Is 2026 the New 1914?

This episode unpacks unsettling parallels between today’s increasingly multipolar world and geopolitical conditions on the eve of World War I, and reviews lessons from history about the cost of great-power war.

Host:

James M. Lindsay (cfr.org/experts/james-m-lindsay), Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR

Guest:

Odd Arne Westad (jackson.yale.edu/directory/odd-arne-westad), the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs, Yale University

We Discuss:

• Why Odd Arne Westad believes that the geopolitical dynamics of 2026 more closely resemble those of 1912 and 1913 than those of 1939 or the Cold War era.

• How an era of collapsing globalization, rising nationalism, and newly powerful states echoes the conditions in the decades before World War I.

• How policymakers can learn from history without ransacking it for convenient analogies.

• Why Europe stumbled into war in 1914 despite deep economic integration.

• What Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers and Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion can still teach about miscalculation.

• Why nuclear weapons and economic interdependence may be weaker restraints on war than we assume.

• The similarities between Belgium in WWI and Taiwan today as geopolitical flashpoints, and what Westad learned on a recent trip to Beijing.

• The three steps Westad would take to keep today’s great powers from sleepwalking into catastrophe.

Mentioned on the Episode:

Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (gutenberg.org/ebooks/38535), Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.

Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History (penguin.co.uk/books/471572/the-coming-storm-by…), Allen Lane

Odd Arne Westad, “Trump, Xi, and the Specter of 1914 (foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-xi-and-…),” Foreign Affairs

For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/is-2026-the-…

Opinions expressed on The President’s Inbox are solely those of the host or guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.