ABSTRACT
The rise of the United States and Japan at the end of the nineteenth century challenged the stability of the international system and resulted in three potentially disruptive conflicts: the Sino-Japanese, Russo-Japanese, and Spanish-American wars. But at least the United States and Japan intruded into areas relatively remote from the existing major powers of Europe. No similar power vacuums cushioned the rise of Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Germany joined the roster of world powers, it threatened the heart of Europe and disturbed the precarious balance that had been the basis of peace since the defeat of Napoleon.
