The Foreign Service Journal, April 2014

the Foreign Service journal | April 2014 67 Perhaps the program, like counterin- surgency itself, simply fell victim to unre- alistic expectations. One suspects that even the most knowledgeable Western experts on Afghanistan would have been daunted by this task, and would have been the first to admit it. To believe that every problem has a programmatic solution requires a certain amount of hubris. In the future, a little humility could go a long way as we size up other social systems. Acknowledging the limits of our understanding will give us the best chance of operating effectively in environments like Afghanistan, where ambiguity reigns. Jim DeHart, a Foreign Service officer since 1993, is chair of The Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board. He has served as director of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Pan- jshir and in Istanbul, Melbourne, Brussels and Washington, D.C., and currently directs the Office of Afghanistan-Pakistan Programs in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. A Grim Centennial The WarThat Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 Margaret MacMillan, Random House, 2013, Kindle Edition/$12.99, 784 pages. Reviewed by Tracy Whittington In her much-anticipated new book, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 , Margaret MacMillan quotes a young Austrian in 1900: “People no more believed in the possibility of barbaric relapses, such as wars between the nations of Europe, than they believed in ghosts and witches.” To make her case that war was not an inevitable end to Europe’s “long peace,” MacMillan expertly weaves together biog- raphies, public opinion surveys and per- sonal anecdotes. The result will enchant newcomers to World War I historiography and challenge those well-versed enough to debate the merits of the Schlieffen Plan. MacMillan begins with a socio-cul- tural survey of Europe from the perspec- tive of the 1900 Paris Exposition. From there she moves through seven chapters that paint individual, vivid portraits of the five great powers—Britain, France, Ger- many, Austria-Hungary and Russia—and their overlapping alliances and rivalries. Next, she devotes dueling chapters to the battle between the forces for peace and war, respectively. By the end of the first, the reader is convinced the interna- tional peace movement will win out. At the conclusion of the second, the military plans of the great powers, all conceived to defend against real and imagined threats, appear ominously offensive. Up to this point, it is almost impossible to stop turning the pages to find out how it all ends, even though you know what’s coming. But when MacMillan switches from a thematic approach to a chrono- logical one, the book loses momentum. Even when she covers pivotal clashes that could have triggered a European war sooner than 1914, such as the two crises in Morocco, Bosnian unrest and the first Balkan War, she does so ploddingly. She might have overcome this flaw by linking the episodes, but instead treats them separately and adds dry explanations of political and military machinations that rely on the book’s first half for context. The reader who can slog through these passages, however, will be well-rewarded. When MacMillan returns to a panorama of Europe’s last months of peace in early 1914, the story once again feels like a runaway locomotive that may just right itself—until the very last minute, well past the assassination at Sarajevo and Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia. As in tragic love stories where the hero and heroine misinterpret, misunderstand and sometimes just miss meeting each other, Europe’s march to doom comes not from an accretion of bad decisions but from a random series of them. Had any single decision changed, the great powers might have maintained their peace, at least for a while longer. It takes a skilled writer to present his- torical facts as cliffhangers. And it takes a master historian to lead the reader to a novel conclusion—that war was not inevi- table—while remaining agnostic about whom to blame. The War That Ended Peace , though imperfect, proves that Mac- Millan qualifies on both counts. n Tracy Whittington, a Foreign Service public diplomacy officer since 2005, works in the Foreign Service Director General’s Office of Policy Coordination. She previously served in Kinshasa, Montreal and La Paz. A member of The Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board, she is the author of Claiming Your History: How to Incorporate Your Past into Your Present and, with her tandem spouse, Eric, A Street Dog’s Story: The Almost 100% True Adventures of Labi. When MacMillan returns to a panorama of Europe’s last months of peace in early 1914, the story once again feels like a runaway locomotive that may just right itself—until the very last minute.