Better Analogies

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks it was common to compare them to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But it seems to me that with the benefit of hindsight the better analogy is the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

There are at least three parallels worth noting. First, both the 9/11 attacks and the assassination were carried out by non-state groups operating under the protection of small, relatively weak states. (The parallel isn't perfect—Black Hand was seemingly much more intertwined with the Serbian state than Al-Qaeda was with any particular country.) Both crimes were asymmetric warfare, carried out against vastly bigger powers using (fairly) unconventional methods. Both of the target countries had arguably over-extended themselves for questionable strategic purposes, provoking the attacks. And in each case the specific target had important symbolic importance. (By contrast, Pearl Harbor was a purely military target, with no particular importance to the American public beyond its inherent importance as a U.S. military base. The attack was motivated by strategic calculations, however misguided, rather than ideology. The fight was essentially symmetric.)

Second, and I think most importantly, the political leadership of each country perceived the attack to be a casus belli, and because each of them desired war, they regarded it as a windfall. Preserving the value of that windfall (not letting the crisis go to waste) became in each case an idée fixe. Any attempt to reason with them was treated as a disreputable attempt to deprive them of their hard-won prize. (I just finished reading July Crisis: The World's Descent Into War, by T.G. Otte, which is a diplomatic history of the events leading to World War I. The book is nuanced and does not attribute blame entirely to any one person or country, but a theme of the book is the implacability of the Austrians, the pointlessness of even trying to reason with them. It seems to me to be only a minor simplification to say that the war happened because the Austrians wanted it, and once they secured German support nothing but abject surrender by the Serbs would have convinced them not to launch it.)

I want to emphasize this point: neither Austria-Hungary in the wake of the assassination nor the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was faking its anguish. The subjective feeling of pain and outrage was genuine enough. But both countries conducted their diplomacy in bad faith. For the sake of appearances (and to keep their allies on board) they went through the motions, but neither was in any meaningful sense open to any alternative but war. (In Austria-Hungary's case there was probably one thing that could have dissuaded it from its march to war: an indication from Germany that it would remain neutral. But in early July Wilhelm wrote his infamous "blank cheque" and from that point forward Germany had little power to exercise restraint. Italy in fact did remain neutral, much to Germany's consternation, but Austria-Hungary didn't care. Likewise Austria-Hungary didn't care about the bellicose rhetoric coming from Russia. Those were Germany's problems, not Austria's.) Similarly the weapons inspectors in Iraq were there for show, and there is nothing they could have said that would have prevented war.

Third, while both Austria-Hungary and the United States were led by people who badly wanted war, in both cases the wars reshaped the world with essentially the opposite of the intended effect. Austria-Hungary disintegrated and the Habsburgs were dethroned while Serbia expanded its territory, and the invasion of Iraq demonstrated the severe limits of U.S. military power, caused a political backlash, forced the U.S. to adopt a more humble posture, elevated Iran's influence in the region, and destabilized the world (not to mention, of course, the terrible humanitarian consequences—but those were not wholly unanticipated).

In all of these ways the 9/11 attacks more closely resemble the assassination of Franz Ferdinand than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Of course the second and third factors were not apparent at the time, but the danger of them should have been. In particular the second point is worth remembering. The unqualified support of Europe's strongest military power blinded Austria-Hungary's leadership to the dangers of war, and the perception that the U.S. military was all-powerful led Rumsfeld to seek war wherever he could justify it.

No analogy can, by itself, be decisive. The U.S. was looking for a casus belli in 1941 just as it was in 2001, and the main thing distinguishing these situations was the strategic wisdom of pursuing war. But any time Pearl Harbor is trotted out as support for war, it is worth considering how the other world war started, and whether we are again sleepwalking into the abyss.