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Was World War One Inevitable Without Franz Ferdinand’s Assassination?

28 Jun 2018

Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is immutable. The First World War was a cataclysm that blew apart the world order, wrecked the first great age of globalisation, destroyed or mortally wounded nearly all of the giant empires that governed most of the earth’s population.

It left unstable, illegitimate or even criminal regimes which provoked further wars and instability. 100 years later violence in the Middle East and the Ukraine, and deep divisions across the Balkans, have important roots in what happened during and just after the conflict.

There is a tendency to assume that an event this influential, this earth shatteringly destructive, must have been the product of deep structural forces which forced politicians and society into a war and which mere individual decision makers were powerless to resist. Huge events, so the thinking goes, cannot just be the product of bad luck, a miscommunication, lost order, or individual judgement.

Bad luck can lead to cataclysm

Sadly, history shows us they can. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a good example of when choices mattered. The world was spared a catastrophic nuclear war because Kruschev backed down, and the Kennedy brothers were clever enough to ignore some of the advice coming their way and conceded on deployment of some of their ballistic missiles.

In 1983 Stanislav Petrov disobeyed strict protocols when he was on duty in the Soviet early warning command centre when the equipment told him the USA had just launched a nuclear strike and he rightly assumed it was a malfunction, so did not pass that information up the chain of command. He is known as ‘the man who saved humanity.’

Had the USA and the Soviet Union gone to war in the second half of the 20th century future historians, if there were any, would have wisely pointed out that war between these two super powers, with multiple points of friction, armed as never before with giant arsenals with dodgy command and control mechanisms, and deeply antagonistic world views was absolutely inevitable. Yet it did not happen.

A militaristic high society

There were lots of forces driving Europe to war in 1914. Traditional elites still saw themselves as a warrior caste. Child princes and grand dukes, strutted around in military uniforms, sons of the aristocracy read militaristic books like G. A. Henty before joining Guards Regiments from St Petersburg to London.

Emperors and Kings often appeared in military uniforms. War was regarded as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It was also regarded as natural and inevitable. Every state in Europe had been forged and sustained on the battlefield.

Military conquest had delivered vast empires to the European powers. By 1914 no corner of the globe was free from formal control or heavy influence from Europe or her former colonies like Argentina or the USA. Control over other peoples was normalised. It was even regarded as hugely positive.

Misreading Darwin had convinced many that the strong and powerful should swallow the weak and disorganised. It was the fastest way to spread the benefits of Christian civilisation. Periodic wars would clean out the dead wood and even revitalise societies.

Domestically, elites found themselves confronted with new challenges. Socialism, feminism, modern art and music all shook traditional structures. Many old politicians thought that war was a purgative that would scour away these degenerate influences and force the people to return to old certainties: God, Emperor, tradition.

Franz and his wife, Sophie, leave Sarajevo Town Hall on 28 June 1914, just minutes before their assassination. Credit: Europeana 1914-1918  / Commons.

The assassination and 1914 ‘July crisis’

None of this however made war inevitable. It was the decisions taken by the individuals in response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that ignited the war, triggering a chain of alliances, which like NATO’s Clause V, were actually designed to prevent it. Some decision makers had deeply personal reasons for going to war.

Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf dreamed that victory on the battlefield would allow him to win the hand of the married woman he had become utterly infatuated with. Tsar Nicholas of Russia was so worried about prestige that he thought he had to back Serbia, even if it meant war, because otherwise his own position would be under threat.

The German Kaiser, Wilhelm, was deeply insecure, he panicked just before German troops rolled into France and tried to stop the invasion and send them east towards the Russians instead. His generals told him this was impossible, and the Kaiser backed down, believing himself to be a victim of events rather than their master.

The First World War was not inevitable. Weirdly, it was the belief by too many of Europe’s decision makers that war was inevitable, that made it so.

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US Entry Into World War I

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 30, 2022 | Original: April 6, 2017

When World War I broke out across Europe in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States would remain neutral, and many Americans supported this policy of nonintervention. However, public opinion about neutrality started to change after the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915; almost 2,000 people perished, including 128 Americans. Along with news of the Zimmermann telegram threatening an alliance between Germany and Mexico against America, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. The United States officially entered the conflict on April 6, 1917.

World War I Begins

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand , heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

One month later, on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia . Within a week, Russia, France, Belgium, Great Britain and Serbia had sided against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the Great War, as it was originally called, was underway.

Central Powers

Germany and Austria-Hungary later teamed with the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria and were referred to collectively as the Central Powers. Russia, France and Great Britain, the major Allied Powers, eventually were joined by Italy, Japan and Portugal, among other nations.

On August 4, as World War I erupted across Europe, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed America’s neutrality, stating the nation “must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls.”

With no vital interests at stake, many Americans supported this position. Additionally, America was home to a number of immigrants from countries at war with each other and Wilson wanted to avoid this becoming a divisive issue.

American companies, however, continue to ship food, raw materials and munitions to both the Allies and Central Powers, although trade between the Central Powers and the United States was severely curtailed by Britain’s naval blockade of Germany. U.S. banks also provided the warring nations with loans, the bulk of which went to the Allies.

Lusitania Sinks

On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank the British ocean liner Lusitania , resulting in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans. The incident strained diplomatic relations between Washington and Berlin and helped turn public opinion against Germany.

President Wilson demanded that the Germans stop unannounced submarine warfare; however, he didn’t believe the United States should take military action against Germany.

Some Americans disagreed with this nonintervention policy, including former president Theodore Roosevelt , who criticized Wilson and advocated going to war. Roosevelt promoted the Preparedness Movement, whose aim was to persuade the nation it must get ready for war.

'America First'

In 1916, as American troops were deployed to Mexico to hunt down Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa following his raid on Columbus, New Mexico , concerns about the readiness of the U.S. military grew. In response, Wilson signed the National Defense Act in June of that year, expanding the Army and the National Guard, and in August, the president signed legislation designed to significantly strengthen the Navy.

