It was possible, I would have told myself as a teenager, to die in the spring of 1914 and believe that you were leaving behind a much better, generally rational and calm world, with an unlimited horizon for human development. In a world where George V was the King of Britain, Wilhelm II was the German Kaiser, and Nikolai II was the Russian Tsar, but everyone called Queen Victoria “Grandma”, it was impossible to imagine a grandchildren’s war.

In retrospect, we received many explanations for the outbreak of the war. The Napoleonic Wars increased national unrest; the unification of Germany, like the unification of Italy, also radicalised national aspirations across Europe. Germany was “forced” to hurry and go to war before Russia, which was stronger but also more cumbersome, entered the war and prevented the implementation of the German “Schlieffen Plan”, and more. The direct cause was, of course, the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by the Bosnian-Serbian student Gavrilo Princip on July 28, but this event is generally treated as a trigger rather than the fundamental reason for the outbreak of war.

However, the dominant factor in the outbreak of the war, which turned the 20th century into a century of unprecedented bloodshed, was the alliances that had been forged between the various countries before the war. They were created, of course, in order to prevent wars by deterring potential attackers, but in practice they created traps that dragged the powers into a dance of demons whose dimensions they could not imagine. As time passes, the “Great War” appears to have become “World War I, the prelude to World War II”, so that, in fact, it can be seen as a single war during which there was an exchange of alliances.

Russia’s commitment to Serbia placed it in conflict with Austria-Hungary. The alliance between France and Russia was activated because of the French commitment to Russia; Germany invaded Belgium, and the agreement between Belgium and Britain caused Britain to act against Germany and defend Belgium. The agreement between Japan and Britain required Japan to support Britain and fight against Germany, and the war broke out in all its murder and cruelty, with its victims and its terrible length.

The danger of World War III has often surfaced, but it has not occurred. Some attribute this to the fact that the alliances that contributed to causing the world war have been replaced by NATO, which is more flexible and does not dictate an automatic response to joining a war, but rather limits participation to a state of defence only. Even then, the nature of participation in the collective effort remains a matter of discretion.

The problem is that the line between attack and defence can be very blurry, and the risk of being dragged into a war that your ally defines as aggression while you define it as a reaction still exists today. Within NATO, there are countries that have turned their backs on democracy but remain part of agreements signed a generation ago. NATO could establish an objective method to determine whether a particular member is no longer democratic, for example, by relying on the annual report of Freedom House as a crucial element in its decision-making process.

It would be a shame to give up a NATO partner, but non-democratic members could drag the entire Alliance into an unnecessary and capricious war. The experience of 1914 requires extreme caution. The fact remains that even the cousins who ruled over European countries found themselves swept into the hell of an unnecessary war.