Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers provides a compelling account of the origins of the First World War.[i] This war, as we know, was cataclysmic: 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. As Clark shows, Europe’s decision-makers were aware of these risks: “British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith wrote of the approach of “Armageddon” … [and] French and Russian generals spoke of a “war of extermination” and the “extinction of civilisation””. But while those in power were conscious of the coming horror, they did not grasp it “in a visceral way”. In this sense, the “protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers”; the dangers remained abstract, dream-like even.
Discussion of Clark’s ideas in relation to the war in Ukraine overlooks the disjuncture he draws between head and heart. That’s a mistake, as it’s precisely this kind of disconnect that characterises western policy and puts us on a dangerous path.