Saturday’s back-to-back headlines in The Washington Post were: “‘They Have Chosen Not To Accept Our Terms,’ Vance Says” and “U.S. Intelligence Shows China Taking A More Active Role In Iran War.” They echo headlines from a century ago that reported on the early days of what quickly became World War I.
In 2021, China and Iran became military allies, signing a “broad strategic partnership encompassing economic, diplomatic, and security dimensions.” Russia signed a similar comprehensive military/security agreement with Iran in January of last year. The three countries are now military allies and formally assisting each other. Hold that thought.
Then, on Sunday, America’s resident madman Donald Trump announced on his Nazi-infested social media site that the United States Navy will illegally blockade the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint through which 20 percent of the world’s oil used to flow every day — threatening to intercept “every vessel in International Waters” that’s paid a toll to Iran.
The US blockade of the Strait began Monday.
That means all the shipping of oil for China and drones for Russia will be intercepted by the US. We’re now blocking the war and energy supplies of nations that have nuclear weapons and whose military assets are already in the region. And it came just hours after the peace talks in Islamabad — led by three American grifters with absolutely no diplomatic experience — had predictably collapsed.
What happens next will depend entirely on whether anyone in this administration has ever seriously studied what happened the last time a similar cascade of great-power commitments, cornered leaders, and military miscalculations all converged at once.
A hundred and twelve years ago this summer, a young Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip fired two shots in Sarajevo, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.
What followed was a deadly catastrophe, because every major European power had spent the previous 40 years putting together mutual defense treaties with other major European powers.
(In the 1908 Bosnian Crisis, Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia, land that Serbia claimed; the Serbs were humiliated and furious. The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 left Serbia stronger and more willing to reach out to the Slavic people still living under Austria-Hungarian rule, particularly those in Bosnia, further enraging the Austria-Hungarians.)
Everybody was armed to the teeth and, frankly, paranoid about everybody else. So, when Franz Ferdinand’s assassination gave Austria-Hungary an excuse to punish its longtime enemy Serbia, those treaties clicked into place like the tumblers of a massive combination lock and the doors of hell swung open onto the most catastrophic war the world had, at that time, ever seen.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia, bound by pan-Slavic solidarity and treaty, mobilized. Germany, allied with Austria-Hungary and, seeing the Russian mobilization, declared war on Russia. The Franco-Russian alliance dragged France in.
Once the fighting started, Germany’s Schlieffen Plan required invading France through neutral Belgium, which triggered Britain’s 1839 treaty obligation to protect Belgian neutrality.
Within six weeks of two pistol shots in Sarajevo, virtually every major power in Europe was engaged in a brutal war that escalated with the inevitability and power of a landslide. The leaders who set the whole machine in motion genuinely believed they could control the escalation, but they were terribly and tragically wrong. The interlocking agreements and past hostilities simply took over, and seventeen million people died.
I’ve been thinking about Sarajevo a lot this week, because what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz right now follows the same terrifying script, except that this time, the European, Middle Eastern, and Asian powers that are being pulled toward what could easily become World War III all have nuclear weapons.
Here’s how we got here:
Benjamin Netanyahumade six trips to the White House in the year before the war began, each time pressing Trump and his old family friend Jared Kushner with the argument that Iran was ripe for regime change, that the mullahs were one good strike away from falling, and that history was calling.
What the New York Times’ reporting now makes clear — and what Trump’s own CIA director and secretary of state reportedly called “farcical” and “b-------” in private — is that Netanyahu had an overwhelming personal reason to want this war: he’s been fighting a fraud, bribery, and breach-of-trust criminal trial that could put him in prison if he’s convicted.
Wars are good for embattled leaders: they can generate emergency status and even pause court proceedings. And when this war started on February 28th, Netanyahu’s trial did indeed grind to a halt under Israel’s wartime court emergency rules, which had to be repeatedly extended. The trial is only now, this week, resuming. (Trump, to help his fellow authoritarian, has been publicly pressuring Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu, telling him to do it “today” and calling him a “disgrace” for hesitating.)
So Trump (himself facing a crisis from the Epstein documents and accusations of raping a 13-year-old girl) and “Whiskey Pete” Kegseth (who simply loves war) launched a bloody confrontation in which one of the key decision-makers’ primary motivation — at least on the Israeli side — was to keep himself out of prison.
