The US is, by some measures, about to cede to China its place as the largest economy. Some say that an era of Chinese world leadership cannot be far behind. But cast an eye over the history of America’s own rise, and one thing is clear: power did not come from economic might alone.
America’s trajectory was unprecedented. It took the first world war – an earth-shattering convulsion in global politics – not just to hoist the US into the role of global leader but even to create that role.
In this centenary year everyone is talking about the Great War. But what is it that we are talking about? It is mainly the hoary questions of war guilt and the diplomatic crisis of July 1914 that have exercised the historians. Amid arguments over whether Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm was guilty or whether Europeans were sleepwalkers stumbling into war, the question that is too easily lost is: why should we care? Why should a dynastic clash, triggered by an assassination in the Balkans 100 years ago, matter in today’s interconnected world?