by Stefano Caprio

Unlike the Gaza deal, the summer drama surrounding the meeting between Putin and Trump in Alaska did not lead to a letup in military operations, but rather pushed both sides towards further escalation, in deeds and words. As in 1914, the "illusion of fate" is dangerously rising again, obliterating all possibilities for choice and diplomatic solutions.

The peace deal between Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza tragedy appears to be a turning point in international geopolitical tensions. It was mediated by Donald Trump, who was set on winning the Nobel Peace Prize regardless of the Stockholm Committee's decision, which ultimately favoured Maria Corina Machado, leader of the opposition to the Venezuelan regime of Maduro.

The fragility of this deal is evident in the absence of a definitive solution for the future of Palestine, which remains suspended between the end of the bombardment and the definition and reconstruction of the territories.

All this could lead to a universally desired outcome for the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as well, but here the contradictions and uncertainties are, however, far greater and menacing, for a future that could instead prove even more catastrophic on a global scale.

The summer drama of the meeting between Putin and Trump in Alaska did not lead to a let-up in the fighting, but rather drove both sides towards further escalation, in deeds and words.

The use of drones by both sides climbed daily, claiming more and more military and civilian victims, power plants and energy infrastructure destroyed on both sides.

Russians believe the push for peace that seemed to have been inspired by the two emperors of the East and West is “now exhausted”. Tsar Putin is increasingly speaking in menacing terms at major gatherings from the Valdai Club conference in Sochi to the summit of the presidents of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Dushanbe. Meanwhile, the US decision to supply the Ukrainians with Tomahawk missiles could extend the war in the skies to the depths of Siberia.

Putin's words bring to mind various circumstances linked to the world wars of the last century, like when Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violated the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1925 Locarno Pact by sending German military troops into the Rhineland, a demilitarised zone along the Rhine River in western Germany.

The so-called spirit of Locarno had symbolised hope for an era of peace and goodwill in Europe, shortly before Hitler's rise to power; instead, in 1935, the Fuhrer unilaterally scrapped the military clauses of the treaty, beginning the remilitarisation of the Rhineland the following year. Two years later, Nazi Germany spread out from its territories, absorbing Austria and part of Czechoslovakia.

Putin's current claims that he is defending “fellow Russians” in the Ukraine strongly echo Hitler’s demands vis-à-vis the Sudetenland, an area populated by ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia.

Russian-speaking minorities emerged during the long periods of Tsarist and Soviet rule, not only in Ukraine, but also in the Baltics, Moldova, and the Caucasus, all the way to Central Asia, the result of the ethnic reshuffling policies devised by Stalin and his successors, which Putin refers to as the "correct conception" of the relationship between the dominant ethnic group and those associated with it in the ideal of Russian sobornost.

Czechoslovakia was a creation of the Treaty of Versailles, encompassing the mountainous Sudetenland area bordering Germany; it is no coincidence that, like Hungary, the two countries of Czechia and Slovakia are today more openly aligned with the Tsar in Moscow.

Yet, according to various political leaders and observers, the current situation closely resembles not only the circumstances that led to Hitler's World War II, but in some ways, it looks even more like the period that preceded the outbreak of the First World War, because of the 19th-century "collapse of empires" and the disintegration of Europe as a whole.

According to an article in Politico, we may be approaching a "Franz Ferdinand moment," i.e. the incident that saw the heir to the Habsburg throne assassinated in the 1914 in Sarajevo, triggering a worldwide war.

That crisis overwhelmed Europe after mounting tensions and successive conflicts, starting in the Balkans, pitting three empires – Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian – against each other.

The independent states of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania were created in the wake of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, in which Russia sought to regain the grandeur lost in the Crimean War of 1853-56. These new entities, in turn, sought to restore the medieval grandeur that had led the Serbs and Bulgarians to have their own tsar even before Moscow.

By the early 20th century, these young states had felt stronger, and in 1911-12, the equally young Italy attacked the Ottoman Empire, occupying Libya, demonstrating that certain territories could easily be wrested from the Turks by force.

The First Balkan War ensued, which drove the Ottomans from all their European territories, but the victorious countries began to compete for them among themselves in the Second Balkan War.

Serbia asserted itself as the strongest of the three, but was also the only one without access to the sea, with the ambition of annexing other lands considered to be ethnically Serbian, but which were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Serbia itself was highly unstable internally, after the assassination of King Alexander Obrenović and Queen Draga in 1903, which led to the rise of the Karađorđević dynasty and the formation by some ultranationalist officers of the "Black Hand", a secret military society that ultimately led to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914.

At that time, Russia, after losing control of Bulgaria, relied on Serbia to exert its influence in the Balkans. For Russia, access to the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles was vital to its ambitions in the Mediterranean, and so helped the Serbs rearm and defend themselves against the Austrians.

In the early part of the new century, what had started as a regional conflict engulfed Europe due to the system of alliances and strategic interests of the various empires. For Germany, it was essential to defend the integrity of Austria-Hungary, while for France, Russian support against Germany was crucial to recover the lost territory of Alsace-Lorraine.

This ultimately led to the clash between Russia and Germany, a fateful event that ended with the collapse of the Russian Empire, paving the way for the Bolshevik Revolution.

These and many other factors generated the widespread belief that "war was inevitable," which today raises the question of how much it is possible to avoid a global war with Putin's Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet empire and its consequences for all the countries that were once subject to it (not only the other 14 republics of the USSR, but also the Warsaw Pact countries, which today rely on NATO's support).

The Atlantic Alliance is the most peaceful form of military union, tied solely to the defence needs of member countries, without the possibility of supporting any aggressive action.

For Russia the Baltics have made this situation particularly irritating, leading Moscow to draw the conclusion that "Europeans are intent on undermining the continent's stability," as Putin reiterated in recent days, and as he has continued to repeat since the start of the "defensive" invasion of Ukraine.

Historian and Cambridge Professor Christopher Clark covered the Great War in his book “Sleepwalkers: How Europe came to the Great War”. In it, he argues that the fundamental cause of the war’s outbreak was “the illusion of fate”, obliterating all possibilities for diplomatic solutions, which existed before war broke out in 1914.

The war was not inevitable, but the succession of errors and miscalculations, fed by ambitions  and driven by futile accelerations, which were later interpreted as necessities imposed by an unfavourable fate.

All of this turns out to be the result of psychological, even more than political or military, pressures and complications, foreshadowing scenarios that we now call "hybrid warfare", i.e.  disinformation and propaganda, explicit or otherwise, which, instead of helping to make reasonable choices, drags leaders and entire peoples into disastrous and irreparable outcomes.

Compared to a century ago, we should be able to count on much more transparent and effective international diplomatic institutions, from the United Nations to the European Union, but the risk of falling into the trap of illusions and specious motivations remains ever more present, considering that individuals and states are never capable of learning from what happened in the previous history of their own and others' relations.

"NATO barking at Russia's borders”, the “defence of one's compatriots in foreign countries”, the "imposition of values ​​contrary to traditional ones," the “support for sovereignism and nationalism in all countries” are statements that can only lead to fresh escalation, dividing the world into good and bad, requiring the annihilation of those on the opposing side, as has been evident in the many of the recent demonstrations in favour of the Palestinians, without stopping to consider the possible consequences for international relations.

Russia's war is just starting, not ending. Unless we wake up from the slumber of reason, we too risk becoming “sleepwalkers” towards war.

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• russia
• moscow
• war
• ukraine
• europe
• 1914
• world war I
• sleepwalking
• habsburg
• tsar
• franz ferdinand
• christopher clark
• sleepwalkers
• putin
• empires
• ottoman
• serbia
• sarajevo