Abstract
Since the beginning of the investigation into the origins of World War I, it has been claimed by researchers and politicians alike that the ‘Great War’ could have been averted had German decision makers not misperceived the structures of power. More specifically, it has been argued that German policy makers, while seizing the Bosnian window of opportunity for either preventive or expansionist aims, 1 underestimated Great Britain’s and Russia’s willingness and readiness to intervene in the Sarajevo crisis of 1914. 2 As a result, World War I appears to be the result of an accidental failure in deterrence.
This claim nevertheless leaves us with a major puzzle: If opportunity structures and balance of power calculus on their own were so determining in crisis escalation, why did German decision makers not seize the opportunity created by the Moroccan crises to go to war in 1905 when the Entente Cordiale was at its conception? After all, in 1905, Russia dropped out as a potential opponent as she was heavily weakened by war and revolution. 3 In order to answer the central question of why the Moroccan crises, contrary to the July crisis, were peacefully resolved, numerous researchers refer to the clear and unambiguous British deterrent posture that prevented war in 1905 and 1911. Nevertheless, this explanation is not without its flaws. If Germany was the most powerful force in Europe at the time, why should it have been intimidated by military threats at the expense of its own credibility and deterrence potential?
I will claim that the reason why the 1914 crisis escalated into war, while its 1905 and 1911 forerunners were resolved peacefully, can be explained by the fact that going to war in the Moroccan crises was perceived as morally inacceptable, whereas in the July crisis, it appeared tolerable. I will argue that in all three instances, German decision makers did not evaluate their strategic environment and their policy options on the basis of objective material considerations, but on the grounds of the subjective meaning decision makers’ reputational filters conferred to the situation.
Reputational filters can be understood as cognitive prisms decoding the symbolic meaning of the material environment for self and social worth of an actor. This assumes that in international politics, state leaders do not always seek to put forth a certain valorized image or reputation for instrumental reasons. The interest in maintaining or asserting a certain image of their state in international relations (IR) cannot be reduced to a formal model of strategic calculations, such as for popular support or international credibility. ‘People care whether their treatment (and not simply their outcomes) is fair because fair treatment indicates something critically important to them – their status within their social group’, that is, their worth. 4 In the same vein, decision makers care about their states reputation and respectable treatment as acquiring a positive valorized self- and role image confers them social and emotional benefits, that is, self-worth. 5 Being recognized and treated according to the self’s expectations is critical for an individual’s general emotional well-being. 6
While traditional explanations of World War I do not deny the importance of animosities between Germany and its neighbor countries, they do, however, underestimate the constitutive impact symbolic interaction has on the strategic environment. Decision makers make sense of their security situation via an interpretive process of Self–Other relations. 7 They chose their policy tools not solely on the basis of material necessities but on the basis of (a) the nature of self–other affective relations, (b) the perceived degree of symbolic injury the other’s actions causes to his self and role image and (c) in accordance to international moral standards (under the condition that being recognized by the international society is aspired).
By tracing the crisis onset and escalation process of the two Moroccan crises, I will show that reputational filters have a constraining and an enabling impetus in the event of international disagreement. On the one hand, they demanded decision makers to actively defend their self and social worth; on the other hand, they constrained actors by binding them to social norms and standards of respectability. If the crises resolved peacefully in 1905 and 1911, it was due to moral reasons rather than deterrent postures of the other European countries that German decision makers abstained from crisis escalation. In 1914, on the other hand, these constraints were considerably weakened.
The symbolic origins of crises
Explanations on the origins of World War I have largely underestimated the role and symbolic value of the Moroccan crises. The majority of the analysis explains the 1905 and 1911 crises anachronically from the researchers’ theoretical point of view on World War I, claiming that German decision makers used the crisis in order to break up the Entente Cordiale and to re-establish a more advantageous relation of power. According to this perspective, the crises provided German decision makers with the opportunity and a pretext to modify the balance of power. Most prominently, IR scholars and historians refer to the Moroccan crises as scape-goat crises, brought up by German decision makers to break up the Entente Cordiale. 8 While those studies appear convincing at first glance, process tracing and discourse analysis hint at a quite different explanation of the 1905 and 1911 crises. The Moroccan crises were first and foremost expressions of German decision makers striving for international recognition and respectability.
