The Ghosts of Sarajevo

Franz Ferdinand was almost an inconsequential figure in Austria-Hungary at the time of his assassination, despite his status as heir to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire, but he was in many ways a complex man who hoped to ease the ethnic tensions in the dual monarchy once he succeeded his uncle Franz Joseph as Emperor (though he never reached the throne).  Franz Ferdinand despised the growing militarism and power plays of the great nations of Europe, and he envisioned a more liberal, more inclusive federation of the many nationalities that comprised the empire.  But Serbian hatred of the Hapsburgs produced tensions between Austria and Serbia that amplified the distrust between their respective allies, Germany and Russia, which respectively belonged to the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente - alliances that kept the great powers of Europe in check and on edge.        

The complacency of the governments of Europe and the simmering animosities between the alliances and among the Continent's various ethnic groups played out in the Balkans, where Serbian influence in Bosnia threatened to destabilize the region.  When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip one hundred years ago today in Sarajevo, the inevitable happened.  While the elites in Vienna took the news calmly, anti-Serb riots in Bosnia erupted and Austria moved to solve the Serbian question once and for all.  The imperial government made a list of demands from and insisted on an explanation from Serbia for the crime.  (The Austrians believed that Princip was acting on behalf of the Serbian government.)  Serbia agreed to eight of the ten demands and Austria, knowing the Serbs would only meet the demands part of the way and knowing also it had German support, declared war on Serbia on July 29, 1914.  Russia, threatened by Austrian expansion into the Balkans, responded with a mobilization of forces, prompting Germany to prepare for war.  This aroused the French, long fearful of Kaiser Wilhelm II's expansionist policies, to mobilize. Germany then mobilized, declaring on first on Russia and then on France.  Great Britain, also wary of Germany, had asked both France and Germany to respect Belgian neutrality; France agreed, but the Germans refused and invaded Belgium, prompting Britain to enter the war on August 4.

What started out as a Balkan crisis that removed one of the most progressive and most forward figures in the European power structure from the scene became a war that shattered Europe with mass killing and devastation and remade the world anew, with wide-ranging consequences.  The Russian Empire was bankrupted, leading to the revolutions of 1917 that ultimately put Lenin into power and brought the rise of the first Communist country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  The British and the French divided up the last of the Ottoman Empire (a German ally) and created new Arab states, Syria and Iraq, out of thin air to advance their influence in the Middle East.  In humiliating Germany and shortchanging Italy and Japan in peace negotiations at Versailles, the British and the French planted the seeds for another world war, which would destroy Europe yet again and lead to the Holocaust.  The United States, having participated as a junior partner in the British-led Allies in World War I, accepted more responsibilities as a world leader in the 1920s and 1930s.  When it emerged from the Second World War, with much of Europe in ruins, it was the world leader, and the U.S.S.R., with its communist system so antithetical to ours, became a counterweight, initiating the Cold War, which divided Europe and exploited the Third World. The British were exhausted and lost their place as a world power, and France was similarly diminished.  The exhaustion of the Russians caused by competing with the United States in a power struggle led to the collapse the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe and Central Asia - the one happy geopolitical outcome of the 1990s.  But the destruction caused by World War I led to a bloody century that included not only World War II but militarization and several regional wars all across the globe, including the breakup of Yugoslavia - formed from Serbia and the remains of Austria's Balkan territories - and the Bosnian Civil War.  The power struggle that led the United States and the Soviet Union  to vie for influence in the Middle East led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which led to 9/11, which led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The ghosts of Sarajevo are still at work.