Waiting for Princip
On the desk in front of me lies a small pistol.
It belonged to my father, who carried it on counter-espionage missions in Germany, Austria, and Morocco in the early 1950s. And as I look at its muzzle, I wonder how many times it was pressed against the temple or ribs of a foreign agent . . .and how many times it delivered a bullet. There were things I asked my father about, and things I chose not to.
The pistol is a Browning Model 1910 semi-automatic. Its manufacturer’s logo – the Belgium gunmaker Fabrique Nationale – is embossed on the grips. One of John Moses Browning’s minor masterpieces, the Model 1910 is not only small, but hammerless; its sleekness made it very popular among European police officers for much of the 20th century. My father always said he carried it because it was almost invisible under his suit jacket.
Another Model 1910 is one of the most notorious weapons in history. That pistol was used in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914 by the 19 year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Austrian Arch-duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife – the event that triggered the First World War.
As it happens, I’ve been thinking about Princip lately – not the pathetic little man – but what he represents. When, amazed at his luck that the Imperial motorcade had stalled in front of him, Princip pulled out that pistol and started shooting, he unknowingly tripped a series of switches in palaces and ministries across Europe – and eventually around the globe – that would lead to a four year war that would pull down the royalty of Europe, murder millions of soldiers and citizens, and set the stage for an even greater slaughter a quarter-century later.
I think Princip has been lurking in the corner of my mind for a while now, as I’ve read with growing trepidation the latest news from around the world. But he came into focus at last, the moustached little man with the frightened eyes, pea coat and filthy trousers of the prison photograph, last week during a business lunch.
Jeff Skoll, the man with whom I was meeting, is an old friend, and we reminisced about those sunny days of infinite possibility in the mid-1990s when he was helping to found eBay and I was advising him. eBay, of course was one of the great success stories of the dot.com boom – and to Jeff’s credit, he took his new fortune and set out to make the world a better place. He’s best known now for Participant Films, his multiple Oscar-winning, socially-aware Hollywood production company. But in the non-profit world he’s even better known for founding the Skoll Foundation, the leading supporter of the world’s social entrepreneurs.
Less known is that Jeff has also founded the Skoll Global Threats Fund to bring together historic antagonists to help find paths to resolution. In other words, among this generation of business tycoons, no one, not even Bill Gates, has worked so hard to make the world a better, more peaceful, place.
So I was stunned when, as it always seems to these days, the conversation came around to the current state of the world. Jeff, by his nature and works a born optimist, grew darker and quieter. And when I inquired about his work in the Middle East, his face grew even longer. He shook his head slowly. The odds for war in the region in the next couple years, he told me, were now frighteningly high. “Nobody’s talking,” he told me, “Nor even wants to talk.”
It was not the happiest topic for a reunion of old friends, and yet we couldn’t seem to escape it. It was as if there was a third party at our table, a nervous little man in a homburg and long overcoat.
Now Jeff asked me a question. You’re always looking into the future, he said, what should I be reading right now?
Strangely, without a millisecond’s thought, I knew what to tell him: Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and William Davidow’s Overconnected.
The first, of course, is a classic history of the events leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. It is the infuriating, and ultimately heart-breaking, story of how European governments, sensing the horrors to come, tried hard to stop the slide into war . . .but because of treaty entanglements, pride and momentum ultimately couldn’t keep the dogs of war at bay. Even Germany, whose militarism created this volatile situation, had second thoughts – but once the Moltke plan was switched on, there was no switching it off. And so, the flower of Europe died in the mud of Passchendaele and the Somme.
Silicon Valley pioneer Bill Davidow’s book was published earlier this year, and deserved a lot more attention than it got. Bill and I together wrote a very influential, and optimistic, book fifteen years ago entitled The Virtual Corporation. I learned then that Davidow is not only one of the world’s leading venture capitalists, but, when it comes to the impact of technology on society, an unequalled seer.
