The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War was published by Pantheon in 1984 and is the second (and final) volume of Kennan’s study of the diplomatic origins of the First World War. It picks up where The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order left off — with Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890 — and traces the formation of the Franco-Russian Alliance through to its ratification in 1894.
Kennan’s argument is that the Franco-Russian Alliance was the decisive step toward catastrophe. Before it, a European war could have been limited and localized; after it, any conflict between two great powers would automatically involve all of them. The alliance was fateful not because it made war inevitable, but because it made general war inevitable once any war began.
The book is notable for its close analysis of the negotiations themselves — Kennan reads the diplomatic correspondence with the eye of a man who had spent decades writing and interpreting such documents — and for its portraits of the key negotiators, particularly the French ambassadors to St. Petersburg and the Russian military establishment. It is also notable for what it implies about the present: writing during the Reagan-era arms buildup, Kennan drew clear parallels between the alliance systems of the 1890s and the alliance systems of the 1980s — the same dynamics of mutual commitment, the same danger of automatic escalation, the same inability of statesmen to control the machinery they had created.
Collecting The Fateful Alliance
First edition (Pantheon, New York, 1984): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Without jacket: $5–$15
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Road to War
The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War (1984) continues the story begun in The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, tracing the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894 and its role in creating the conditions for World War I. Kennan argues that the alliance, formed in response to the perceived threat of a united Germany, locked Europe into the fatal system of opposing alliances that made war virtually inevitable once a crisis arose.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this connected to his other diplomatic histories? Yes — together with The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, it forms a two-volume study of European diplomacy from 1875 to 1894. The two books represent Kennan’s most sustained work of pure diplomatic history.