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SEIFFE:  Ahmadinejad's Sarajevo

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

By Ralf Seiffe

Over the weekend, the Sunday news shows were consumed by the situation in Israel and Lebanon with Newt Gingrich coming to the conclusion that we are watching the start of World War III.  The former speaker may be right; the same motivations and disabilities that created World War I are now operating in the Mid East and the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers may be filling the role that was once played by Franz Ferdinand.  

The situation in which Europe found itself in 1914 was the result of three main factors. The Europeans had industrialized, the political environment had become so convoluted that any provocation was magnified and the co-sanguinity of the European aristocracy clouded their judgment.  Now, we have Islamic states flexing their military muscles, alliances are operating that seem to be designed to create war, and the corrosive effect of Islamic extremism--presently manifesting as Hezbollah--proves a mental defect as profound as the hemophilia aristocratic intermingling produced a century ago.  

By 1914, the Industrial Revolution had come to full expression in the form of steel, chemistry, transportation and electricity. This technology had naturally spread to the armies of Europe which produced militaries of unprecedented force and unexplored capabilities. The British Navy had invented and built dreadnaughts, the forerunners of battleships, compelling the other powers to quickly follow suit.  Growing armies were matched by potential adversaries and Europe ’s highly developed railroads made moving troops and material lightning fast. The men who controlled these assets were itching to test them in battle including the Kaiser, who constantly read railroad schedules the way other generals read maps.  

The analogous modern power is Iran; like Imperial Germany, the Islamic Republic is flexing its newly developed muscles.  Staggering oil prices have had the same effect on Iran as industrialization had on Germany; it gives access to modern weapons. The Germans built their own weapons because they were a capable western society.  The Iranians are buying theirs from the Russians, the Chinese or, perhaps, the French. 

Like the Great War, the weaponry is new and horrid.  Hezbollah is firing Syrian missiles that spray ball-bearing shrapnel.  These are the equivalent of 1914’s Maxim guns; high-tech weapons designed to kill people. 

The second parallel is political.  In the late Nineteenth Century, the Germans felt pressure from both flanks; France in the west and Russia in the east.  To countervail that threat, the Germans allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in a triple alliance that required the parties to come to the aid of any other party, if attacked. The British and the French noticed and created L’Entente Cordiale, “The Friendly Understanding” which had the same co-defense requirements.  Later, the Russians joined, bringing their ally Serbia into the pact.

This created the conditions that were necessary for the Great War to start.  When Gavrilo Princip fired his pistol into the Archduke’s phaeton in Sarajevo it was the spark, but not the fuel, for the war.  When the Austro-Hungarians invaded in response to the murder, the thicket of treaties compelled the Russians to declare war.  Within a week, World War I’s sides had been drawn.  

Diplomatic realities are just as convoluted as they were in 1914.  Relations between Iran and Russia are curious; Muslim fundamentalists are at war with Moscow yet the Kremlin chooses to support the Mullahs. Iran’s relations with the Chinese are transparent; the Middle Kingdom needs the oil and has an agnostic policy towards the political systems of its suppliers.  The net effect manifests as paralysis in the Security Council and as big an impediment to peace as the Entente Cordiale was. 

The two kidnapped Israeli soldiers are also the spark, but not the fuel, for the ordinance flying across the Israeli-Lebanese border.  The Israeli response to the kidnapping is just like the response to the Archduke’s assassination in the sense that it is the spark that ignites a conflict that’s been developing for a long time. Iran and Syria ’s support for Hezbollah is a threat just as tangible as the Austrian’s invasion of Serbia. 

Finally, there is the human parallel.  Of all the factors that create wars, the personalities are the most important factor as study of Hannibal to Ho demonstrates.  In 1914, the privilege Europe ’s aristocracy enjoyed created a separation from reality that allowed them to see war as a noble undertaking and not to see the consequences of sacrificing hundreds of thousands in a single day’s battle. One wonders if the intermingling of bloodlines that famously afflicted the Russian Tsarevich also weakened their minds. 

There is no question that the Islamic Mullahs are suffering from some form of diminished capacity.  Given their stated desire to create nuclear weapons to eliminate Israel and their belief that Islam is a license to kill, the Mullahs have declared themselves criminals against humanity and more like those leaders executed after the Second World War than the leaders of the First.  

©2006 Ralf Seiffe

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.