About a year ago, I read an interesting article by Prof Niall Ferguson, drawing parallels between the period leading to the First World War and the current global scenario. More recently, I read his book The Pity of War, which analyses factors contributing to the First World War, including some reasons which have not been discussed much but which are very convincing. He makes a very persuasive argument that the First World War was a major error of the modern era. More significantly, it was an error that could have been avoided.

I have read other books and essays by Prof Niall Ferguson and I don’t find them particularly convincing. However, his fear that there is a risk of the world war being repeated raises a big question of our time.

The world saw tremendous rise in prosperity in the fifty years from 1865 to 1915. It was an era when efficiency and globalisation won over stagnant tradition. In the United States, civil war established the dominance of the industrial economy by crushing the agrarian South. Commercial use of internal combustion machine, petroleum, telegraph, and aircraft made the world integrated and prosperous. The world saw unprecedented growth in investments across boundaries. The major powers spent heavily on building military machines.

The world was then riding the wave of industrial revolution. We are now riding the wave of information revolution. As it happened then, we are witnessing high-speed technological growth, increase in prosperity and global movement of capital. Each economic revolution creates its own elite and its political counter-revolutionaries. If there was the Propaganda of Deed in the late 18th century, there is Al Qaeda now.

Sometime back, The Economist carried a special article comparing the situation in the late 18th century to the current one. It analysed the acts of violence carried by anarchists influenced by the Propaganda of Deed mindset and the current spate of violence promoted by jihadi groups. It concluded that the philosophical basis of terror could change from anarchy to jihad to something else in the future but the world would go on.

I must add for the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with the Propaganda of Deed movement that it included the killing of six heads of large states in a short period of time and an attempt on a few others. The victims included President of the United States, Queen of Austro-Hungarian Empire, King of Italy, Prime Minister of Spain, and among the lucky ones the King of Germany. The anarchists also threw bombs at cafes in Paris and the National Assembly of France and some of them looted the landowning classes of Italy. Our present day terrorists have focussed on killing innocent civilians travelling by trains, attending business or shopping in marketplace.

However the argument that terrorism has merely changed its nature from the late 18th century to now, while the world has become more prosperous ignores the fact that a twin World War happened in between. About hundred million people died in the last century in the twin World War and several regional conflicts that resulted from unstable power imbalances produced by Yalta. The world has not simply gone on. The world economy was destroyed and was dysfunctional for over three decades, though it has managed to rebuild itself. And nobody can say if the world would have survived if the nuclear bomb had been invented in 1915 at the beginning of the twin war instead of 1945 at the end of it.

That is why Prof Niall Ferguson’s fear about another world war must be taken seriously. The big question is whether there is a connection between rise of terror and the outbreak of a global war. Prof Niall Ferguson merely draws a parallel and raises the question. Unfortunately, he does not provide the answer.

On the surface, there should be no automatic connection between terrorism involving some outlawed groups and careful decisions of war taken by professional bureaucracies. Even if there is a conflict between a state and a group of terrorists, it cannot engineer a war between states. In the late 19th century, Italian farmers attacked their King. A self-declared anarchist attacked the President of the United States. (Other anarchists disputed his claims.) French social revolutionaries attacked their own elite. Even if there was some coordination between the terrorists in different countries, and even states sponsoring some of them, there was no reason for war. Even in the case of the attack on Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by a terrorist supported by the Serbian state, there could at worst be an Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia, just as there was the American attack on Afghanistan. It is too far fetched to argue that Serbian terrorism automatically led to German intention to attack France or British attack on Germany. And Prof Ferguson’s book vividly describes how the talk of war was in vogue in London and Berlin for almost a decade before the Sarajevo incident. Similarly, in present times the talk of war on Iraq was in circulation in Washington DC well before the 9/11 incident; in any case even the neo-cons don’t ascribe 9/11 to Saddam Hussein.

The First World War happened because each player perceived it self to be relatively strong in 1914 but potentially weak in later years. Each state believed that its rivals would take over in the future unless they were curbed in time. France, Germany, Russia and Great Britain overstretched themselves to win the big power game. Britain believed that it was necessary to stop Germany before it dominated the continent. Germany wanted to stop France and Russia before they controlled Europe. At some stage they all intuitively determined that it was the time to go for closure.

Much of the United States policy in the Middle East and Central Asia is guided by acquiring strategic depths before Russia, China and Iran acquire strength. Iran wants to build nuclear weapons before the US and Russia are able to dominate the region. China is quietly making inroads in much of Asia and Africa before the US firmly establishes its global dominance. It’s not just the United States that is following a doctrine of pre-emption. China and Iran are playing the same game. Can some calculations go wrong when investors are most confident of global economic growth and political stability as they were in the years leading to the First World War?

Yet what is the connection between acts of terror and calculations, including miscalculations, by professional decision makers of great powers? Can increase in international terror be a forewarning of a global war? It is necessary for social scientists to examine this question closely since the health of the global body politic is not different from the health of a human being. Sometimes there is only an innocuous fever. Sometimes it proves to be a mere viral infection that goes away in a week. Sometimes the fever proves to be the symptom of a major disease that causes death. And when fever does prove to be indicator of something fatal, it is normally too late.