Tweet
Twin Cities Daily Planet
June 29 2014
The Great War and modern amnesia: Imperialism still coming home to roost
By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero
Exactly 100 years ago, on the morning of June 28, 1914, the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife Sophie
were assassinated when two bullets were fired at them at close range.
At the moment, the couple were riding through the streets of Sarajevo
in an open car when the vehicle stalled while the driver attempted to
turn around.
The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was one of a team of killers on the
trail of the Archduke that day. All were Serb nationalists who laid
claim to all regions of the Balkans inhabited by ethnic Serbs,
including places that were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Princip and the others were also members of a terrorist organization
called the Black Hand founded by the head of Serbia's military
intelligence.
At the time, little was made of the killings. Virtually no one in the
public sphere thought the event would lead to anything more
cataclysmic than another round of fighting between Austria and Serbia.
As we now know, of course, the assassinations precipitated a chain of
events that, within six weeks, plunged Europe - and eventually the
rest of the world - into the bloodiest conflict in history up to that
time.
The leading politicians, journalists and public intellectuals who did
not foresee the outbreak of war were equally shortsighted about the
course that war would take once it erupted. It was going to be short.
A few weeks, a few months at most. Everyone home by Christmas.
Everyone in the know was familiar with the deadliness of mechanized
weaponry, from machine guns to aerial bombardment to heavy artillery.
But until then, such armaments had mostly been used against poorly
armed tribes or native insurrectionists in "uncivilized" lands
colonized by a European state. In 1914, the best and brightest of the
day fully expected that enemy troops would be routed by "our side" as
easily as villagers in North Africa or tribal warriors in Southeast
Asia.
Once again, we now know different. But who could blame the European
powers for their undue optimism? In current parlance, the leaders of
those nations lived in a bubble. They were only told what those around
them thought they wanted to hear, and they only listened - like elites
everywhere, including Washington, D.C. - to those willing to tell them
what they wanted to hear.
In the run-up to the Great War's centenary, the already capacious
library of books published about the conflict, like Paul Fussell's
early masterpiece The Great War and Modern Memory, has swelled
considerably, including Christopher Clark's magisterial 700 page The
Sleepwalkers.
Among the newer books - it was published in 2011 - The Russian Origins
of World War I by Sean McMeekin should have special value for us in
the United States. Not only does it offer an alternative, and
convincing, take on who the most villainous player was in the lead up
to hostilities in 1914, its examination of Russian policies before and
during the war offers critical lessons for America, especially in the
Middle East. There our current leaders seem doomed to keep making the
same kinds of mistakes Tsarist Russia made in pursuing policies that
were simultaneously fickle, feckless, and brutal, based upon premises
that were little more than self-delusion. Epistemic cloture is a term
currently in vogue for describing the echo chamber in which, for
example, the GOP leadership seems to be operating. Epistemic cloture
is also a good term for describing the milieu in which Russian leaders
operated in the early 20th century. It is an equally apt term for the
milieu in which American leaders operate, not just when it comes to
the Middle East and Central Asia but, indeed, throughout all of the
developing, non-Western world.
The Russian Origins of World War I is a study of the unintended
calamitous consequences that inevitably follow misguided decisions in
the fields of foreign policy and war. Not only did the Tsar's secret
service collude with Serbian intelligence in helping fund and train
the Black Hand, but Russia's military leaders urged the Serbs to
resist Austria's demands that it be allowed to participate in the
investigation of the Archduke's murder, promising the Serbs in return
slices of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Balkans domain - territory
that Russia was also promising to other nations. Most critical of all,
it was news of Russia's secret general mobilization of its military
nearly a week before Germany or Austria that enabled the German staff
to overcome Kaiser Wilhelm's reluctance to rush to war.
Russia's aim in all this was for France and England, its partners in
the Triple Entente, to pin down Germany and Austria long enough for
Russia to achieve its real strategic goals - dismemberment of the
Ottoman Empire and seizure of Constantinople, which Russia planned to
rename Tsargrad.
