Tipping Points Or Why World War I Isn't Over Yet

In a post some weeks ago the Geek averred that rather than being the opening stages of World War IV as some in the blogosphere have alleged, the current fight against Islamists is the last battle of World War I. That's the war which the Geek prefers to call by its original name, The Great War.

History is littered with what a geologist might call fault lines or a physicist, tipping points. A fault line marks the boundary between masses of moving bedrock. A tipping point marks that moment, perhaps the smallest part of a second, when a previous condition changes irrevocably into a new state. The Geek likes the term, "tipping point," as it invokes a breathless, still interval separating the way-things-have-always-been from the way-things-will-be.

Even minor tipping points can have major consequences.

You want an example?

Try this. Back in 1990 the US appointed a new ambassador to Iraq. Part of the SOP for sending a representative is the careful preparation of diplomatic instructions. April Gillespie got her instructions prior to the usual "shake and grin" photo-op with the President.

Off she went. At her first meeting with Saddam Hussein the subject of the ongoing Iraq-Kuwait controversy was brought up by the Iraqi dictator. The Iraqi was of the view that Kuwait was a mixer and troublemaker. Ms Gillespie temporized. That's central to much diplomacy.

Saddam zeroed in on one particular gripe. The Kuwaitis, he alleged, were oil pirates, stealing Iraqi oil by slant drilling under the common border.

Ms Gillespie again temporized. Her instructions had been so ambiguously drafted that they provided no clear US position on that particular issue. She made a statement that could have been interpreted quite legitimately as indicating that the US had no views and was inclined to consider the matter an internal one.

Saddam heard the words through the mental filter of Iraqi history (and the Geek believes, ambitions). Kuwait had been a province of Iraq during the long centuries of the Ottoman Empire, and Saddam took the statement to mean the US had no objections to him settling the problem any way he wanted to.

The rest, as they say, was (and is) history.

Small tipping point to be sure. Major and ongoing consequences as well. That's the nature of tipping points in human events. They are often, to use a concept from mathematics, non-linear systems. That means simply the size of the output is not congruent in magnitude with the size of the input.

The Great War of 1914-1918 was a major tipping point. Arguably it was the tipping point of the last century or more. It stands as the great chasm between the ancien regime of the-way-things-always-have-been and the modern world, the world which continues to shake and heave, shudder and threaten collapse under our feet and over our heads.

Get a grip on the inputs to that tipping point. There were eight. Except for the last, each, taken individually, was small. Again, except for the final one, they should have been manageable by the "decider guys" of July and August 1914, the last summer of the old world.

The English commercial elite was afraid of Germany's emerging power.

France wanted revenge for the Franco-Prussian war of forty-three years earlier.

Russia wanted to extend its sway in the Balkans.

Serbia had delusions of adequacy.

A terrorist shot an Austrian Grand Duke.

In a fit of stupid cupidity, the German Kaiser offered a "blank check" of support to the gerontocracy running the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Austro-Hungarian Imperial Government believed its army could teach the Serbs a lesson they would never forget.

Military mobilization schedules and war plans were like the ICBMs of today. Once the button was pushed, they went. No stopping. No modifications. Like a bullet they could not be recalled.

Now, get a grip on some of the outputs.

The greatest body count in human history up to that time.

The death of four empires: The Austro-Hungarian, the German, the Russian, and the Ottoman.

The rapid decay of two others: The French and the British.

The rise of one empire: The Japanese.

The rise of two Great Powers, one almost immediately, one a couple of decades later: The US and the USSR.

The creation of several new states in Europe by the victors from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The carving up of the Ottoman Empire into artificial states to suit the perceived needs of two of the Great War winners, England and France.

The creation of the idea of "self-determination of peoples" throughout much of the colonized areas of Asia, Africa, and the Mideast. (This was an American product with a passel of unintended consequences.)

Islam, Islamic peoples, are in real sense discovered and forced into greater contact with Europe.

It is commonplace to state that the next World War was embedded in the outcome of the Great War not only in Europe as a result of German revanchism but in Asia and the Pacific as a consequence of Japanese imperial efforts in China.

What is less commonplace, far less often mentioned, is that the Second World War accelerated both the appeal of "self-determination" and the centrality of Islamic areas to the needs and ambitions of both the Europeans and the two new Great Powers.

Islam and the Jewish State, Islam and oil, Islam and Great Power influence would all loom larger and larger in the consciousness and decision making of leaders both East and West.

Take a moment to think about this. The Second World War did not settle all of the problems raised by the Great War. Many were only magnified.

The outputs of the Great War tipping point cannot yet be measured. The effects of the Great War are still being felt. The problems raised in the Great War's creation of the modern world are still being felt and fought over.

Fought over in Iraq. Fought over in Palestine. Shouted over in Iran.

Get a grip on this. We aren't out of the trenches yet.