So it was shocking when I read a manuscript of Overconnected and realized it was a warning from a worried man. Simply put, the thesis of the book is that the networking of the modern global economy has presented some extraordinary, and unprecedented, benefits to mankind. But the fact that all of those servers and networks, storing and transferring much of the world’s financial and intellectual capital are also interlinked via the Web with few protections and no kill switch, is enormously dangerous. It gives the global economy, says Davidow, an unprecedented volatility and vulnerability to tiny events that can chain react at light speed into world-wide crises.
Four years ago, when I read Bill’s first draft, I thought he was being a bit over-the-top. After subsequent events, from the global economic crash to the Arab Spring, I now wonder if he didn’t go far enough. Suddenly the pace of technological change (Moore’s Law) and the networking effect (Metcalfe’s Law), so long celebrated for their benefits to modern life, are now showing us their very sharp teeth. We are now discovering to our dismay that the democratization of information not only can improve the lot of billions of people, but that it can also empower little men standing outside cafes with hatred in their brains and pistols in their pockets awaiting the chance to unleash both.
The world is always a dangerous place; but in the last few years that danger seems to have spread. Equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa may be about to tip over into another hellish era of tribal warfare. China, when it isn’t being arrogantly expansionist seems to be dancing on thin demographic ice. As its hordes of men grow up without women, its thinkers now write about the value of ‘small’ wars. In Russia, faced with economic collapse if oil prices slump, Vladimar Putin has made himself de facto Tsar – or worse. And in Europe, the aging population, trapped between rioting welfare junkies and unassimilated Muslim immigrants, fervently hopes (they don’t pray anymore) that they will die before their long vacation from economic reality ends.
As for the United States, the world’s military protector and economic backstop, there is not only the greatest philosophical schism since the Civil War, but a dangerous lack of leadership at the top. Even as it is crushing new business and new job creation at home with endless regulations and the corruption of corporatism, it is also projecting a self-righteous image of weakness abroad. The lesson of history is that vacuums in leadership are always filled, more often by the ambitious than the responsible. And that, at least in the short run, “soft” power is no defense against hard men. Right now there are some very hard men out there leading nations, loading their pistols and eyeing their neighbors and rivals.
I learned a long time ago that when things seem crazy, they usually are – no matter how much smart people try to convince you otherwise. There is a lot of crazy going around right now. . .and it won’t disappear just because we look away or tell ourselves it’s not as bad as it seems.
Ours is not Auden’s “low, dishonest decade” before World War II, but it certainly has been a decade of denial and distraction. But no amount of ignoring the magnitude of the threat, or busying ourselves with other matters, changes the fact that there are not only millions of switches out there waiting to be tripped, but that, in our networked world, all of those switches are wired together. Or that even one of them, snapping at the right moment, could send trillions of chains of consequence around the world in less time than it takes to say “Sarajevo.”
The awful irony is that I merely have to lower my eyes from the Browning pistol to my laptop computer to remind myself that there is also another set of indicators out there – breakthroughs in atomic level transistors, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and energy; along with the discovery of vast oil and natural gas reserves in the western hemisphere; and a million budding entrepreneurs out there ready to connect with the tens of billions of dollars sitting in venture capital funds. With a little luck, a few more years, and lot less government interference we could find ourselves once again in an economic golden age.
But first, we have to get from here to there in an overconnected world of angry people, and pray that no one accidentally – or purposefully – trips the switch that sends us back to August, 1914. There is no obvious path, and we seem chronically short of leaders to mark the way. Worst of all, he is out there. We don’t know who, or where, or when, and probably not even why, but our Princip, the little man with the little pistol, is waiting for us, hoping against hope that we stall once more and he gets his chance.
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Dec '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
Of them all, the little man with the mustache in Tehran, busily loading his pistol, probably concerns me the most.
Dec '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
The first casualty of history is the loss of imagination to envision events that could be different—worse—than what happened.
Was WWI so bad the nothing, nothing, could have been worse? Nothing could have been worse than our own Civil War, except for not having it.
