Before Americans can evaluate whether intervention in World War I was wise, they must understand the system they were being asked to join. This episode examines the European imperial order that produced the Great War: the British Empire at its zenith, the Crimean War and the birth of anti-Russian propaganda, the romantic brutality of the Great Game in Afghanistan, the horrors of the Scramble for Africa, and the alliance system that transformed a Balkan assassination into cont

To understand America’s entry into World War I—and to evaluate whether it was wise—we must first understand the world Americans were being asked to enter. This article examines the European imperial system: its origins, its logic, and its catastrophic failure. Before Americans can judge whether intervention was necessary, they must grasp what intervention meant: joining a continent-spanning network of automatic commitments that could transform any local dispute into general w