After campaigning on the slogans “He Kept Us Out of War” and “America First,” Wilson was elected to a second term in the White House in November 1916.

Meanwhile, some Americans joined the fighting in Europe their own. Starting in the early months of the war, a group of U.S. citizens enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. (Among them was the poet Alan Seeger, whose poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” later was a favorite of President John F. Kennedy . Seeger was killed in the war in 1916.) Other Americans volunteered with the Lafayette Escadrille, a unit of the French Air Service, or drove ambulances for the American Field Service.

Submarine Warfare Resumes

In March 1916, a German U-boat torpedoed a French passenger ship, Sussex , killing dozens of people, including several Americans. Afterward, the United States threatened to cut diplomatic ties with Germany.

In response, the Germans issued the Sussex pledge, promising to stop attacking merchant and passenger ships without warning. However, on January 31, 1917, the Germans reversed course, announcing they would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, reasoning it would help them win the war before America, which was relatively unprepared for battle, could join the fighting on behalf of the Allies.

In response, America severed diplomatic ties with Germany on February 3. During February and March, German U-boats sank a series of U.S. merchant ships, resulting in multiple casualties.

Zimmermann Telegram

Meanwhile, in January 1917, the British intercepted and deciphered an encrypted message from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German minister in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhart.

The so-called Zimmermann telegram proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico—America’s southern neighbor—if America joined the war on the side of the Allies.

As part of the arrangement, the Germans would support the Mexicans in regaining the territory they’d lost in the Mexican-American War— Texas , New Mexico and Arizona . Additionally, Germany wanted Mexico to help convince Japan to come over to its side in the conflict.

The British gave President Wilson the Zimmermann telegram on February 24, and on March 1 the American press reported on its existence. The American public was outraged by the news of the Zimmermann telegram and it, along with Germany’s resumption of submarine attacks, helped lead to the United States joining the war.

America Declares War on Germany

On April 2, 1917, Wilson went before a special joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany, stating: “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

On April 4, the Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war. Two days later, on April 6, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 50 in favor of adopting a war resolution against Germany.

Among the dissenters was Rep. Jeannette Rankin of Montana , the first woman in Congress. It was only the fourth time Congress had declared war; the others were the War of 1812 , the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War of 1898.

In early 1917, the U.S. Army had just 133,000 members. That May, Congress passed the Selective Service Act , which reinstated the draft for the first time since the Civil War and led to some 2.8 million men being inducted into the U.S. military by the end of the Great War. Around 2 million more Americans voluntarily served in the armed forces during the conflict.

The first U.S. infantry troops arrived on the European continent in June 1917; in October, the first American soldiers entered combat in France. That December, America declared war against Austria-Hungary (America never was formally at war with the Ottoman Empire or Bulgaria).

When the war concluded in November 1918, with a victory for the Allies, more than 2 million U.S. troops had served at the Western Front in Europe, and more than 50,000 of them died.

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U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian . Why did the US enter World War I? The University of Rochester Newscenter . U.S. Participation in the Great War (World War I). Library of Congress .

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• International History, 1945-1991

Was World War 1 Inevitable?

Karaivanova, Katerina

14 October, 2004

        World War I was a unique event, since it was the first war to involve all major powers of the world. The First World War was inevitable, because of all events that happened prior to it, with exception of the assassination of the Archduke every other cause had a root years earlier, so no matter what, the war would have happened at approximately the same time.

        The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Serbia on June 28, 1914 was the event that directly caused the First World War. (Causes) It was the “spark” for the Great War, but also a coincidence. (Features) If the Serbian nationalist who did it was not in the exactly same café in front of which Franz Ferdinand stopped, this would not have occurred at all. If he was not dead, then Austria – Hungary would not have sent Serbia an ultimatum, and declared war on July 28, 1914. (Features) Thus, this coincidence actually is what directly caused the war at that particular moment. However, even if it hadn’t occurred, the war would have started in the near future.

        One of the things that made the First World War practically inevitable was the strong will for power that some countries had. Germany, for example, was pretty confident that it can become a major power and was ready to do whatever it takes to become one.( 11.2 Causes) So Germany wanted to fight, in order to get more powerful and control more things. Great Britain, France and Russia had similar if not completely the same goals. Thus, sooner or later they would have fought a war for power.

This is a preview of the whole essay

        Imperialism was another important feature that caused World War I and that was one of the reasons for the war to be inevitable. (11.2 Causes) Before 1914 European countries were fighting who will get more territory outside Europe, since that brings more raw materials, and possibilities for trading. (11.2 Causes) At a point though, the territory they could get was already divided among them. So then, the conflict was that each country wanted more territory and had to fight with the others to get it. Thus a war would have started soon, because of territorial conflicts.

        Alliances were also an important feature in making the First World War happen. In an alliance, two or more countries have an agreement to help each other in case of a war. Throughout the years prior the war, two major alliances appeared in Europe. One was the Triple Alliance between Germany, Italy and Austria – Hungary. (The Causes) The other one was the Entente between Russia and France. (Karpilovski) So, if any of those countries was attacked for one or another reason, all five of them would have to join the war. So even if the direct cause of the war was different than the assassination, all of those countries would have been in war.

        The First World War was inevitable. Even if the Archduke was not assassinated, the imperialism, desire for power and alliance system would have caused the war anyway. It was just a matter of time, before some of the countries declared war on another one. The assassination just sped up the course of actions, and led to the first Great War in the World History.

Works Cited

“11.2 Causes of World War I”. PinkMonkey.com . 14 October 2004 <http://www.pinkmonkey.com/studyguides/subjects/worldhis/chap11/w1111201.asp>.

“Causes of World War 1”. Page Wise Inc.  29 September 2004 <http://sdsd.essortment.com/worldwaricaus_nbk.htm>.

