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.

Is It World War IV? Or Just World War I?

Before launching into this several post assessment, there is one thing the Geek would like to make quite clear.

The Geek is not a lover of war.

I don't have any affection for war. Like the vast majority of those who belong to the great fraternity of those who have been shot at, I fear and loath war, the miserable snuffing out of human lives, the turning of human beings with hopes and fears, loves and hates, strengths and weaknesses into a massive sanitation problem. No. I don't love war.

I study it. I think about it. I write about it in both the virtual and real worlds. I teach about it in both the electronic and physical universes.

But, I sure as hell don't love it.

No one can love it. At least not if they are reasonably well oriented as to reality.

In reality a person can love another. A person can love life. A person can love beauty. Or art. Or the sight of a dawn, the smell of rain, the feel of a touch.

A person cannot love the boredom of war, or the fear of a firefight upcoming or just concluded, or the pulling of a trigger as the sights line with the body of another human. A person can live with fear, live with boredom, live with the knowledge that he has killed another. A person can even learn to live with seeing a buddy die, or be splattered with the horrid goo which a split second before was the buddy's brains.

But, a person can never learn to love war.

The Geek no more loves war than he hates Muslims--even those of the Islamist category. Hating the men who have so dehumanised themselves that they become mere machines of death as they trigger the explosive laden vest they wear or the bomb filled vehicle that they drive or the passenger laden aircraft that they pilot toward a target is a waste.

Get a grip on the Islamist suicide bombers. Take a grip on their fundamental nature. No. Not their psychology. Nor their beliefs. Nor their motivations. Get a grip on their basic existential nature.

They are not men.

They are not human.

They are machines.

That's right. Machines.

You can't hate a machine. All you can do is figure out why the machine runs the way it does--and, if necessary, determine the best way to break it.

Now there is something terribly ironic in this understanding. In a way it's a perfect fit, as the modern and, even more, the post-modern periods, have adopted irony as the central feature of life and art alike.

Consider for a moment the Great War. The Great War is the old name for World War I. Not until after Hitler started its successor, all Europeans and Americans called the bloody fifty one months between August 1914 and November 1918 The Great War. It was the greatest blood letting in the entire history of the human race up to that time.

It was something more. It was the great red dividing line between the last days of the pre-modern world and the first moments of the true modern world. It was the fault line between all the old orders of life, of politics, of art and literature, of the very understanding people had of their own power, their own control of forces, of personal destiny.

The Great War not only wiped away four dynasties, not only started the US and Russia on the rise to global power status, it assured the Europeans would fight again and launched the new Japanese Empire on a collision course with the US.

The Great War did two other things as well. It started moving Islam, particularly the austere and expansionist oriented version located in Saudi Arabia, toward the center of the world's political and economic stage. And, the Great War redefined war as an impersonal contest between mass forces dominated by machines.

The Great War in a real sense made the suicide bomber, the man-as-machine not only possible, but inevitable.

So, we are not engaged as some allege in the opening battle of World War IV. We are fighting the last battle of World War I, the Great War.