The Fuse
The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History by Odd Arne Westad
In The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History, Yale University historian Odd Arne Westad explores the idea that to understand the risks we face in the present we should look at the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- a period when Great Powers regularly clashed, when nationalism defeated internationalism.
As Westad observes at the outset, today “less than half of 1% of the world’s population has experienced Great Power war.”[1] Coddled by the safety of the postwar World War II era, the vast majority of us grew up during the Cold War -- a stable-ish world governed by two Superpowers -- or the post-Cold War era, in which just one Superpower reigned. During these eras, we learned to think of the clashes of Great Powers as a vestige of history, rather than a danger that could return under new conditions.
Westad notes will change.
“We are entering a phase where multiple Great Powers jostle for supremacy within regions and within human endeavors such as nuclear technology, artificial intelligence, or space exploration,” he writes.[2] “This world is unlike anything any of us have experienced in our lifetime. But it does look quite a bit like the world of more than 100 years ago, from the late 19th century to 1914.”[3]
Westad argues that today’s Great Powers, to avert looming risks, urgently need to seek compromise wherever they can. This will require making difficult decisions over complex sovereign and territorial questions which could otherwise potentially serve as triggers for Great Power disputes, such as Taiwan and the South China Sea. It will require resolution in wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. And it will necessitate arms control over sensitive technologies, like artificial intelligence.
Otherwise, the consequences could be devastating.
The book is clearly inspired by the scale of devastation that arose in the past when Great Powers clashed. “The total number killed in battles among Great Powers in the hundred years between 1815 and 1914,” he writes, “is smaller than the number of casualties at the Somme in the summer of 1916.”[4]
Concerned about this scale, Westad weaves that past into the present. He starts with an exploration of the various Great Powers’ circumstances in the 19th century. He highlights the example of Britain, indisputably the strongest power in the mid-19th Century, with its leadership in industrial output and technological and military innovation and production essentially unrivaled.
By the end of the century, he observes, political attitudes based on fear had contributed to Britain’s decline. Westad suggests that these attitudes present a helpful comparator with the United States today: as Britain did then, the Great Power’s anxieties and fears led to the sudden appearance of tariffs leveled by a country that was once “the free-trade nation in the world.”[5] Britain suddenly did not wish to behave like the guarantor of the order it helped build, much like the United States today.
Another characteristic of British society of the time resembling the United States of today: inequality. “In 1910, the top 5 percent in Britain owned almost 90 percent of the country’s wealth.”[6] Compare that with the United States: “In the United States today, the top 5 percent own around two thirds, and that share is rising.”[7]
The comparator that he makes with Wilhelmine Germany -- growing rapidly after unification into a credible superpower -- is the dizzying rise of China. China’s ascent, like Germany’s, has created a potentially dangerous combination of capability, grievance, and impatience.
Westad acknowledges that many of the global institutions created in the wake of World War I and II, which were designed to contribute to peace and development and to avert Great Power conflict, have been thwarted, bent, ignored, or exploited by states that do not share the assumptions behind them. However, he seems to downplay this fact. Trump’s critique of the postwar system has political force for a reason Westad too often overlooks: the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, NATO, and other multilateral fora have not always been respected by the states operating inside them.[8]
But Westad nevertheless effectively shows how institutional weakness, domestic resentment, and nationalist confidence can reinforce one another until compromise becomes impossible and tensions come to a boil. “Economic, resentment, aided by fears, guided by nationalist beliefs, were key aspects of what led toward war in 1914,” he writes.[9]
This is where the book is especially good: not just on current constellations of power and comparisons with the past, but on the emotions -- especially the emotions of strong leaders -- that make this power so dangerous. Westad’s most important subject is fear -- the fear of Great Powers over their own decline, the fear of Great Powers about encirclement or entrapment by other Great Powers, the fear of Great Powers of humiliation by others, and the fear that waiting is wrong.
“Very few leaders inherently believe that a major war is the best outcome for their country,” he writes. “What pushes decision-makers toward war is usually fear, and often fear of the debilitating kind, preventing them from taking action that could move away from military conflict, or at least buying time in which peace can be negotiated.”[10]
That observation helps explain why wars can arrive even when nearly everyone wants them averted. Fear narrows the imagination.
The most immediate test is Taiwan. Westad emphasizes how much uncertainty still surrounds China’s military capability and its willingness to act. The risk is not only that China might decide to move; it is that the United States, Taiwan, China, and other regional partners might misread each others’ resolve or intentions.
Westad believes that even in the event of a quarantine or blockade of Taiwan, deathly military conflagration would likely spiral as a result. That judgment is bleak but it aligns with his study of events following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand: once Great Powers begin testing red lines, events tend to overrun the intentions of leaders that set them in motion.
The danger is not confined to Taiwan. Westad identifies other potential hotspots, including India and Pakistan, India and China, North Korea and South Korea, the Philippines, Russian revanchist wars of aggression (including Ukraine and potentially the Baltic states, especially if the United States leaves NATO), and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The final accelerant is speed. That may be the book’s other most alarming point. As Trump’s conduct on X demonstrates almost daily, modern communications do not necessarily make leaders wiser; they may instead make them more reactive. A rumor, cyberattack, blockade, or missile launch could produce a chain of decisions before diplomacy has time to work. This might be why books like Nuclear War: A Scenario or the recent political thriller film A House of Dynamite have captivated so much attention in recent years.
This is also why Westad’s conclusion is both realistic and urgently cautionary. Great Powers must compromise not because it is satisfying, but because the alternative is so utterly catastrophic.
—The Director
[1] 3
[2] 4
[3] 4
[4] 15
[5] 35
[6] 80
[7] 81
[8] 106
[9] 109
[10] 65