Yesterday marked 100 years since the end of the First World War. The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog used the occasion to publish an excellent commentary, based on a longer academic journal article, by political scientists Alexander Lanoszka and Michael A. Hunzeker. They argue that the Great War could have actually ended long before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Two years earlier, in December 1916, both “Germany and the United States issued peace overtures” that, if heeded, “could have spared countless lives and have helped Europe escape the financial ruin and deep-seated animosity that produced World War II,” Lanoszka and Hunzeker explain. “Unfortunately, the Entente — Britain, France and Russia — dismissed both offers, and the fighting continued.”

At the time, all sides were facing catastrophic losses, financial insolvency, and a virtual stalemate on the battlefield. An armistice then would have been a great relief to the warring parties. So why did the Entente powers reject peace? According to Lanoszka and Hunzeker, “Honor pushed the Entente to prefer war over peace despite the overwhelming costs and risks…[For the Entente,] Honor was worth the material price, no matter how high. Germany was unapologetic about its transgressions. Atrocities in Belgium and repeated frustrations on the battlefield to win and exact punishment made national honor take priority over national survival. War aims expanded; by December 1916, the Entente came to believe the only way to overcome dishonor was to destroy the German regime itself.”

Honor is not “a relic of a bygone era in international relations,” the authors conclude. Indeed, it is still very much with us.

Sociologists argue that honor is crucial to group self-esteem, involving an emotional investment in how groups define themselves and their place in social hierarchies. Honor leads actors to believe that others must respect these identities. It can enhance cooperation when mutual respect exists, but encourage severe escalation and undercut conflict resolution when it does not.

Accordingly, when identity faces an external threat, actors feel an intense psychological need to salvage their honor. To restore besmirched honor, either the transgressor apologizes or the victim punishes. The longer the transgressor refuses to apologize and resists punishment, the more the victim will dig in and perhaps even risk dying for honor’s sake.

Threats to honor can thus undermine rational behavior and make wars longer. Rationality means that an actor objectively assesses available information, selects which goals it will pursue and picks the most efficient and risk averse way to do so. However, when honor is at stake, leaders might begin to ignore disconfirming evidence, prioritize honor over survival and adopt strategies based on hope, not efficiency.

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One hundred years ago Sunday, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the bloodiest war in history ended. In the New Yorker, historian Adam Hochschild writes about the senseless beginning of the war in an “epic chain of blunders, accusations, and ultimatums” and about its senseless end: “In the five weeks since the Germans first requested peace negotiations, half a million casualties had been added to the war’s toll…. Worse yet, British, French, and American commanders made certain that the bloodshed continued at full pitch for six hours after the Armistice had been signed [at 5 a.m., with the news immediately radioed and telephoned to commanders on both sides].”

Cato senior fellow and historian Jim Powell wrote about the blunders and consequences of World War I in his book Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II. He summarized his argument in Cato Policy Report four years ago:

World War I was probably history’s worst catastrophe, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was substantially responsible for unintended consequences of the war that played out in Germany and Russia, contributing to the rise of totalitarian regimes and another world war. 

Indeed World War I was a catastrophe, a foolish and unnecessary war, a war of European potentates that both England and the United States could have stayed out of but that became indeed a World War, the Great War. In our own country the war gave us economic planning, conscription, nationalization of the railroads, a sedition act, confiscatory income tax rates, and prohibition. Internationally World War I and its conclusion led directly to the Bolshevik revolution, the rise of National Socialism, World War II, and the Cold War. 

On this weekend as we celebrate the end of this tragedy we should mourn those who went to war, and we should resolve not to risk American lives in the future except when our vital national interests are at stake.

A split Congress could affect Donald Trump’s negotiating strategy vis-à-vis North Korea, but the legislative branch’s impact will mostly come at the margins of U.S. policy. Trump’s control over the two major levers of U.S. pressure on North Korea—sanctions implementation and the military—means that he has significant discretion over negotiations with Pyongyang. By controlling the sources of U.S. pressure, Trump can adjust either and impact negotiations with little concern for what Congress thinks or wants. Congress does have the ability to prevent either extreme outcome of war or peace, but neither of these seem likely given the current conditions on the peninsula.

The two primary ways the new Congress could influence North Korea policy is through investigations and appropriations. House investigations could absorb much of Trump’s time and political capital, making it harder for him to find the time to negotiate with North Korea. Appropriations battles between the White House and Capitol Hill could restrict the former’s latitude in talks with Pyongyang, but any potential restrictions are unlikely to suffocate the president’s efforts. For better or worse, the executive branch in general and Trump in particular will be able to deal with North Korea as they see fit, even with a Democrat-controlled House.

An additional but very uncertain way that the midterms could affect U.S. policy toward North Korea is by creating a window of opportunity for both Trump and Kim Jong Un. If Trump comes away from the midterms thinking his prospects for re-election are grim, then he may push harder to break the current impasse in negotiations in order score a major foreign policy win that he can point to on the campaign trail. Likewise, Kim could take a similar lesson from the midterms and try to maximize diplomatic gains while Trump is still in the White House if Kim thinks a new president would want to return to a “maximum pressure”-like policy. There is no guarantee that the two leaders will have this interpretation, however, and even if they did they may decide that continued engagement is not worthwhile.