“Feature Articles: The Causes of World War One”. 24 March 2004. 29 September 2004 <http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm>.

Karpilovsky, Suzanne, Maria Fogel, and Olivia Kobelt. “The Great War, Causes”. 14 October 2004 <http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/great_war/causes.htm>.

“The Causes for World War 1”. 14 October 2004  <http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/ww1/causes.html>.      

Document Details

• Word Count 667
• Page Count 3
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject History

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Was World War 1 Inevitable? sample essay

The First World War has established an unforgettable memoir in the history books. World War 1 was a massacre of human life and an important event that determined the present state of the modern world. Yes, World War 1 was inevitable. The foundation of the causes of World War 1 can be traced back to several factors that were building up international tension to the ultimate result of war. In the 1900s, the European countries were extremely competitive in extending their influence around the world. Their competitive nature was motivated by the encouragement of nationalism within countries, the entangled alliances between nations, the arms race and the battle to acquire colonies around the world contributed to the small disputes that exploded to the conclusion of World War 1 with the assassination of Austro-Hungarian heir, Franz Ferdinand.

Firstly, nationalism was a chief contributor to promoting competition between the European countries. In the 1900s, the European countries were experiencing a period of massive industrialization which created a surplus of goods and weapons. As a result, foreign markets had to be dominated to sell goods and to ensure the nation’s prosperity. The leaders of Europe instilled patriotic feelings in their citizens and were spreading a belief that their country’s superiority made them destined for greatness. The need to control foreign markets provoked a competition for territory which caused further patriotism among the nations in Europe that evolved into a fear and suspicion of other countries. This patriotic attitude was negatively impacting the relationships among the people living in Europe such as in the multinational Austria-Hungary where there were conflicts between different cultural groups due to the desire to be independent from Austro-Hungarian rule.

Additionally, the Serbians living in Bosnia murdered Franz Ferdinand because they wanted to be free of Austro-Hungarian rule and return to previous Serbian rule as they felt their loyalty was to only Serbia. Austria-Hungary acted on its irrational nationalistic behaviour when it declared war on Serbia for its involvement in the assassination of their heir, even though there was no solid proof of Serbia’s involvement in the crime. Furthermore, the independent nations in Europe were craving more power which put them in a constant battle to prove their superiority to the other countries. This issue was present in many ways in World War 1 such as when Germany was building up their army as a way of increasing their prestige, the French wanting to gain back their two lost provinces from Germany through military means and the Russians wanting another chance to redeem their national honour that had been lost through another war.

The nations of Europe expressed their desires for peace but not at the expense of their national honour. With these attitudes, it was not long before the tension and disagreements led to war. The patriotic attitudes that formed in Europe were stressing relationships negatively and it caused a rise in international tensions. The build up of these disputes were making the outcome of war unavoidable. Though countries looked at each other in unfavourable light, they knew they were vulnerable if they were alone so they decided to form alliances.

Alliances were becoming a very common issue in Europe. Alliances made the European countries pick sides, therefore it divided Europe. The alliances were made in secret thus it produced much distrust and suspicion among European powers. There was the Triple Entente which consisted of France, Russia and Britain who feared the rise of Germany and in return, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy established the Triple Alliance. The general suspicion involved in alliances prevented their diplomats from devising a suitable solution to many of the crises. As well, alliances were mostly created on a war-footing and so heightened the war tension and further contributed to the arms race among the European powers. For example, within four years after the formation of the Triple Entente in 1907, Germany had built 9 dreadnoughts and consequently Britain built 18. This leads to the conclusion that the European powers were ready for war in 1914. It is important to realize that since the European powers made alliances with each other, small arguments concerning one power might lead to a war involving all the powers.

In the case of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, this situation created a serious misunderstanding between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and as a result, the other nations in Europe involved in alliances with either 2 countries were obligated to support them. Alliances were originally created strictly for defensive purposes but by 1910, many of the alliances had changed their character like the Austro-German alliance. Germany promised to give military aid to Austria-Hungary to invade Serbia and on the other hand, Russia provided Serbia with military assistance. As alliances had become instruments of national aggression, the chances of war doubled. The probability of Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia due to the death of their heir increased because Austria-Hungary could rely on the support of Germany to help achieve its goal. In addition, this fragile interlock of alliances relied on the leaders of the European countries to act reasonably however, this was not the case in the situation of World War 1.

The Kaiser of Germany felt his country was being denied the chance to unleash its full potential by Britain so the power hungry ruler was determined to prove to the World that Germany was as capable and powerful as Britain. He was continually being pressured by his military officers to start a war because a war would be good business for the military and his determination to demonstrate the supremacy of his country made Germany a strong contender for war. On the other hand, the Czar of Russia’s lack of participation in his country’s politics symbolized the weak leadership of Russia. The combination of strong military alliances and bad leaders promoted the certainty of the occurrence of the First World War. Also in the early 1900’s, the European powers were building up their armies in the competitive arms race.

The countries in Europe were building up their military as a nation’s power rested on its military strength. The German army was a powerful force but Germany wanted to increase its strength by acquiring colonies. Britain’s vast army protected the British Isles and secured the trade routes within the empire. Germany’s jealously of Britain’s strong army and naval fleet resulted in the arms race. By the end of 1914, Germany had built 17 Dreadnoughts and Britain had built 29 Dreadnoughts. The two rivals were competing for the title of the “Master of the Sea”. The competition placed a strain on relationships between countries and seriously depleted the wealth of countries, making war even more likely. The new technologies such as the dreadnought and poison gas that were developing in the 1900s were making a war more deathly and expensive.

