How far is it correct to say that the First World War was fought essentially for the preservation of balance of power?

The balance-of-power case

Since 1871 a German Empire had sat in the middle of Europe with industry, a general staff, and, under Wilhelm II, a Weltpolitik fleet that frightened Britain. Bismarck’s old isolation of France gave way to a Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy against a Triple Entente of France, Russia, and Britain. Britain’s entente was not a blank cheque. Naval rivalry and the Schlieffen plan for a two-front war made every crisis a test of who would be isolated. When Austria moved on Serbia after Sarajevo, Russia backed a Slav cause. Germany backed Vienna. France stood by Russia. Britain entered over Belgian neutrality. That was the old British habit of not letting a single power own the Channel coast. In that story, 1914 is balance of power pursued by war.

• German rise: Industry and navy looked like a bid for hegemony.
• Alliance blocs: Two camps turned a Balkan war into a continental one.
• British tradition: Britain sought to prevent a hostile dominant power in Western Europe.

What the formula leaves out

Imperialism made the blocs global. Morocco, the Baghdad railway, Africa, and the Ottoman lands were extra-European stakes. Nationalism in the Balkans and among subject peoples of Austria-Hungary was not only a diplomatic move. It was a demand for states of their own. Arms races and railway mobilisation plans meant that once a cabinet chose war, the trains ran. Fischer’s reading of German war aims, and the later Versailles war-guilt clause, stress aggression, not only equilibrium. Socialist and liberal opinion at the time named capitalist rivalry. Colonial soldiers died for a European conflict they had not designed.

Italy’s switch and the Ottoman and Japanese entries show a war that rewrote the balance rather than preserving a known one. The peace of 1919 created new imbalances. It left a punished Germany, a dissatisfied Italy, and a revolutionary Russia.

• Empire: Extra-European stakes were not a sideshow.
• Nation: Serbia, Poland, Czech, and South Slav questions were not mere weights on a scale.
• Contingency: Blank cheques, misread telegrams, and elite honour codes also mattered.

How far “essentially”

It is correct that cabinets spoke the language of encirclement, prestige, and equilibrium. Britain’s entry fits an old balance reflex. It is incorrect to say the war was essentially only that. Balance of power was the usual method of great-power diplomacy. Imperialism and nationalism ran through that method. Without the German–British naval race the system still might have held. Without Sarajevo and mobilisation timetables it might have held a few years more. The word “essentially” overstates a real strand.

A fair verdict is this. The war was fought among other things to stop a feared German hegemony. That was a balance-of-power aim. It was also fought to settle who would own colonial margins and whose nation would exist.