The Guns of August
It was a summer day in the Balkan city of Sarajevo in 1914. The town was then in the Bosnian Province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Crown Prince of the Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were in town after inspecting the Austrian troops. They came for the feast of St. Vitus and to show Austrian loyalty to the region. A parade we held in their honor, and they waved their way through the town in the back of an open car. Suddenly an assassin jumped in and shot them both.
The assassin, nineteen-year old Gavrilo Princip, was an impassioned member of the “Black Hand”. This was a Serbian society that wanted to unite the Southern Slav states into a nation separate from the Empire. Serbia was already independent, and wanted Bosnia to join as part of what would ultimately become Yugoslavia.
But the assassination of the Archduke had consequences far beyond his death. Austria-Hungary rightfully blamed Serbia, and mobilized troops at the Serbian border. Serbia responded with troop mobilization as well, and asked for help from their ally, Russia. Russia began to bring their troops up, and Austria-Hungary turned for help to their ally, Germany.
Germany was already planning for European conquest. They attacked Russia’s ally France. And thus World War I began, with the killing of one man.
Soleimani
Thursday, the United States used a drone attack to assassinate a leading Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, as he travelled to the Baghdad Airport in Iraq. Soleimani was the mastermind behind twenty years of Iranian involvement in “irregular” forces, defined by the United States as terrorists, throughout the Middle East. These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, the Popular Mobilization Force in Iraq, and the Houthis who are fighting against the Saudi Arabian backed government forces in Yemen.
Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran, second behind leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There is no question that he was the author of many terrorist actions throughout the Middle East. He was not a “good actor” in the region. The United States government believed that Soleimani was planning additional attacks in Iraq targeting US assets and personnel, so he was targeted and killed.
But unlike Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Soleimani was a “state actor”. The difference is that bin Laden and al-Baghdadi were leaders of non-state, irregular terrorist forces. Both their organizations, al Qaeda and ISIS, were failing and widely dispersed. Those groups were unable to respond to the US actions. Soleimani was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, an official position in the Iranian government. With Soleimani gone, another general fills his position, and Iranian assets remain unchanged.
Act of War
Targeting another nation’s leadership is a technical act of war. The United States, like it or not, has attacked Iran in a legal sense. It should be no surprise to anyone that Iran will respond to the attack.
This doesn’t mean that Iran will launch conventional military attacks against US Forces. They aren’t stupid; in a conventional war the United States has the overwhelming advantage. Iran will respond in a way that gives them an advantage. They might use their irregular allies throughout the Middle East. Or they could use their developed expertise in cyber-warfare, and somehow disrupt US networks or infrastructures. It is called “asymmetrical warfare,” where attacks of one kind, like the US drone strike in Iraq, are responded to by random bombings, suicide attacks or electronic assaults in a totally different place.
Young Gavrilo Princip did not kill Archduke Francis Ferdinand and Sophia to start World War I. There was no way that he could know the fuse he ignited, creating an explosion involving all of Europe, and ultimately the United States. That was far beyond that young man’s nationalistic vision.
Neither he, nor the leaders of Europe, foresaw what would happen. Their actions resulted in the unintended consequence of a world at war, enormous loss, and irrevocable change.
Unintended Consequences
The assassination of Qasem Soleimani feels much the same.
Iran will have to respond. Where they will strike, and how the United States is prepared to respond, is difficult to know. But, unlike World War I, we know that America’s current allies in NATO are not happy with US actions. Most of the them were still abiding by the Iranian Nuclear Protocol, negotiated by the Obama Administration to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. President Trump repudiated that deal, and now has directly attacked the Iranian government.
What will those allies do? How will they respond if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, strangling world and particularly European oil supplies? Or decides to disrupt the international banking network? And where will Russia and China, both frequent allies of Iran, stand?
And perhaps the biggest question is, has the Trump Administration actually thought through the consequences of the assassination? Are we following a carefully thought through plan for the Middle East, and the world? Or are we living in an era of knee-jerk reactions and unintended consequences. It’s easy to fear that the latter is the case.