Russia was developing its army to help it gain a strong voice in the matters in Europe and restoring its lost honour by constructing a mighty fighting force to intervene in the conflicts rising in the Balkans. France was preparing for the potential outcome of war by increasing the size of its army. As a result, all the countries in Europe were anticipating a war to resolve the conflicts stirring about each country’s supremacy and the cost of war was a great expense for the countries. Germany was very ready to go to war because it wanted a war. Its economy would receive a good boost from the increase in the ammunitions industry if Germany went to war. The spark that set off the war was small however; Wilhelm was yearning for any reason to start a war. If Germany wanted a war then war was an unavoidable situation because the Germans were trying to find any conflict to commence a war. Furthermore, imperialism was becoming a very popular practice in Europe.

At the beginning of the 20th century, industrialization in Europe required countries to dominate other foreign markets thus establishing another reason for competitiveness within countries. All the European powers except Austria-Hungary and Russia had colonies in Africa and consequently, there were many clashes between countries like France, Britain, Germany and Italy. For example, the French Empire lost its colony in Canada to the British Empire in the Seven Years War. Colonial rivalry among the European powers made the First World War expected due to the bitterly strained relationships between the nations. Germany was looking to acquire more colonies due to its need to strengthen its economy but there were few places left to establish colonies. Germany and Britain’s aggressive battle for colonies intensified the arms race.

The battle for colonies caused the European countries to become more competitive and reach the end verdict of war. Colonial rivalries led indirectly to the formation and strengthening of alliances and ententes such as when Germany was attempting to invade Britain’s and France’s colonies in Africa, Britain and France’s alliance would have strengthened against Germany. The hostile behaviour created by the competition to set up colonies gave more reasons for countries to start to war to resolve past conflicts. Most importantly, World War 1 was fought on the basis of a full World War because of the colonies of each European country that involved mostly all the nations. Imperialism was definitely a key contributor to ensuring the inevitability of the First World War.

World War 1 was the conclusion of many problems that escalated to the final stage of war when Gavrillo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand. The pressures from the problems were causing a rise in international tensions that ultimately reached the peak with the First World War. Firstly, the industrialization occurring in European countries at the beginning of the 20th century was a cause to the nationalistic attitude among the citizens in each country that reached the conclusive result of war to settle the battle for supremacy among the nations.

Alliances contributed to dividing Europe into 2 sides, heightening the war tension and bad leaders pushed Europe to start the First World War. The arms race created further rifts between the European countries but more importantly, Germany wanted a war to prove its military dominance. Lastly, the colonial rivalries increased tensions between countries, making the chances of World War 1 more inevitable. In conclusion, World War 1 was a predictable war. Is World War 3 going to be inevitable too?

Bolotta,A.,Hawkes,C.,Jarman,F.,Keirstead,M.,and Watt,J.Canada Face of Nation.Toronto:Gage Educational,2000.

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Essay: The World’s Biggest Crisis Is the End of Scarcity

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The World’s Biggest Crisis Is the End of Scarcity

How our era of plenty has created the global problems that plague us today..

• United States

Imagine an alien observer, sent undercover to Earth every half-century, to account for the status of human life on the planet. What would she convey to her extraterrestrial colleagues about 2024?

This article is adapted from The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era , Francis J. Gavin, Routledge, 106 pp., $16.95, March 2024.

Before taking her trip, she would peruse her previous reports, noting a few things. In 1974, the world’s leading democratic power, the United States, was in geopolitical retreat and domestic disarray, while the authoritarian Soviet Union appeared increasingly powerful. The most populated state in the world, a Mao Zedong-led China, possessed an economy barely above subsistence level, while the second most populous nation, India, was scarcely better. The global economy suffered from both inflation and slow growth, marked by a chaotic international monetary and financial system. Wars or the threat of wars, both civil and interstate, were ever present in every part of the globe. Nuclear Armageddon hung like a sword of Damocles over the planet.

1974’s report, however, was absolutely Pollyannaish compared to 1924’s. One horrific world war had concluded while laying the seeds for another even more murderous. Imperialism shaped the international order, as a significant percentage of the world’s population was ruled or exploited by European capitals thousands of miles away. A steep economic depression had just ended but was only a precursor to a far deeper, more devastating financial collapse a few years later. Racism, misogyny, and intolerance were the norm. This, however, was paradise compared to the previous chronicle. 1874’s report pointed out that global life expectancy was only 30 and that few living people had not, at some point in their life, been visited by personal and communal violence, deadly disease, misrule and misgovernance, and the threat of famine and disaster. Each preceding half-century report was, in fact, more dire than the last.

The soup line in New York City, circa 1929. Bettman Archives/via Getty Images

Seen from this historical perspective, the alien could send a positively glowing report back home. In 2024, famine and illiteracy have been dramatically reduced, and life expectancy has more than doubled over the past century. Unimaginable volumes of wealth are generated; staggering amounts of information are available to ordinary people, instantaneously; and transformative new labor and lifesaving technologies are created every day. Genocide is rare; tolerance, not prejudice, is increasingly a shared norm; formal colonialism has been thrown on the dustbin of history; and economic recessions are unlikely to turn into crippling depressions.

Most importantly, the incentives for states to fully mobilize their societies to pursue total wars of conquest—perhaps the most pervasive and frightening aspect of world politics in her past chronicles—have all but disappeared. Indeed, states are now expected to protect and provide benefits to their citizens, instead of simply using them as military fodder to vanquish foes and seize land. Ideas and innovation, not territory, are the sources of power in this new world.

In short, the world has made unimaginable progress in taming the steep challenges of scarcity that had plagued humanity for millennia and had been one of the core drivers of total wars for plunder, empire, and conquest. But the success in creating a more prosperous, informed, and secure world for humanity has, unexpectedly, generated a whole new set of planetary challenges that, if not resolved, threatens disaster, if not human extinction.

The remarkable progress in generating unimaginable levels of wealth, information, and security has created the new, more vexing, and arguably more dangerous problems of plenty—unexpected and potentially catastrophic challenges that were created, ironically, by humanity’s impressive efforts to tame scarcity.