And 44 days later, the man who should be in the defendant’s chair is instead flying into southern Lebanon to pose with troops (his popularity is now sky-high in Israel because of the war), while the United States Navy blockades one of the most consequential waterways on the planet.
On Sunday, Trump posted to his failing social media site a declaration that may end up being seen, in retrospect, much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. He proclaimed that the Navy will begin “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” and will “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.”
That last sentence is the one that could rock the planet, because, as the independent National Security Desk analysis makes clear, Trump’s phrase “every vessel in International Waters” is a global directive. It means the U.S. Navy now officially claims the legal right to board, search, and seize foreign ships anywhere on the world’s oceans as well as the ships of any nation trying to pass through the Strait.
Under international maritime law, that’s called “piracy.” And here’s the other parallel to the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia back in the day: roughly 80 percent of China’s oil imports that transit the Strait — that Trump just said he will “blockade” — are Chinese-owned or Chinese-connected vessels.
— China already has a Type 055 cruiser, a Type 052D destroyer, and a massive surveillance ship sitting right there in the region, in the Gulf of Oman.
— Chinese satellites have been providing real-time targeting intelligence to Iran throughout this war.
— Russia has been running electronic warfare systems that, according to pre-war assessments, degrade American radar and communications by as much as 80 percent.
— Iran’s military has been successful in killing over a dozen American troops and wounding hundreds — and downing multiple US military aircraft — because of targeting information Putin’s reportedly been giving them.
These are active military contributions to the Iranian war effort right now.
So what happens when a U.S. destroyer orders a Chinese-flagged tanker to heave to in the Strait of Hormuz and a Chinese warship sails between them? Trump has to choose between backing down — and watching the blockade collapse — or firing on the naval vessel of a country with roughly 400 nuclear warheads.
And this isn’t a purely hypothetical scenario. China and its leader Xi Jinping have made it abundantly clear that maintaining an uninterrupted energy supply through the Strait is one of its core national interests; it won’t simply steam away.
On the Russian side, Vladimir Putin is also not a man who responds with moderation to being cornered. And he’s already in deep trouble in his own country, as well as on his back foot in Ukraine.
The Atlantic Council and RAND have both documented that Putin’s domestic position is more stressed than at any point since his brutal and criminal Ukraine invasion began. Russia today faces runaway military spending consuming eight percent of GDP, skyrocketing inflation, fuel shortages, and a society that polls show has grown deeply tired of the war in Ukraine.
Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute have concluded that Putin literally cannot afford to be seen accepting strategic defeat, because the entire justification of his authoritarian model rests on his promise to “restore Russian greatness” (Make Russia Great Again). If he fails, he may not survive. Not just politically, but physically; Russia has a long, ancient history of dealing harshly with failed leaders.
Thus, a cornered, domestically vulnerable Putin with 6,000 nuclear weapons who is already actively helping Iran kill Americans isn’t a guy who backs down gracefully. He’s a leader who escalates.
And to compound things, on Sunday one of the most important parts of the worldwide autocratic network Putin’s been building for decades (including his support for Trump’s election and re-election) collapsed.
In Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has spent 16 years building the model of “illiberal democracy” that Trump, Vance, and the Heritage Foundation have openly cited as their template, voters turned out in the highest numbers since the fall of communism — a stunning 78 percent — and handed a decisive victory to opposition leader Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.
Vice President JD Vance was just there last week, rallying with Orbán, promising Trump’s “economic might” to help out Hungary (which is suffering under years of corruption and looting by Orbán’s oligarch buddies) if Fidesz held on. That ally is soon to be gone (Magyar takes over in May). The worldwide autocrat network, which is now largely led by Putin, Trump, Orbán, and Netanyahu, is beginning to fracture at its European edge.
When great powers are simultaneously cornered along with a smaller ally, when their leaders face domestic crises that demand the appearance of strength, when interlocking military commitments are already active and drawing them toward conflict, that’s when the world has historically stumbled into catastrophes that nobody wanted and nobody planned.
In 1914, it took six weeks until the dogs of all-out-war were fully unleashed. This time, we’re already 43 days in, and we have destroyers parked in a mined strait that China needs to stay alive economically and Russia would love to see humiliate the United States and Europe.
Louise and I have traveled the world extensively; I’ve stood in the World War I cemeteries of France and Belgium, with row after row of white crosses stretching to the horizon, and been stunned by the fact that every one of those young men died in a war that the people who started it genuinely believed they could control.
The lesson of WWI is that leaders who think they can manage escalation usually can’t.