Easy to say a century and a half hence, true; but, each man can only experience his own personal Armageddon while societies, and the majority of its members, continue in greater prosperity.
Fear mongering about our society’s future calamity often lacks perspective—cataclysmic collapse compared to the status quo, but the deracination of our collectivist temptation and of our class warrior impulse may not occur until its spendthrift adherents consume all of their resources and die of starvation.
The sturdy will survive.
Re: Waiting for Princip
I was compelled to buy Tuchman's The Guns of August a couple weeks ago, at the time by an unarticulated dark, ominous feeling in my subconscious. Your essay gave words to that foreboding sense, that I'm sure many share, that something big is about to snap.
I haven't started the book yet, but I think I'll bump it up to the top of the queue.
Jul '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Charles Gordon
While the sturdy may survive here, I do not expect this to be pretty at all.
Many stout English souls went over the top on the first day of the Somme and 60,000 perished. 23,000 sturdy boys at Antietam.
The bloodbath coming in the middle east will be profound and how it spills over to the other big world powers is yet to be seen.
If your point is that something drastic has to happen to change the status quo of our messed up world....then I agree.
Nonetheless, I am reminded of Einstein and tens or hundreds of millions dead is quite expected from the upcoming catastrophe if it spreads.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
Apr '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Reminds me of this song, by The Minutemen, from 1983. (Warning! Bongo-playing punks ahead!)
Aug '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
Technology is not an automatic benefit to society (though it is to civilization); technology only amplifies mankind's ability to satisfy its desires.
Most of those desires are altruistic--the drive for more food, better health, less repetitive labor and more leisure time... but there are always assassins waiting in the wings.
You could construct a blunt divider between liberal and conservative views of civilization along that line: liberals believe it is possible to soothe or appease the assassins, while conservatives assume they will always be around in some form and need to be dealt with.
Feb '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Black swans.....
May '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Michael S. Malone:
The awful irony is that I merely have to lower my eyes from the Browning pistol to my laptop computer to remind myself that there is also another set of indicators out there – breakthroughs in atomic level transistors, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and energy; along with the discovery of vast oil and natural gas reserves in the western hemisphere; and a million budding entrepreneurs out there ready to connect with the tens of billions of dollars sitting in venture capital funds. With a little luck, a few more years, and lot less government interference we could find ourselves once again in an economic golden age.
Peter Thiel, founder of Pay Pal, has a rather long article on NRO today about where technology has gotten us in the years since Woodstock. Very sobering.
Re: Waiting for Princip
Brilliant post, Michael. I've had the same nagging feeling since 2008, before the crash. But I remember the 80s, the constant dread we college kids got from our conviction that Reagan wanted a nuclear war; it was all-pervasive, and it infected the music, the magazines, the literature. Doesn't feel the same now.
(To put it in science-fiction terms for all the geeks in Ricochetia, a Seldon crisis, not a Leibowitzian replay.)
Aug '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Another book well worth reading is Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, which shows how Europe reached the stage where Princip's deed could trigger a four-year war.
Incidentally, when I was in Sarajevo in 1961, I visited the Garvrilo Princip Museum, all about him, his co-conspirators, and the assassination. Princip turned out to be, after all, one of the founders of the Yugoslav state. It's now extinct, and I wonder if the museum is still in existence.
Jun '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
Charles Gordon:
The sturdy will survive. · Oct 3 at 1:49pm
All too many of the "sturdy" died in the trenches. We don't send the weak and infirm to fight, we send the young, the healthy, our hope for the future.
Re: Waiting for Princip
Here is the optimistic perspective, and I quote from one of the Mont Pelerin guests who managed to cheer me up, because he fully understood the problem. "So we lose the coasts. So what? Who would miss them. The heartland is solid."
He meant lose them, literally--as in, "So they're vaporized."
James Hannon gave a terrific speech, by the way. I didn't take notes, but I was impressed by him. I agree with him about this:
I have no time anymore for people who see the the light and deliberately avert their gaze. History won't forgive them.