Drone to Yacht, an exclusive delivery service, drops a bag of food to boats near Ibiza on Aug. 24, 2021. Jaime Reina/AFP via Getty Images

Five revolutionary shifts were key in creating our present era of plenty. First, an unexpected and voluntary demographic compression unfolded in the developed world, with birth rates falling precipitously while life expectancy markedly expanded; as median ages increased and population growth slowed, the need to conquer additional territory abated. Second, an economic-technological revolution emerged that massively improved agricultural yields and the availability of food, dramatically boosted industrial productivity, and transformed finance capitalism, while improving transportation, housing, and health, and making accessible, affordable fuel bountiful. Third, an information revolution took place, whereby increased literacy and technological change significantly expanded the amount of access to knowledge about the world. Fourth, leaders of the developed world created domestic and international governing institutions and practices, which, among other benefits, generated far greater domestic stability and socio-economic well-being, eliminated great depressions, and provided increased personal as well as collective security, creating a political order that prized order, sovereignty, and, in time, human rights. Finally, ground-breaking new military capabilities, especially thermonuclear weapons, prohibitively increased the costs and risks of great-power wars of conquest.

These revolutions combined to reduce the shadow of famine, disease, and misery that had long fallen upon the human experience, massively increasing total wealth and information while weakening core drivers of territorial expansion, immeasurably improving the quality of life in the developed world. Populations stabilized and aged; food, resources, and markets became more abundant; and disintermediated flows of information exploded.

So what exactly are the problems of plenty? The current world order produces great material output, generated by increasing global exchange, but distributing it fairly among and between populations is contentious. This enormous prosperity generated by the burgeoning trade and industrial prowess has spawned grave risks of climate, ecological, migratory, and public-health catastrophes. The emergence of new technologies, developed largely in the private sector, has solved innumerable problems, while also creating frightening new ones. Surprisingly, an unlimited amount of data and information, no longer intermediated by legacy institutions, generates different though equally fraught dangers as scarce information controlled by religious institutions or the state.

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Yes, fiscal and monetary policy seemed stuck for too long in expansionary mode. But the era also saw the rebalancing of the world economy.

As Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman point out in their forthcoming book, Children of a Modest Star , the list of threats to human welfare, life, and the planet itself generated by plenty is daunting: “climate change, pandemic diseases, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, space junk, growing antibiotic resistance, biodiversity loss, anthropogenic genetic disruptions, declining soil health, upended nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, freshwater depletion, ocean acidification, oceanic plastics—and maybe even emerging technologies with terraforming potential, like bioengineering and artificial intelligence.”

A key feature of the age of plenty is the extraordinary ability to move massive quantities of ideas, money, goods, and especially people around the world quickly, irrespective of borders and territory. But this revolution in transmission does not simply enable good citizens and products to move around the world: unwanted agents—from pathogens to terrorists to bad ideas—can also move far more quickly and effortlessly, often with devastating consequences. Expectations have also been dramatically raised while left unmet. While the age of abundance has promoted tolerance and radical individuality, it has also undermined social cohesion and weakened the sense of common purpose needed to confront these challenges. Governing norms and institutions developed to successfully tame scarcity have been exposed as ill-suited to confront contemporary challenges, generating a crisis of political legitimacy and stoking polarization.

Families arrive to board a train at Kramatorsk central station as they flee Kramatorsk, in the Donbas region of Ukraine on April 4, 2022. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

In an era of plenty where empire, plunder, and conquest make little sense, how should we understand the current turmoil in world politics, marked by atrocities in the Middle East, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and the deepening tensions between the world’s two most powerful states, China and the United States? Why are the leading powers seemingly focused on issues that resonated in the world of scarcity, particularly great-power rivalry and war, while offering inadequate responses to the pressing issues generated by a world of plenty? There are many reasons, but three stand out.

First, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule, revealing the dangers of strategic decisions based on outdated assumptions about conquest. From a narrow national-interest perspective, a desire to control the Donbas made some sense in 1900, when its abundant coal, wheat, defense in depth, and pliant population added to Russia’s power in a world shaped by scarcity and where empire and conquest were the norm. Today, in an age when food and fuel are historically cheap and abundant, land less valuable, conquered territories much more difficult to subdue, alternative grand strategies far more promising, and the world both aghast by and willing to punish Russia for its violations of the norms of sovereignty and human rights, even a successful conquest of Ukraine was unlikely to make Russia much more powerful in the long run. There are many important differences between America’s disastrous post-9/11 wars in the greater Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both, however, reflect poor grand-strategic decisions based on profound misreadings of the nature of power and the incentives of the contemporary international system, misunderstanding the increased difficulty and decreased payoff for using force to conquer territories or subdue uncooperative populations in the age of plenty.

Second, it is important to recognize that there are many causes of war and conflict beyond plunder and imperial conquest. In particular, we must distinguish between the imperial conquest of the past—or an expansive, often unlimited impulse to add territory and colonies—and irredentism, or the finite desire of a state to reclaim territory it believes it has unfairly lost. The most dangerous places in the world—Kashmir, the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait—are often where states are willing to fight, at great cost, to regain territory they believe is naturally and historically their own. While they may seem similar, imperial conquest and irredentism are driven by significantly different factors and forces, are shaped by different cost-benefit calculations, and demand different grand-strategic responses.

Whether China’s ambitions to take Taiwan is an example of irredentism or the desire for global domination is a critical question. Regardless of China’s ultimate goal, however, the changing circumstances wrought by the age of plenty make the return of an imperial, ever-expanding Eurasian empire similar to Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, or Stalin’s Soviet Union very unlikely. Unlike states and empires during the age of scarcity, China has no reason to fear being conquered, nor, even if it wanted to, could it easily invade, occupy, and take over neighbors like India, Japan, and Southeast Asian states, especially if a future successful takeover of Taiwan generated widespread military balancing and nuclear proliferation in the region. In the age of plenty, China might soon discover that the cost-benefit ratio of conquest has been completely inverted over the past century. Even if Beijing wished to pursue imperial conquest, it is hard to imagine how it could succeed, and, if it tried, it would risk its own defeat and collapse.

