With each passing day, the political landscape across the globe looks increasingly like August 1914. Then, it took only the assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist to ignite the First World War.

The second decade of the century was a time of fear and deep suspicion, of secret alliances and dark conspiracies. Militarism was on the rise and great-power rivalries dominated world politics. For a young, naïve generation the promise of modernity was about to collide with the forces of an older, more-sinister world. It would be a costly fight.

Eighty years later, another assassin is on the prowl. This time he’s an Islamic fundamentalist with dreams of a Middle East free of Western influence. His goal is nothing less than a resurgent Muslim civilization and a new world order that no longer includes the United States at its helm.

The weapon of choice for Osama bin Laden is not the bullet, but commercial jetliners, and possibly biological toxins, targeted at the heart of American cities. With his vast resources and a network of committed followers, he may just have initiated the first global conflict of the 21st century. Such is the power of terrorism.

Two months after the attacks of September 11, all the pieces are coming together. A coalition of antiterrorist countries, led by the United States, is being formed on one side. A loose coalition of rogue states and committed terrorist organizations has formed on the other. Each side has issued ultimatums from which it cannot comfortably retreat.

Propaganda and patriotism have aroused popular anger. Armies are on the march. The antagonists have a clear and uncluttered vision of what’s right. Each has a global reach. Each has weapons of mass destruction. Each has God on its side.

President George W. Bush has declared a global war on terrorism. His spokesmen have acknowledged that the fight may yet extend to 60 or 70 countries, each home to an underworld of crime and subversion. It could take years before the scourge is eradicated. The United Nations has been mobilized with every state being asked to weigh into the fight. “Either you’re with us or you’re against us,” is the battle cry out of Washington.

As always, the Middle East remains a flash point for conflict. Its nations are restless, frightened and poised for war. Terrorism has reached a crescendo in Israel, with scores of Israeli citizens and Palestinians being killed and injured each week. A senior Israeli minister has been assassinated. The prospect of peace has all but vanished. Oslo is dead. Both the Israeli and Palestinian societies are at a breaking point. Each has warned the other that a single act of violence could unleash a chain of events leading to a regional meltdown.

In Egypt, the government has said it will not stand by if Israel mounts a major offensive against the Palestine Liberation Organization inside of territory it controls. Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, continues to probe Israel’s northern defenses, attempting, yet again, to drag Jerusalem into the Lebanese quagmire. Other terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are itching for an opportunity to strike at Israeli urban centers in the hope of demoralizing the population, instilling panic and bringing about the collapse of the Jewish state.

Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, finds itself on the verge of disintegration. Rising popular anger over the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan coupled with mounting social unrest, economic collapse and increasing religious militancy could lead to widespread destabilization across Southeast Asia.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia’s president, ominously has warned that the nation is in danger of becoming the “Balkans of the East.” She said, “If [violence] continues, we will split into lots of small races, into lots of small countries, all of which will be weak in the face of outside forces.”

To build its antiterror coalition, the United States has looked first to NATO, invoking Article Five of the Atlantic Charter for the first time in history. Old rivals of the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance now are joined against a new enemy. An attack on one is an attack on all.

Great Britain has committed its largest force to battle since the Falklands War. London joined Washington in launching the first strike on Afghanistan, using submarine-launched cruise missiles while also dispatching SAS commandos.

French support of Operation Enduring Freedom consists of intelligence-gathering, reconnaissance aircraft and mine-clearing ships. The Germans are providing 3,900 troops along with airborne medical craft, armored reconnaissance vehicles and nuclear/biological/chemical detection equipment. The Italians have offered an aircraft carrier and up to 2,700 soldiers. Canada is committing 2,000 troops, six ships, six aircraft and a commando unit.

The Australians, too, have rallied to the allied battle standard with troops and equipment. Always eager for a good scrum, the Aussies once again find themselves up against a Muslim foe. Afghanistan may not be Gallipoli, but its defenders are equally ruthless and the terrain just as challenging.