In a shameful episode that bears a striking similarity to what
happened to Iraq's Kurds and southern Shia when we abandoned them to
Saddam Hussein's revenge following the 1991 Gulf War, McMeekin
describes Russia's key role in triggering the course of events that
resulted in the forced relocation and subsequent death of 600,000
Armenians living under Turkish rule. This humanitarian disaster was
set in motion by Russia's decision to arm and train Armenian militia
in 1914. When Turkey responded, Russia walked away from its pledge of
military support for the Armenians. The Turks, facing an internal
uprising along the border with its traditional enemy, reacted, as we
know, with unrestrained brutality.
Whatever its proximate cause, however, and whichever nation bears the
greatest responsibility for setting it off, WWI was ultimately
European Imperialism come home to roost: a homecoming that in 1939
would see the "scientific racism" concocted in the 19th century to
justify the conquest of "lesser peoples" reach its apogee with
Hitler's attempt to exterminate Europe's Jews, Gypsies and Slavs.
As McMeekin's book shows, the war was also the coming home to roost of
the Great Game Europe had played throughout the 19th and early 20th
centuries with the lives and territories of people living in the
Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The ISIS horror show
currently on display in Syria and Iraq is yet another consequence of
Europe casually divvying up the Middle East without regard to the
region's ethnic or sectarian realities - a Pandora's Box the U.S.
obligingly pried open with its ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in
2003.
Over the course of the century since the assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, Europe would - at the cost of more than 100 million
European lives - come to see the error of its ways, turning away from
armed conflict as the primary means of advancing national interests.
But if the decades following the Second World War have demonstrated
anything, it is that the United States still hasn't learned the
lessons so painfully absorbed on the battlefields of Flanders and the
killing fields of Auschwitz and Dachau. We continue to blunder along
trying to impose our "civilizing" mission -- now termed "nation
building" and "democratization" -- on lesser peoples, especially in
the Middle East and Central Asia (think Afghanistan).
Tsarist Russia, to its ultimate cost, found out how self-destructive
its fantasies of hegemony in this part of the world proved to be.
Would that we took note of Russia's fate in 1917 and acted
accordingly.
Not that I'm holding my breath. Even now, there is an assassin waiting
for us to come into range. Only this time the name of the assassin
isn't Gavrilo Princip. It's us.
And the gun we hold is aimed at our own heads.
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rich-broderick/great-war-and-modern-amnesia-imperialism-still-coming-home-roost-1
From: A. Papazian
June 29 2014
The Great War and modern amnesia: Imperialism still coming home to roost
By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero
Exactly 100 years ago, on the morning of June 28, 1914, the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife Sophie
were assassinated when two bullets were fired at them at close range.
At the moment, the couple were riding through the streets of Sarajevo
in an open car when the vehicle stalled while the driver attempted to
turn around.
The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was one of a team of killers on the
trail of the Archduke that day. All were Serb nationalists who laid
claim to all regions of the Balkans inhabited by ethnic Serbs,
including places that were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Princip and the others were also members of a terrorist organization
called the Black Hand founded by the head of Serbia's military
intelligence.
At the time, little was made of the killings. Virtually no one in the
public sphere thought the event would lead to anything more
cataclysmic than another round of fighting between Austria and Serbia.
As we now know, of course, the assassinations precipitated a chain of
events that, within six weeks, plunged Europe - and eventually the
rest of the world - into the bloodiest conflict in history up to that
time.
The leading politicians, journalists and public intellectuals who did
not foresee the outbreak of war were equally shortsighted about the
course that war would take once it erupted. It was going to be short.
A few weeks, a few months at most. Everyone home by Christmas.
Everyone in the know was familiar with the deadliness of mechanized
weaponry, from machine guns to aerial bombardment to heavy artillery.
But until then, such armaments had mostly been used against poorly
armed tribes or native insurrectionists in "uncivilized" lands
colonized by a European state. In 1914, the best and brightest of the
day fully expected that enemy troops would be routed by "our side" as
easily as villagers in North Africa or tribal warriors in Southeast
Asia.
Once again, we now know different. But who could blame the European
powers for their undue optimism? In current parlance, the leaders of
those nations lived in a bubble. They were only told what those around
them thought they wanted to hear, and they only listened - like elites
everywhere, including Washington, D.C. - to those willing to tell them
what they wanted to hear.
In the run-up to the Great War's centenary, the already capacious
library of books published about the conflict, like Paul Fussell's
early masterpiece The Great War and Modern Memory, has swelled
considerably, including Christopher Clark's magisterial 700 page The
Sleepwalkers.
