The story
Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was the commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian army and an heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne (i.e. the designated next emperor, the ruling emperor Franz-Joseph being at the time in his eighties.) Franz-Ferdinand was assassinated along with his wife Sophie and several others on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia, which was at the time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There had been several attempts on his life during one day, including a bomb thrown at him, which injured many bystanders but missed their intended target. The decisive shots were fired from a handgun by Gavrilo Princip.
The participants of the assassination conspiracy were members of an organization named "Black hand" which was allegedly funded by the Serbian government in Belgrade. In the aftermath of the attack the Austrian government demanded from the Serbian government to stop its support for the Bosnian separatists and allow for the Austrian investigation into the affair in Serbia itself. While the contemporary politicians deemed the particular details of these demands to be unacceptable to a sovereign state, the non-compliance would mean a war between Serbia and Austro-Hungary. Russia, the major Serbian ally, promised to support Serbia by attacking Austro-Hungary - a move for which Russia was encouraged by France and Britain. In response Germany promised to help Austria by military action against Russia and France. The whole situation quickly deteriorated into World War 1.
While historians agree that the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand was not the major reason for the global war, but merely the event that started it, the assassination contains several useful lessons, usually ignored by all parts of the political spectrum.
Lessons for the right:
1. Terrorism is not a modern phenomenon. Indeed, it was quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Europeans, familiar with the history of their countries, would probably have few difficulties finding examples. For example, in Russia it resulted in assassinations of the Tsar Alexander III and prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, in assassinations of many local governors and smaller officials, as well as in many unsuccessful attempts at the lives of various Tsars.
2. Terrorism is not directly tied to Islam. At different times and different countries terrorists represented extreme expression of various, otherwise legitimate, ideologies: nationalistic, revolutionary, religious etc. The assassination of Franz-Ferdinand was intended to accelerate secession of Bosnia from Austro-Hungarian Empire and its incorporation into Serbia on the way to satisfy the nationalistic aspirations for a union of southern Slavs (realized after the WW1 as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia).
Characteristically, the European terrorists showed the suicidal tendencies similar to the modern ones: Gavrila Princip, following the assassination, attempted to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide (He vomited it out and therefore was taken in custody alive.)
3. Modern terrorism seems particularly evil, since it targets innocent civilians rather than particular political figures. This however is more likely the result of the political systems targeted rather than the special wickedness of the terrorists themselves. For example, Franz-Ferdinand, soon-to-be the Emperor, was known to be a proponent of the political reform which would give greater autonomy to the Southern Slavs within the Austro-Hungarian empire, similar to the autonomy granted a few decades earlier to its Hungarian subjects (when the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian one.) These reforms would relax the nationalistic tensions in Bosnia, and the assassination had a clear goal of preventing such a development.
On the other hand, in a democratic country assassination of a politician is less likely to produce desired political effect than an attack against unremarkable voters. Indeed, the elected politician merely reflects the sentiment of the voters and can be replaced by another politician reflecting similar sentiment. Thus, for example, the policies of Yitzhak Rabin were continued by Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, and continue to be promoted by the Israel's left-wing politicians.
In the same time, the recent attempts at assassination of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the member of the Saudi government in charge of the antiterrorism efforts, is characteristic of an undemocratic regime, where an attack against undistinguished crowd would be unlikely to affect the government policies.
Lessons for the left:
4. All of the participants in the conspiracy against the Austrian Archduke were Austrian citizens. This should be kept in mind by those who claim that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved by Israel annexing the West Bank and Gaza and making the Palestinians living their Israeli citizens. If, in practice, this turns out to have nothing to do with their actual grievances and aspirations, the conflict will continue. Indeed, neither the speeches of the popular Palestinians leaders, nor the opinion polls among the Palestinian public give us reasons to think that statehood/Israeli citizenship is their main priority.
5. Assassination of Franz-Ferdinand was the extreme expression Southern Slavs’s nationalistic belief that their full political, cultural and economic development would be possible only, if they were united as single nation. Neither giving Bosnians the Austrian citizenship, nor granting the Southern Slavs within the Empire greater autonomy would satisfy this aspiration, deeply rooted in the culture and history of these people.
Likewise, in the case of Palestinians, we encounter nationalistic aspirations going far beyond the current Palestinian communities in the West Bank in Gaza. The Palestinian national identity that should inevitably incorporate the Palestinians which constitute the majority of the citizens of Jordan, as well as those living in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries. These aspirations are reflected in what is called “the right of return” in the peace negotiations, in the calls to “wipe out” the Zionists from more hard-line Palestinians, and in the constants civilian unrest in the Jordan, which prompts the King of Jordan to be a greater proponent of the two-state solution than any of the Israelis or Palestinians. Creating a Palestinian state, consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, will do nothing to address this problem.