Finally, it often takes some time—sometimes decades—for people, institutions, and states to understand when their environment and circumstances have changed and to update their assumptions, conceptual lenses, and policy practices accordingly. Millenia of conquest, empire, and violent revolutions—and governing institutions built to deal with those crises—have left deep scars and unchallenged assumptions, and states, leaders, and populations have been slow to recognize the profound changes in demographics, technology, economics, and socio-cultural realities that have done much to tame scarcity while abetting the problems of plenty.

This myopia can come at a steep cost. Today’s leaders may share the characteristics of their tragic predecessors on the eve of World War I. Faced with a rapidly changing world and global phenomena they do not understand, they fall back on their long-held, unspoken, and often unexamined beliefs about how the world should work, as opposed to trying to better understand how the world does work. As terrifying as the problems of scarcity and the geopolitical behaviors they unleash can be, at least they are familiar. Leading powers and their leaders and institutions understand how to play the great-power political game that dominated the past. The problems of plenty, and the solutions required, are unfamiliar, disorienting, and vexing. Yet a melting planet, mass migrations, another even more lethal pandemic, destabilizing new technologies, and the cancers of inequality, deep polarization, and sociocultural fragmentation and alienation threaten the United States and the planet far more than the kind of expanding industrial, mobilized Eurasian hegemon that plagued the first half of the 20th century.

An IBM computer center that processes agricultural data to produce projected figures for farming, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, circa 1973. Alan Band/ Getty Images Archive

How would our alien friend end her report? She would point out that the institutions, practices, theories, and policies that successfully tamed scarcity—and that dominated current debates—were woefully ill-suited to meet the problems of plenty. The costs of failing to update core, often unspoken assumptions about how the world works and what matters would be highlighted, and that by preparing for the last war, Earth might tragically and unnecessarily get it. Her report would chide the thinkers and statesmen of 2024 for obsessing over the return of great-power competition and regurgitating the works of geopolitical thinkers like Mahan and Mackinder in order to control oceans and land that, if the problems of plenty are not confronted, may be dying and uninhabitable before long.

Visiting the planet every half-century has made her, unlike her Earth friends, an optimist. Humankind never goes the easy way around, and given the stakes, they could easily mess up—by starting World War III or being unprepared for a more lethal pandemic than COVID-19, unrestrained artificial intelligence, or the deadly consequences of the climate crisis. She reminds herself, and wishes the citizens of the planet could remember, that few living in 1974, 1924, or 1874 could have imagined the extraordinary progress earthlings have made since. Which, perhaps against her better judgment, gives her hope that she will get to visit in 2074 and be impressed once again.

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli distinguished professor and the director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his most recent book, The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era .

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The Cowardice of Guernica

I n the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—she refused service in the Israeli military, for years has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

[ Read: Beware the language that erases reality ]

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

[ Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing ]

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.

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A forever war, more repression, Putin for life? Russia’s bleak post-election outlook

The president will use his inevitable win in the polls as a mandate for continuing the assault on Ukraine and going after domestic ‘elites’

F or a few weeks in 2022, Vladimir Putin’s world was unravelling fast. Russian troops had failed to take Kyiv and the west was coalescing around Volodymyr Zelenskiy, freezing Russian assets abroad and imposing unprecedented sanctions. Putin himself appeared unhinged, railing against Lenin or appealing to Ukrainians to overthrow their “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”.

As Russians go to the polls on Friday in an election with only one possible result, the Kremlin will claim a mandate for that war, enshrining Putin’s bloodiest gamble as the country’s finest moment. The Russian leader has often succeeded by presenting his opponents with only bad and worse options; these elections are no different. Now convinced that he can outlast the west, Putin is seeking to wed Russia’s future, including an elite and a society that appear resigned to his lifelong rule, to the fate of his long war in Ukraine.

“You are dealing with the person who started this war; he’s already made a mistake of such a scale that he can’t ever admit it to himself,” a former senior Russian official told the Guardian. “And he can’t lose that war either. For him that would be the end of the world.

“We all – thanks to Putin – have been led into such a shitshow that there is no good outcome. The only options go from very bad to catastrophic,” he added. And if Putin begins to lose, the person added, then “we may all see the stars in the sky” – suggesting a potential nuclear war.

Putin’s re-election campaign, which has included a more than £1bn propaganda push, according to leaked documents obtained by the Estonian outlet Delfi and reviewed by the Guardian, has put the war front and centre, as he envisages a militarised society stripped of its liberal trimmings.

Insiders said that while his team had insisted that he focus on a positive agenda of social spending or cultural achievements he instead chose to declare his candidacy while speaking with veterans of the war, whom he has said should help form a new “management class” to replace the old, disgraced elite.

And he has appeared confident on TV as he suggests he is ready to continue fighting until victory.

“It would be ridiculous for us to start negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition,” Putin said in an interview this week with the propagandist Dmitry Kiselev.

One of Putin’s goals in these elections is to “deprive most Russians of the ability to imagine a future without him”, wrote Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman in Foreign Affairs. And the prospects for his next term, or even two terms until 2036, appear clear: a forever war, an increasingly militarised society, and an economy dominated by the state and military spending.

Consolidated elite

In May 2022, Boris Bondarev, a counsellor at the Russian mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva, resigned in protest against the war. At the time, he accused the foreign ministry of “warmongering, lies and hatred” and wrote: “never have I been so ashamed of my country”.

Two years later, Bondarev remains the only Russian diplomat to have publicly defected to the west since February 2022. Asked why, he said: “Because I am the only one maybe without a sound mind,” adding: “All the others are sitting at home, probably feeling pretty good, even better now. They are getting their salaries, can still travel and are not mobilised for the war. They now think, soon we will win and we will be able to travel to the west again once sanctions are lifted.” He said he had been looking for a job since defecting.

