The Chinese island build-up in the South China Sea and its steady expansion into the Indian Ocean augur ill for not just law-based international order but the very essence of global and regional peace. There are some historical parallels to this that should cause alarm in world capitals. Around 1895, Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm II and the powerful Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, decided that the hegemony of Britain ought to be challenged and that the best way to do that was to build a powerful navy.
Britain’s dominant global position and its vast colonial empire were built around its navy; in the wake of the German actions, the political and military leaders in London felt an imminent threat to their power position and existence as an empire. However, Britain did not immediately start a preventive war, and it took nearly two decades for the war clouds to emerge over Europe.
All it took was a spark in Sarajevo, the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, on 28 June 1914. But the die had been cast sometime back when Berlin decided to challenge the one critical element of power that the British equated with their survival as an imperial power. Like the outbreak of wildfire in the hot summer season, the structural conditions in the form of rigid alliances were present for the mayhem to begin and escalate in Europe, that too in a massive way, as no firefighters were present to stop the carnage!
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