The Long Fuse Essay

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The Long Fuse

In Laurence Lafore's book titled The Long Fuse he discusses the conflicts of World War I and describes how Austria-Hungary was considered to be the "Second Sick Man of Europe". During a time when Europe seemed to be moving faster towards progressive ideas and towards the sweeping away of old institutes, Turkey was the original Sick Man of Europe, mostly caused constitutional and national problems. The European order was based upon the assumption of nations in 1871, a kind of mutual protection, and as Austria was not a nation, it was in line after Turkey to become the second Sick Man of Europe. The term "Sick Man", in referring to a nation, according to Laurence Lafore, would be in circumstances that could lead to a type
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Turkey, Serbia, and Russia were not pleased with Austria-Hungary, and luckily for Austria-Hungary, Japan had just depleted the Russian army to small threat. Germany and Austria-Hungary had planned strategic times of attack, and with the Russia army depleted they figured the time should be then. Just as in the previous autumn, the campaigns were too promptly decisive to give Austria-Hungary much time to engage in the ponderous process of making up its duel mind (pg. 177). The military structure that developed was that Russia would back up Serbia in an Austrian-Hungary invasion, and German would back up Austria-Hungary if France and Russia imposed on their invasion. Laurence Lafore discussed two factors that led to problems for Germany and Austria-Hungary, which would lead to Austria-Hungary becoming the second Sick Man. The difficulty was partly constitutional and partly national, these issues led to conflicts in foreign policy. Germany thought Russia must and could be prevented from interfering, and the Russians thought that Austria must be persuaded or threatened into abandoning its project. They were going to provoke a war in which they were not ready start (pg.251). They were also unaware that Great Britain would be getting involved. In a way everyone was bluffing, expecting a diplomatic resolution, but the circumstances that were in place led the world on a path to war that couldn't be stopped. Austria-Hungary quite possibly