The Moroccan crises developed around the French government’s attempt to increase their grip on Morocco, at the expense the other European powers holding rights in the country. The reasons pushing German leaders to trigger the Moroccan crises can nevertheless rather be found in the symbolic meaning the French move took in German decision makers’ perceptions. In fact, German decision makers at the time were not per se opposed to the French government’s integration of Morocco in its colonial Empire. 9 What nevertheless sparked their outrage was the fact that Germany’s rights in Morocco, contrary to other powers, were completely passed over and ignored. The analysis of the documents witnessing of the German interpretation and solution seeking inform us explicitly about the emotional frustration and indignation felt by German decision makers. The exclusion of German decision makers from the renegotiation of French rights in Morocco, that is, its unequal treatment by international great power standards, was in clear disaccord with German decision makers’ self-images as a Great European Power. 10 Their normative expectations were not reflected by material reality.
Why the emotional cost of non-reaction in this situation outweighed material costs of international crises can only be understood if we take into consideration the effects such a rejection of the ‘moral’ Self caused for German leaders. The rejection of one’s identity by a significant other is painful, both for cognitive and affective reasons. 11 The work of critical recognition theorist like Axel Honneth has shown that humans need positive valued self-images in order to feel good about themselves. Nevertheless, actors depend on the acceptance and reflection of their self-images by others to have their self-images confirmed and thereby come to take effect in ‘reality’. 12 If the negative face stimulus is repeated, action to redress the unjust perceived reflection of the Self can become an emotional imperative 13 – particularly for irritable virile identities as those displayed by the German political society at the time. In this regard, German decision makers’ reactions to the Morocco affair have to be seen in a moral perspective as demand for respectability necessary to realize their role as a European Great power.
Therefore, the Emperor’s visit to Tangiers, the request of the dismissal of French Minister Théophile Delcassé who was perceived as responsible for the ‘anti-German’ policy orientation, the rejection of a bilateral agreement and the call for an international conference to negotiate international rights in Morocco, as well as finally the sending of the gunboat Panther to Agadir should rather be seen as means of restoring German decision makers’ self-images and with it, the moral balance of power.
Moral inhibitors containing potential escalation
In fact, symbolic pressure was high on the German decision-making process in the 1905 crisis and even more so in 1911. The emotional frustration of German decision makers can be clearly empirically detected. German decision makers felt strongly about international feedback to its demand for respectable treatment. International public speeches and foreign newspaper articles underlining German bellicosity and war proneness caused strong emotional reactions within the German governmental elite. The repeated speculation about a hidden German aggressive international agenda in conjunction with the repeated German governmental assertion that it only wanted its rights in Morocco to be acknowledged, despaired German politicians. As a result, they turned to more threatening language and intransigence in international bargaining, and particularly so in reaction to deterrent threats issued by British and French political leaders. German decision makers’ reaction to Lloyd George’s famous Mansion House speech is one of the most prominent examples to name where threats were answered by counter threats and where calculations in terms of self-worth can be found as decisive.
Nevertheless, the crisis never escalated over a certain point although the Moroccan indignation caused great outcry within the German press and population. What distinguished the 1905/1911 situations from the July crisis of 1914 is that being recognized by members of the European Great power club as respectable was still seen as desirable by the German political elite during the Moroccan crises. Far from being seen as noble art, war at the beginning of the twentieth century was much less valorized as some theorists claim. It no longer represented an ordinary and legitimate tool of imposing one’s will (at least among great powers recognizing each other’s sovereign existence). 14 In July 1914, in comparison, ambitions to appear respectable to the other great European powers had decreased; war appeared in many European leadership circles as inescapable in the long run as self–other images had sensitively changed.
During the Moroccan crises, this sort of fatalist view on the other European states intentions was not present. While French and British foreign policies in the Moroccan crises infuriated German decision makers, they did not attribute those policies to a universal hostile national character of the other. In fact, numerous central policy makers in the German government believed that relations with France, Great Britain and Russia, in spite of the crises, could still be improved (although this belief diminished by the time of the second Moroccan crisis). The British and French governments were not perceived as universally hostile toward Germany and were not reified as one undifferentiated Other. The moral costs of war to the Self in terms of respectability in the 1905 and 1911 crises can therefore be seen as dominating strategic calculations. In 1914, on the contrary, there were considerably fewer moral inhibitors, allowing crisis escalation to as appear morally acceptable.