ABSTRACT
Power is the crux of many explanations of war and peace, but its effects are not agreed upon. Most observers argue that a nation which is too powerful endangers the peace. The military power of rival European alliances was most imbalanced, was distributed most unevenly, at the end of a decisive war. A culprit stands in the centre of most generalised explanations of war. While there may be dispute in naming the culprit, it is widely believed that the culprit exists. The First World War convinced many writers that armaments races and arms salesmen had become the villains, and both world wars fostered the idea that militarist regimes were the main disturbers of the peace. In the nineteenth century, monarchs who sought to unite their troubled country by a glorious foreign war were widely seen as culprits.
