The Limits of Diplomacy: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War

Aksakal, Mustafa

doi:10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00132.x

Cited by 21 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…If Japan’s intervention can be explained by a combination of incentive, opportunity, and domestic politics, much the same applied to Ottoman Turkey (on Turkey see Gottlieb 1957; Kurat 1967; Trumpener 1968; Silberstein 1970; and Wilson 1995: chapter 9; Yasamee 1995; Aksakal 2008, 2011: Essay 5). Its entry set the Middle East ablaze, spreading fighting to the Caucasus, the Dardanelles, Mesopotamia, Sinai‐Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula.…”

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confidence: 99%

From Balkan Conflict to Global Conflict: The Spread of the First World War, 1914-19181

Stevenson

2011

Foreign Policy Analysis

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confidence: 99%

From Balkan Conflict to Global Conflict: The Spread of the First World War, 1914-19181

Stevenson

2011

Foreign Policy Analysis

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“…Even thereafter, neither side had much appetite to fight alongside the other. “For three long months after signing the German alliance,” writes Aksakal (2011), “[the Ottomans] did everything they could to stay out of the fighting” (198). German officials similarly believed that the Ottoman Empire was “militarily too weak to be of any value” (Aksakal, 2008: 123) and viewed its neutrality as of greater value than its involvement in the war (Aksakal, 2008: 169).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Even thereafter, neither side had much appetite to fight alongside the other. "For three long months after signing the German alliance," writes Aksakal (2011), "[the Ottomans] did everything they could to stay out of the fighting" (198).…”

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confidence: 99%

Bad influence: social networks, elite brokerage, and the construction of alliances

Sazak

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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If all states want to survive, why do some of them enter unpropitious alliances? International Relations (IR) theory’s conventional answer is that imperfect information and systemic complexity result in miscalculation. This explanation begs the question: any alliance that fails is a miscalculated one, so the puzzle is not whether but why such mistakes are made. This article imports from recent scholarship on network theory and interpersonal trust to offer an alternative explanation. Alliances are not entities ethereally formed out of strategic imperatives, but products of interactions within transnational social networks of political, military, and business elites in the prospective allies. Such interactions enable alliances because people who are connected to each other through mutual association or previous exchanges develop mutual trust and gain subjective certainty about each other’s intentions and capabilities, which points at a previously ignored mechanism in alliance behavior: brokerage. In a case study that combines theory-based archival research and social network analysis, this article uses historical evidence on the Turco-German alliance to empirically demonstrate the brokerage role Colmar von der Goltz, the head of the German military mission to the Ottoman Empire, played in the two countries’ relations at the turn of the century and their eventual alliance in the First World War. The analysis points at a potential means of bridging IR, history, and sociology while expanding our understanding of alliance behavior and providing policy-relevant insights on geo-economic competition and the weaponization of interdependence at a time of growing strategic rivalry on the world stage.

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“…Essay 3 by Levy (2011), who has written on the First World War, explores alternative hypotheses to ours. Essay 4 (Dickinson 2011) applies the overall model to Japan’s joining the war and Essay 5 (Aksakal 2011) does the same for the Ottoman Empire. The latter two essays bring historians’ perspectives to our model of diffusion, but also provide an investigation of how well general explanations can be applied to the contexts of key individual cases (and vice‐versa) and thereby the utility of the interaction of social science and historical analyses of the same phenomena.…”

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confidence: 99%

Forum on the Spread of War, 1914-1917: A Dialogue between Political Scientists and Historians

Vasquez

Diehl

Flint

et al. 2011

Foreign Policy Analysis

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PrefaceThe First World War has been the most studied war of any in human history. In part this has been because of its impact and in part because of the complicated and rich theoretical questions it raised. It would seem that little could be said that has not been said before. This is hardly the case, as new evidence still comes to light and new methodologies arise that have not yet been applied. This forum hopes to add to our insights about the First World War by doing three things. First, it utilizes a methodology that has been successful in other areas of social science-network analysis. Second, it applies the methodology to a question that has been somewhat understudied with regard to the First World War-the diffusion of war. Third, it revisits a persistent theoretical question within international relations-the relationship between systemic conditions and foreign policy decision making. The forum also does something that is often advocated and occasionally done, but not as often as it should be-generate a dialogue between quantitative political scientists and diplomatic historians.Although network analysis has a long history in sociology and has been applied extensively to study terrorism, albeit mostly in a descriptive vein, it is only beginning to be used within international relations (e.g., Maoz 2011). We believe that social network analysis is particularly relevant to the question of the diffusion of war. Networks map the linkages-how strong and dense they arebetween actors. As such, they provide ex ante a map of how war might spread once it breaks out. In Essay 1 of the Forum (Vasquez et al. 2011) we present a network analysis of the main diffusion processes that we think were at work in the spread of the First World War. Given the interdisciplinary audience, we do this in a relatively parsimonious and nontechnical manner while still presenting the basic findings and an analysis of the key networks.The question of war diffusion has been studied statistically within international relations, although it has not received the kind of attention devoted to war onset. Yet despite the extensive treatment of the First World War within political science and history, the question of why the two-party war that broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in 1914 spread has spawned comparatively little quantitative data analysis (cf Choucri and North 1975). Perhaps because the role of alliances in spreading the war seems so obvious, scholars have not

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The Limits of Diplomacy: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War

Cited by 21 publications

References 5 publications

From Balkan Conflict to Global Conflict: The Spread of the First World War, 1914-19181

From Balkan Conflict to Global Conflict: The Spread of the First World War, 1914-19181

Bad influence: social networks, elite brokerage, and the construction of alliances

Forum on the Spread of War, 1914-1917: A Dialogue between Political Scientists and Historians

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