A Call for Restraint

A Call for Restraint

From:  https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/outbreak-of-world-war-i#section_3

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a great friend of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, met with him in mid-June 1914 to discuss the tense situation in the Balkans. Two weeks later, on June 28, Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were in Sarajevo to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of the nationalist Young Bosnia movement, assassinated Archduke Ferdinand on that date. 

In order to maintain its credibility as a force in the Balkan region (let alone its status as a great power), Austria-Hungary needed to enforce its authority in the face of such an insolent crime. However, with the threat of Russian intervention looming and its army unprepared for a large-scale war, it required Germany's help to back up its words with force. Emperor Franz Josef wrote a personal letter to Kaiser Wilhelm requesting his support, and on July 6 German Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg informed Austrian representatives that Vienna had Germany's full support.

On July 23, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Serbia delivered an ultimatum: The Serbian government must take steps to wipe out terrorist organizations within its borders, suppress anti-Austrian propaganda and accept an independent investigation by the Austro-Hungarian government into Franz Ferdinand's assassination, or face military action. After Serbia appealed to Russia for help, the czar's government began moving towards mobilization of its army, believing that Germany was using the crisis as an excuse to launch a preventive war in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. On August 1, after hearing news of Russia's general mobilization, Germany declared war on Russia. The German army then launched its attack on Russia's ally, France, through Belgium, violating Belgian neutrality and bringing Great Britain into the war as well.

Over the next four years, the Great War (as World War I was then called) would grow to involve Italy, Japan, the Middle East and the United States, among other countries. More than 20 million soldiers died and 21 million more were wounded, while millions of other people fell victim to the influenza epidemic that the war helped to spread.

The war left in its wake three ruined imperial dynasties (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) and unleashed the revolutionary forces of Bolshevism in another (Russia). In the end, the uneasy peace brokered at Versailles in 1919 kept tensions in check for less than two decades before giving way to another devastating world war.

With regard to our current situation with Iran, an un-named American contractor was killed in Iraq by a rocket allegedly launched by an Iranian militia. The attack on the U.S. embassy earlier this week was reportedly in response to a series of U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 militia fighters on Sunday. That strike was in turn in retaliation for a rocket strike on an Iraqi military compound that killed a U.S. defense contractor and injured U.S. and Iraqi service members.

Who is the aggressor?

CPW