Only a handful of top businessmen, including the billionaire banker Oleg Tinkov and Yandex’s Arkady Volozh, have spoken out against the war, and they have done so from relative safety outside the country. Both no longer have businesses in Russia.

There was a moment when others could have been peeled away from the Kremlin, observers believe. But as Russia has stabilised its battlefield position and its economy, and western support for Ukraine has become mired in political infighting, the shifting balance of power has discouraged further defections.

“I don’t talk with people still in Russia about their futures,” one major businessman who has had sanctions imposed on him told the Guardian. “That is a stupid question. Everyone has already made their choice.”

At the same time, the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the crackdown on all opposition politics in the country have raised the stakes for any perceived opposition to Putin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the ex-oligarch who was imprisoned under Putin and is now a member of the exiled opposition, said that the moment for a schism among the elite “has been missed.”

“Without suffering an obvious military defeat,” he said, conflicts among the elite would not provoke “serious change, at least while Putin is alive”.

Increasingly, Russia has sought to lure back the more than half-a-million people who fled the country after the war began, including some of its most educated and wealthiest citizens.

“I don’t believe there will be any public defections,” said the businessman who has received sanctions. “And what for? Clearly, it hasn’t worked out very well for those who left. Those who say it should be easy to speak out [against the war] don’t understand the realities and the consequences.”

Forever war footing

Although Putin’s war planners envisaged a lightning attack that would take Kyiv in a matter of days, diplomats, insiders, observers and activists largely believe that Putin is now ready for a far longer conflict that could take years, if not decades.

“Putin appears to have dug in; he will not stop the war unless he is forced to do it,” said a senior western diplomat in Moscow. “We do not believe he is serious about any peace talks and it would be up to Ukraine anyway to decide them. From my rare meetings with Russian diplomats, I get a sense that they are feeling more self-assured than after the start of the war.”

Russia is devoting an estimated 7.5% of its GDP to military spending, the highest proportion since the cold war, and the government’s lavish spending has meant that factories making weapons, ammunition and military equipment are working double or triple-shift patterns, and welders collecting overtime can make as much as white-collar workers. A defence insider predicted that levels of spending would only continue to increase, he said, calling the change a “new permanent phase” that could last “many years”.

On the home front, restaurants in Moscow and St Petersburg remain full, projecting an image of normality, “parallel imports” – importing of western goods via third countries – and other new schemes have sought to prevent Russians from noticing a loss of creature comforts and luxury products.

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“The Kremlin wants to cosplay the Soviet Union but without the food and product deficits,” said a well-connected source in Moscow media circles. “Their generation remembers the consumer goods deficits really well and wants to prevent them at all costs.”

Publicly, Putin has played down the potential for an all-out war with the west, saying this week he did not believe that the United States was planning on nuclear war by modernising its strategic forces. But, he added, “If they want to, what is there to do? We are ready.”

And while Putin claimed he is “ready to negotiate” with Ukraine this week, he also dismissed “wishful thinking” and smeared Zelenskiy as a drug user. “I don’t want to say this, but I don’t trust anyone,” he told Kiselev of potential security guarantees from the west.

“I believe any signals that Putin might be sending about wanting peace are just a way for him to delay western weapon deliveries to Ukraine,” said Bondarev.

Even anti-war Russians regularly parrot views that the west bears some culpability for propping up the Ukrainian side, either by deterring possible moments to conclude a peace or prolonging a conflict that they believe Putin will never allow himself to lose.

“It’s clear that this war isn’t going to end with a victory for either of the sides,” said the former senior Russian official. “It won’t end. It will end as a frozen conflict. And that frozen conflict is going to continue for 100 years.”

If Donald Trump is re-elected US president in November, it will put pressure on Ukraine to concede territory as he has vowed to end the war “in one day”.

Societal transformation

Speaking before Russia’s legislature last month, Putin announced an initiative called the Time of Heroes, a programme meant to bring veterans of the invasion of Ukraine into the upper ranks of government.

But the announcement was also clearly targeted at Russia’s liberal elite, whom Putin said had disgraced themselves through insufficient patriotism since the outbreak of the war.

“You know that the word ‘elite’ has lost much of its credibility,” he said. “Those who have done nothing for society and consider themselves a caste endowed with special rights and privileges – especially those who took advantage of all kinds of economic processes in the 1990s to line their pockets – are definitely not the elite.”

Even senior members of the pro-Kremlin cultural elite, who often mingle with senior Russian officials and meet Putin, now find their positions are no longer secure.

In a crackdown that highlighted Russia’s conservative shift, household names like pop icon Philipp Kirkorov were forced to make tearful apologises after footage spread of them attending a raunchy “almost naked” celebrity party in Moscow .

“For many of the elites, the naked scandal backlash was the most alarming event of the year; it shook them even more than Prigozhin’s rebellion,” said the Moscow media source. “Many realised that their private lives would no longer be off-limits.”

Putin’s recent rhetoric could summon images of a Mao Zedong-style restructuring of Russian society reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, although most observers played down that comparison.

“The government is clearly worried about the loyalty and morale of the military, and the defence industry,” said the person close to that industry. “They know that they need to at least choose some examples of people who fought in the war who are now in positions of power.”

But the programme is part of a larger issue that will trouble the Russian state for coming years and has been lobbied for by the country’s loudest war hawks: how to manage the influx and return of tens of thousands of soldiers, many with serious injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, thousands of whom were recruited from Russian prisons.

“Now our guys, fighters, are returning from their training, many of them are very smart people with education and experience, of course, they should get their place in the management apparatus,” Anastasia Kashevarova, a former assistant to State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and one of the most vocal pro-war bloggers, told the Guardian.

Under constitutional changes he orchestrated in 2020, Putin could remain in power until 2036, when he will be 83 years old.

For young Russians, often referred to as Generation Putin, another decade looms under the increasingly authoritarian rule of the only president they have ever known.