Among the newer books - it was published in 2011 - The Russian Origins
of World War I by Sean McMeekin should have special value for us in
the United States. Not only does it offer an alternative, and
convincing, take on who the most villainous player was in the lead up
to hostilities in 1914, its examination of Russian policies before and
during the war offers critical lessons for America, especially in the
Middle East. There our current leaders seem doomed to keep making the
same kinds of mistakes Tsarist Russia made in pursuing policies that
were simultaneously fickle, feckless, and brutal, based upon premises
that were little more than self-delusion. Epistemic cloture is a term
currently in vogue for describing the echo chamber in which, for
example, the GOP leadership seems to be operating. Epistemic cloture
is also a good term for describing the milieu in which Russian leaders
operated in the early 20th century. It is an equally apt term for the
milieu in which American leaders operate, not just when it comes to
the Middle East and Central Asia but, indeed, throughout all of the
developing, non-Western world.
The Russian Origins of World War I is a study of the unintended
calamitous consequences that inevitably follow misguided decisions in
the fields of foreign policy and war. Not only did the Tsar's secret
service collude with Serbian intelligence in helping fund and train
the Black Hand, but Russia's military leaders urged the Serbs to
resist Austria's demands that it be allowed to participate in the
investigation of the Archduke's murder, promising the Serbs in return
slices of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Balkans domain - territory
that Russia was also promising to other nations. Most critical of all,
it was news of Russia's secret general mobilization of its military
nearly a week before Germany or Austria that enabled the German staff
to overcome Kaiser Wilhelm's reluctance to rush to war.
Russia's aim in all this was for France and England, its partners in
the Triple Entente, to pin down Germany and Austria long enough for
Russia to achieve its real strategic goals - dismemberment of the
Ottoman Empire and seizure of Constantinople, which Russia planned to
rename Tsargrad.
In a shameful episode that bears a striking similarity to what
happened to Iraq's Kurds and southern Shia when we abandoned them to
Saddam Hussein's revenge following the 1991 Gulf War, McMeekin
describes Russia's key role in triggering the course of events that
resulted in the forced relocation and subsequent death of 600,000
Armenians living under Turkish rule. This humanitarian disaster was
set in motion by Russia's decision to arm and train Armenian militia
in 1914. When Turkey responded, Russia walked away from its pledge of
military support for the Armenians. The Turks, facing an internal
uprising along the border with its traditional enemy, reacted, as we
know, with unrestrained brutality.
Whatever its proximate cause, however, and whichever nation bears the
greatest responsibility for setting it off, WWI was ultimately
European Imperialism come home to roost: a homecoming that in 1939
would see the "scientific racism" concocted in the 19th century to
justify the conquest of "lesser peoples" reach its apogee with
Hitler's attempt to exterminate Europe's Jews, Gypsies and Slavs.
As McMeekin's book shows, the war was also the coming home to roost of
the Great Game Europe had played throughout the 19th and early 20th
centuries with the lives and territories of people living in the
Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The ISIS horror show
currently on display in Syria and Iraq is yet another consequence of
Europe casually divvying up the Middle East without regard to the
region's ethnic or sectarian realities - a Pandora's Box the U.S.
obligingly pried open with its ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in
2003.
Over the course of the century since the assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, Europe would - at the cost of more than 100 million
European lives - come to see the error of its ways, turning away from
armed conflict as the primary means of advancing national interests.
But if the decades following the Second World War have demonstrated
anything, it is that the United States still hasn't learned the
lessons so painfully absorbed on the battlefields of Flanders and the
killing fields of Auschwitz and Dachau. We continue to blunder along
trying to impose our "civilizing" mission -- now termed "nation
building" and "democratization" -- on lesser peoples, especially in
the Middle East and Central Asia (think Afghanistan).
Tsarist Russia, to its ultimate cost, found out how self-destructive
its fantasies of hegemony in this part of the world proved to be.
Would that we took note of Russia's fate in 1917 and acted
accordingly.
Not that I'm holding my breath. Even now, there is an assassin waiting
for us to come into range. Only this time the name of the assassin
isn't Gavrilo Princip. It's us.
And the gun we hold is aimed at our own heads.
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rich-broderick/great-war-and-modern-amnesia-imperialism-still-coming-home-roost-1
From: A. Papazian