Providence far enough ahead to anticipate historical developments according to one's own calculations."
Unlike Napoleon, Bismarck did not lose a war, and he left Germany far stronger than how he found it. But Providence had a destiny that confounded Bismarck's legacy.