“I am pessimistic about the long-term prospects of Russia,” said the businessman living under sanctions. “I would advise young people with a good education to leave and build a new future abroad. Russia is not going to run out of money … It will just be a stagnant, militaristic nation.”

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‘Masters of the Air’ Review: Hanks and Spielberg, Back at War

The team behind “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” returns to World War II and the Greatest Generation, this time piloting B-17 bombers.

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By Mike Hale

This review contains spoilers for the entire season of “Masters of the Air.”

When Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg created “Band of Brothers” in 2001, in the wake of their partnership on the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan,” they were the most prominent celebrators of what had become known as the Greatest Generation. Twenty-three years later, with the release of “Masters of the Air,” they’ve become their own greatest generation: upholders of an old-fashioned style of television making, fighting their chosen war over and over again.

Created by John Shiban and John Orloff based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same title, “Masters of the Air” — which wrapped up its nine-episode run on Apple TV+ this week — was Hanks and Spielberg’s third mini-series saluting American troops in World War II. (Gary Goetzman joined them as executive producer for “The Pacific” in 2010 and for “Masters.”) The latest band of brothers chosen for dramatization and valorization was the 100th Bomb Group, the “bloody Hundredth,” based in England and decimated during its daytime runs over Europe from 1943 to 1945.

The first — and for many viewers, perhaps, sufficient — observation to be made about “Masters” is that the money, more than ever, was right up there on the screen. These producers are Eisenhower-class when it comes to marshaling staff and materiel, as evidenced by the solid five minutes of closing credits, and both the quotidian recreation of an air base in the green English countryside and the special-effects extravaganzas of airborne battle were visually captivating.

Some of the images of mayhem in the skies as the American B-17s and their crews are torn apart by German flak and fighters were the kind that will stick with you even if you would rather they didn’t, like the rain of wings and engines slowly falling after two bombers collide or like the airman sliding through the sky and being halved by a plane’s wing.

But being absorbingly pictorial (the distinguished roster of directors included Cary Joji Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Tim Van Patten and the team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck) only contributed to the sense that the show existed in amber — more of a well-preserved fossil than a compelling drama. You could argue that this was the inevitable result of trying to celebrate 1940s-style patriotism one time too many. But the issues with “Masters” are artistic rather than cultural or political or factual.

In condensing Miller’s broad-ranging history, while also converting it into a drama extending over nearly eight hours, Orloff and Shiban ended up with an ungainly, disjointed story that never gave itself the time or the space to grow. “Masters” felt like a catalog of war movie genres — the home-front melodrama, the aerial-combat blockbuster, the P.O.W. escape adventure, the behind-enemy-lines spy thriller, the racial-harmony drama — strung together in fealty to actual events but with disregard for dramatic development.

To be fair, the satisfaction offered by “Band of Brothers” and, to a lesser extent, “The Pacific” had to do in part with a focus on groups of men enduring a particular gantlet of action together. The history behind “Masters,” more diffuse geographically and temporally, was certainly more difficult to adapt. But Orloff and Shiban make choices that are in some cases puzzling, in others explicable but dramatically wrongheaded.

A female British soldier — vividly played by Bel Powley — is revealed to be a spy, last seen walking down a street in occupied Paris, and then completely disappears from the show, fate unknown. The all-Black Tuskegee Airmen appear out of nowhere in the next to last episode, as if the reels had gotten mixed up; several of them end up in a prison camp with the show’s white main characters, and one is centrally involved in planning an escape, before they, too, are dropped from the action. A downed pilot rescued by the Russians happens upon an abandoned concentration camp littered with corpses, in a brief scene with a dreary sense of obligation.

The primary narrative, centered on the pilots Buck Cleven (Austin Butler) and Bucky Egan (Callum Turner), also takes a tortuous path. It’s easy to see why you would want to build the story around the best friends Cleven and Egan, with their harmonious nicknames and sterling records of service. But the facts dictate that partway through the series, both ditch their planes and are taken prisoner, radically changing the feel and look of the show in a way that attenuates the drama and diminishes the emotional investment the viewer has been building.

Those events could have been shaped artfully, but “Masters” doesn’t manage it. Cleven’s initial disappearance occurs off screen and without explanation, setting up a surprise prison-camp reunion with Egan several episodes later; it may match real events, but onscreen it feels manipulative and obvious. Neither that meeting nor their second reunion back at the air base has the emotional force it should have; the moments feel like boxes being checked.

Contributing to the general sense of disorganization, the show doesn’t do a good job of differentiating and particularizing the members of its large cast, as airmen die by the hundreds and replacements are brought in. Especially in the aerial scenes, behind oxygen masks and goggles, the crew members are hard to sort out, adding a layer of confusion that makes it harder to be invested in their fates.

The unfortunate thing about “Masters” is that it isn’t doing what it should for some of the actors in the cast, the way “Band of Brothers” showcased Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston. Butler and especially Turner are fine performers, and they’re wonderful to watch in the early episodes, as the 100th arrives in England, prepares for battle and embarks on its disastrous early missions.

Butler’s reserved charisma and Turner’s witty, sparkling-yet-barbed energy play off each other in an absorbing and moving way, and you want to see where the toll of the nightmarish bombing runs takes them. (Nate Mann is also excellent in the more one-dimensional role of the dedicated replacement pilot Robert Rosenthal, who picks up the narrative slack after Cleven and Egan go down.)

Once they’re in the German camps, though, playing out familiar contraband-radio and clandestine-plotting scenarios, the life goes out of their performances, and out of the series as a whole. Butler and Turner deserved better, but Egan and Cleven, who died in 1961 and 2006, respectively, get their due in the scene many viewers probably care about most: the biographical denouement showing their real faces and detailing their postwar lives. Even with Hanks and Spielberg involved, when you put history right next to fiction, history tends to win.

Mike Hale is a television critic for The Times. He also writes about online video, film and media. More about Mike Hale

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