The elusive explanation: balance of power ‘theory’ and the origins of World War I

Martin Wight once asked why the balance of power ‘has inspired no great political writer to analysis and reflection’? Looking back in 1923, Winston Churchill wrote: One rises from the study of the causes of the Great War with a prevailing sense of the defective control of individuals upon world fortunes. It has been well said, ‘there is always more error than design in human affairs’. The limited minds even of the ablest men, their disputed authority, the climate of opinion in which they dwell, their transient and partial contributions to the mighty problem, that problem itself so far beyond their compass, so vast in scale and detail, so changing in its aspect—all this must surely be considered before the complete condemnation of the vanquished or the complete acquittal of the victors can be pronounced.