Rock, Paper, Albion:
France’s Diplomatic Web, 1894–1914 (Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself)
In children’s games the rules are simple. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock. In Europe between 1900 and 1914, the game could seem deceptively simple, a dangerously sly arithmétique. If it got going, Austria could beat Serbia, France could thwart Austria, Germany could counter France, Russia could wreck Germany, and the Ottomans could cage Russia. In the diplomatic hand game, however, the French threw more hands.
France set its trap carefully. Having lost Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, Paris spent decades preparing not just for revanche but for surety. By 1890, the French elite understood they could not defeat Germany alone. Their solution was scissors: they had cut Africa in pieces and realized colonized soldiers could later be imported to Europe to fight, and they cut out their hatred of Britain —of the English— and in its place they put paper, layers of treaties, alliances, and ententes that hemmed Germany in. And waited. With Russia in the east, Britain in the west and on the high seas, and Italy wavering but courted, France appeared to have surrounded its enemy with a web with enough potential power to strangle German power. And it had. Diplomatically, it was a triumph. Strategically, it was a self-provocation.
Signed in 1894, the Russian alliance was France’s insurance policy against a German reinsurance policy. Russia, slow-moving but immense, balanced Germany’s industrial might. French financiers backed Russian railways and armaments, knitting their economies together. For Germany, this meant joining the war in the Balkans—even a cause that Austria was justified in pursuing—risked a two-front struggle. For France, it meant confidence.
But the hinge which opened the door to French payback was the Entente Cordiale. The 1904 Cordial Agreement settled colonial disputes in Africa, freeing Britain to focus on the German threat. By 1907, with Russia also reconciled to Britain, the Triple Entente was born but France was the midwife, France was the glue, it was a constellation of agreements orbiting Paris. Britain’s naval supremacy was only partly risked by Germany’s naval buildup, but this only tightened the Anglo-French bond. Here again, French diplomacy closed off Germany’s options. Britain’s commitment to France appeared limited and ambiguous but their cooperation and planning grew closer in the decade leading up to the war.
The cost would be spread over four years of war. France survived the opening blows, but at the price of devastation. The alliances had worked, but they also ensured the escalation. By making the potential conflict into a war they could win, French leaders made it too tempting to pass on the opportunity when it was presented. They should have resisted.
In 1905 the world watched Russia and Japan grind each other down in Manchuria. It was the first Great Power industrial war of the twentieth century, and it should have been a warning to Europe. Instead, its lessons were noted but not absorbed. The Russo-Japanese War revealed what modern armies, armed with new weapons and mass mobilization, could do to each other. It showed the scale of death, the speed of destruction, and the brittleness of empires. Europeans looked on but told themselves they could will themselves to swift victory without the cost. The Battle of Mukden’s casualties alone were two and a half times those at Gettysburg. However, the May 24–26, 1904, Battle of Nanshan should have stopped everyone cold.
At Nanshan the Imperial Japanese Army, 35,000 strong, charged the entrenched defenses of the Imperial Russian Army numbering around 4,000 men. This was not the maneuver warfare of the Emperor Napoleon the Great. The Japanese force outnumbered the Russians almost ten to one, defeated them, and cut off the Port Arthur garrison from Russia’s main forces in Manchuria. However, to earn it, over two days the Japanese attacked a two-mile-long defensive line of Russian mines, barbed wire, and machine guns. The United States studied it and Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr., father of General Douglas MacArthur, sent as an observer to the Russo-Japanese War, gave figures for the furious assault of the Japanese:
At the battle of Nanshan we have from report of Gen. McArthur(sic), the following statement of the expenditure of ammunition, which was given out officially by the Japanese authorities: 1st Division, 667,010,—3d Division, 425,148,—4th Division, 1,110,086.1
With primary fighting on May 26, the three Japanese divisions alone threw almost the equivalent firepower — around 2.2 million rounds — at the Russians as Meade and Lee’s troops combined per-day average at Gettysburg from July 1-3 1863. And for all that this victory cost the Japanese 6,000 casualties to only 1,600 Russians or four-to-one.
Yet with Britain in its pocket, the French pursued a war that would bring this carnage to its eastern frontier. With Britain, France could expand its diplomatic stratagem to the Mediterranean powers. Nevertheless, by 1914 France had arranged the table so that Germany’s every move looked like a losing one. Get stuck on French defenses and bleed, or let Russia and France squeeze you on two fronts, or go through Belgium and bring the British Empire down on you.
Credit where it is due: this was masterful. It was also fatal. France created an atmosphere for itself where war looked winnable and therefore more attractive. But Nanshan was a “win” for the Japanese too, and a European war would involve many more soldiers and longer lines. In a way it is a paradox of success, French diplomacy was brilliant, but brilliance came with the risk of being too clever. It gave France allies. It gave France confidence. And in 1914, it gave France the option of war. France could win the war and wreck itself. It did.
Why this matters: When we’re upset and want payback, a risky path that looks winnable can lure smart people into bad bets—on teams, in policy, and in relationships.
“Ammunition Supply” – Major H. G. Bishop, 5th Field Artillery, published in The Field Artillery Journal, Volume III, No. 4 (October–December 1913) From a lecture delivered by Major H. G. Bishop, 5th Field Artillery, at the Army Service Schools. The misspelling of “McArthur” is in the original.