Jack Snyder's article “Better Now Than Later: The Paradox of 1914 as Everyone's Favored Year for War” makes an important contribution to scholars' understanding of World War I. Snyder argues that all of the continental powers were pessimistic about the future, optimistic about the prospects for war in 1914, and influenced by better-now-than-later thinking.1 The hypothesis that preventive logic strongly influenced German and Austria-Hungarian decisionmaking is familiar,2 but the idea that it significantly influenced Russian and French decisionmaking is relatively new. It is also paradoxical. Underlying shifts in power that create incentives for one state to fight sooner rather than later should generate the opposite incentives for its adversary.3 Snyder documents the “puzzle of simultaneous optimism” in 1914 (p. 73), and makes a theoretical contribution by analyzing the utility of a modified bargaining model of war for explaining this puzzle.
I agree with many of Snyder's arguments...