Stephen Van Evera's Offensive Argument For The First World War

There are many events that led to the outbreak of the First World War, but only few are important. I am trying to answer if problems of private information or commitment were primarily the cause. Van Evera argues that the belief in offensive military doctrines created private information that destabilized the international order. Rowe argues that the the ability to credibly threaten violence stabilized the system prior to the First World War, but globalization undermined states’ abilities to credibly commit the threat of violence. In this paper I will argue that the decisions by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia to go to war in 1914 were primarily shaped by commitment problems because globalism increased the power of the political left in

Germany which prevented its military from maintaining the status quo.
Private information causes war because states cannot accurately predict the resolve or costs of going to war of other states. In James Fearon’s rational model of war, wars occur because bargaining deals are not within both countries acceptable bargaining ranges. The bargaining range is on the Pareto Frontier where the issue being bargained over is a zero sum game. One state’s gain is the other state’s loss. Because there is always a positive cost of war even for the winning state, there exists bargaining outcomes that both sides would prefer to going to war. Private information affects the perceived bargaining ranges that one state has of another. If state A thinks that state B has a high cost of war because it perceives state B’s citizens will not support war, then state A is going to make on offer closer to state B than if state B’s cost of war is actually lower than state A perceived. In this situation, state B prefers to go to war because it is a better outcome for it than if it did not go to war (Feron 1995).
Stephen Van Evera’s cult of the offensive argument for the First World War illustrates private information as the cause of war.

He extends Robert Jervis’s argument that offense-defense balance and distinguishably causes war. Jervis argues that technology and geography alter the balance between a military’s offensive and defensive capabilities. If a state has a more offensive than defensive posture, then it can be a sign that it is an aggressor. If there is no geography that aids a state in defense, then it is likely to take land as a buffer to protect itself. Offense-defense balance is a cause of the security dilemma because it is difficult for a state to determine the intentions and balance of another state. For example, a state has an incentive to keep military technologies a secret. Any state analyzing another state’s capabilities will then misinterpret its offense-defense balance. It is also hard for states to distinguish between a technology’s offensive or defensive use. A fort is easy to interpret as defensive, but a machine gun can be either used as an offensive or defensive weapon (Jervis 1978). Van Evera argues that military beliefs lead to heavy offensive weighted balances which cause the security dilemma. Great Powers believed in the superiority of offensive military strategies. This belief stemmed from past wars according to Van Evera. These doctrines held that offensive swift blows were the key to military victories. Van Evera concludes that if a state’s

military power revolves around an offensive first strike capability then it is likely to be secretive about its military posture which increases the amount of private information. The time it takes to mobilize is then a key variable because in an offensive doctrine mobilization is a likely signal of a first strike. The shorter the mobilization time the less time an adversary has to mobilize and defend itself. This is another source of private information because a state can mobilize for reasons other than war. States have an incentive to lie about intentions to prevent an opposing state from mobilizing its troops into a defensive position (Van Evera 1984).
Commitment problems cause war because changes within a state or between two states in the future will enable one of them to renegotiate deals in the future. Like wars of private information, wars of commitment problems stem from the bargaining range. Instead of the inability of one state to know the resolve or cost of war of another state, it is the rapid shift of the distribution of power that causes war. If state A thinks that state B’s military power is increasing and it settles a deal now, nothing will prevent state B from renegotiating when it is stronger in the future. State A prefers war earlier when it is stronger relative to state B than in the future when it is not (Fearon 1995). There are five types of commitment problems according to Robert Powell. The first type is a preventive war which is a war caused by an anticipated shift in the balance of power. The second type is a preemptive war which is a war caused by a first-strike advantage. The third type is a war caused by bargaining over an issue which is a future source of power. The fourth type is a war caused by the domestic shift in power. Finally, the fifth type is a war caused by the inability for a state to preserve the military status quo (Powell 2006).
David Rowe’s argument relies on Powell’s fourth and fifth types of commitment problems: wars from a domestic shift in power and a states inability to preserve the military status quo. In an international system that is oriented around offensive first strike capabilities as Great Powers postured prior to 1914, the ability to credibly threaten violence was important. States in a defensive position cannot threaten violence on other states very well. When one state adopts an offensive posture, then to balance that behavior other states need to have military parity. Globalization undermines the ability of a state to credibly threaten violence because of the potential domestic pressure to not spend money on the military (Rowe 2005).
An event that led the to the outbreak of war that illustrates private information was the way politicians in Germany interpreted the partial mobilization of Russia as a declaration of war on it because the mobilization was perceived as a signal of an offensive first strike. After Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia partially mobilized its military towards the border of Russia and Austria-Hungary. Russia did not intend this partial mobilization to be interpreted as a offensive action (Fromkin 2004). Van Evera argues that Germany interpreted the Russian partial mobilization as a general mobilization which forced Germany to launch a preemptive war (Van Everay 1984). However, this was not a war caused by private information because the German military decided that it needed to go to war with Russia before the Russian mobilization occurred (Rowe 2005)
The European need to maintain the balance of power manifested itself in a military arms race. Governments were investing in railways and increasing man power of their armies. Van Evera argues that this destabilized the international system and made war more likely. The increasing size of a military signaled offensive intent because fewer men are needed to defend than needed to attack. Technological advances in railway speed decreased the time it took to move armies to a first strike attack and gave adversaries less time to decipher intent (Van Evera 1984). Jack Snyder presents evidence that military leaders in Europe knew of the defensive capabilities of railways because of results discovered in war games (Snyder 1984). Rowe argues that arms race was important because the state that maintained a credible threat of violence kept its power. Germany lost its ability to keep up with the arms race and thus is ability to credibly threaten violence because of domestic factors caused by globalization (Rowe 2005)
Globalization increases the the national income within a state but causes distributional shifts between the holders of the abundant and the scarce factors of production according the Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade.

In the case of Germany globalization reoriented its economy around labor, its abundant factor of production, and decreased the income generated from land because of the depressed prices coming from other areas of the world. The increased the demand in Europe for industrial goods increased the wages of labor in Germany. People moved from rural parts of the country to the urban parts. The military usually drafted members of labor class to maintain its armed force parity with Russia. As the liberals gained in power, they pressured the German government to stop conscripting men to maintain such a large military force. This pressure convinced the military that it needed strike first against Russia while it had military parity with Russia. The declining domestically support of a large military force set preferences such that the military preferred to fight a war at that time when they had a credible threat for violence than let Russia take what it wanted in the future because it was stronger (Rowe

2005).
Van Evera’Ts argument does not account for Germany’s two front war. Germany decided to attack France first so it would not need to fight a two front war which military leaders believed they could not win. The plan assumed that Germany could convince Austria-Hungary to hold off Russia while Germany used its full military force to quickly conquer France. Military leaders realized the cost of the plan, but in the face of the waining ability to parity Russian military improvements decided to strike while they had the best chances of winning (Fromkin 2004).
While the offensive posture as part of the cult of the offensive was a condition of the cause of the First World War, it was not the primary factor. The shifts in the distribution of power provided the pressure needed to make Germany stage a preemptive war with Russia because globalization empowered the political left within Germany to put pressure on the government and start constraining military spending. In response, the military opted for a war because of the political left’s inability to commit constraining itself in the future.