In what is their first overseas deployment since World War II, Japan is providing military support to the U.S. antiterrorist effort. Many Chinese are worried that this could signal the beginning of a remilitarized Japan. Beijing has moved troops to its westernmost province as a precaution and closed its border with Afghanistan.

Russia, too, is on heightened alert, its leaders mindful of the fury of radical Islam and its potential to spread chaos well beyond the borders of Afghanistan. The Kremlin is concerned that U.S. forces operating within its sphere of influence in Central Asia may not leave after the fighting. No less than seven of the former Soviet republics have pledged their support for the war effort. Some are allowing U.S. troops to be based on their soil. Naturally, the Kremlin is nervous. Once again, the “Great Game” is being played out in Asia.

There may yet be a popular backlash in those countries bordering Afghanistan – Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan – where dissident Muslim minorities are displeased with offers made by their governments to aid the U.S.-led coalition. The signs of a geopolitical collision are everywhere.

Popular discontent and a mounting refugee crisis threaten to topple the government of Pakistan, which has the second largest Muslim population in the world. Were this to occur, the Pentagon is set to launch a commando raid to seize the country’s stockpile of an estimated 23 nuclear weapons. Sympathies for the Taliban run deep within Pakistan. Across the Muslim world, thousands of recruits are heeding the call to jihad and flocking to Afghanistan, via Pakistan, for a millennial fight against the infidel. Iraq, like the proverbial Cheshire cat, waits quietly in the wings.

Rising disaffection within Saudi Arabia could bring down that regime, throwing into chaos a significant portion of the world’s oil supply and leaving unresolved the future of Islam’s holiest shrines. The same is true for Egypt, where not since the 1940s has the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed such broad, popular support. Today, university students, the country’s middle class and the Egyptian intelligentsia have joined with the impoverished masses in a growing wave of opposition to the Hosni Mubarak regime.

The Great War erupted in 1914 when mass discontent and old political rivalries led small states to challenge the composition of the existing social order. Then, as now, terrorism merely was the catalyst for chaos, a pretext for settling old scores.

But the price the great powers paid for their blunder into global war was more than they ever had imagined. Fratricidal destruction, economic ruin, the beginning of the end of empire and the collapse of monarchical rule across Europe brought closure to a world that had emerged with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and ended in the trenches of the Somme.

To be sure, World War I was bitter medicine. Yet, it did clear Europe of its strangling undergrowth of petty autocracies and many of its protected monopolies. Ultimately, the war led to the growth of modern governmental institutions and the triumph of democracy in Europe.

Much as in August 1914, many U.S. allies in the Muslim world are undergoing social and political convulsions. Several may not outlast the current turmoil. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia fear that, whichever way they turn, the ides of March may be upon them. Embrace too closely the U.S.-led war effort and the Muslim world will see this as a betrayal of Islamic unity. Show only lukewarm support for the coalition and these countries may find themselves at odds with Washington.

These are unsettling times, a period when the destinies of countries are shaped by historical currents outside their control. To its credit, the Bush administration has come to understand that the war in the Middle East is more than just a fight to defeat terrorism. It is a fight to determine the shape and political composition of the region for the next 100 years. For the United States, this is a defining moment, a historical contest over whether our ideas of democracy, freedom and modernity will reign supreme in the new century or whether anarchy and asceticism will assert its hold over great swaths of the world.

To be sure, the assassination of one archduke reasonably cannot be compared to the murder of more than 3,000 innocent people, but its consequences can. Punitive strikes against those responsible for the worst foreign attack ever on American soil certainly are justified. An expanded war beyond the borders of Afghanistan may be a necessity. Yet, in marshaling a highly militarized world into a broad antiterror coalition, there always is the risk that events could ignite a global conflict that quickly could escape our government’s control.

U.S. policymakers must remain mindful of history in all they do. The guns of August 1914 have awakened to our drumbeat. The memory of a lost generation hangs heavy over the world tonight.

This article appeared in Insight Magazine, December 10, 2001 issue.

Rand Fishbein is President of Fishbein Associates Inc.,
former staff member U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittees
on Defense and Foreign Operations

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