May '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
Add A world undone : the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 / G.J. Meyer to your reading list. It provides a clear description of the roots and origins of WWI (no easy feat).
I have been having that same uneasy feeling. In April this year when my son got married wearing his Army dress blue uniform. In August at a church picnic (the only thing missing was the croquet, although I was sorely tempted to buy a set specially for the occasion).
Yet it won't be a spark that trips off a complex intertwined series of events like WWI. It will be an iceberg toward which the United States is already on a collision course. Has perhaps already hit. They're still serving caviar and champagne in the 1st class lounge, but it is midnight on the Titanic.
It is impossible to continue running 1.5 trillion dollar per year deficits, but the press concerns itself with Amanda Knox, Marco Rubio's brother, and what was painted on a rock in Rick Perry's deer lease years ago.
May '10
Re: Waiting for Princip
If ignorance is bliss, then 'tis folly to be wise.
Edited on October 4, 2011 at 2:19pmFeb '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Claire Berlinski, Ed.: James Hannon gave a terrific speech, by the way. I didn't take notes, but I was impressed by him. I agree with him about this:
I have no time anymore for people who see the the light and deliberately avert their gaze. History won't forgive them. · Oct 3 at 5:27pm
Claire, not to nitpick, but just for the sake of correct attribution, it was Daniel Hannan. (Feel free to delete this comment.)
Feb '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
What an outstanding and terrifying post. I'm currently reading Steyn's "After America", so I didn't need more dread.
Just thinking of all the countries that have nukes that could quite plausibly sell one to a terrorist group makes me wonder why it hasn't already happened -- NorK, Pakistan, Russia, not to mention China which seems like the grown-up responsible country in this sorry group. Who needs Iran to have a nuke to start worrying about a Western city melting in an expression jihadist religious ecstasy?
In a van, such a weapon could be driven from the Mexican border to downtown LA in 3 hours. As all the electronics in LA turn off and a few seconds later the shock wave breaks the windows in my house, it will occur to me that we should have done something to keep failed states from having nukes.
Jan '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
James, you may be heartened to hear (or maybe just shake your head and say "Oh no!) that : Sony Pictures has hired Dante Harper to adapt Foundation, the groundbreaking Isaac Asimov science fiction trilogy which Roland Emmerich is developing to direct.
I wake up every morning and turn on the radio in anticipation of hearing who lobbed a nuke at who - or what mighty personage was assassinated. I read Mark Steyn to cheer me up.
Re: Waiting for Princip
Doctor Bean
Claire Berlinski, Ed.: James Hannon gave a terrific speech, by the way. I didn't take notes, but I was impressed by him. I agree with him about this:
I have no time anymore for people who see the the light and deliberately avert their gaze. History won't forgive them. · Oct 3 at 5:27pm
Claire, not to nitpick, but just for the sake of correct attribution, it was Daniel Hannan. (Feel free to delete this comment.) · Oct 3 at 8:34pm
You're quite right. That's the power of the unconscious for you. I had not put two and two together, but I now realize that Daniel looks quite a bit like an old friend of mine named James. Only now did I make the connection consciously.
Aug '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
Terrific post. Original, thoughtful, provocative. More, please.
Feb '11
Re: Waiting for Princip
"As for the United States, the world’s military protector and economic backstop"
Whoa, stop right there. I read that, and my teeth clenched.
I missed the election that established that the lives and money of the American people were to be spent to become that.
Perhaps I'm just such a lowly peon that I fail to understand that this was decided in 1950 or whenever. But I always thought we had been making war in places such as Korea to protect American interests, etc.
Now it's because we're the world's military protector?
Oh. I take this as an open acknowledgement that the US government has ceased to be the limited Constitutional regime it was established to be, and has moved on from America. Global hegemon, perhaps.
I'm not alone in this idea, based on what I hear and read.
So I'll add a new reason to worry. I doubt the political stability of the US regime, because it has been busily sacrificing the interests of the American people to the globalist aspirations of the political class.
That needs to end, if the present regime wishes to have a future.