Wars rarely turn out as their authors predict. For the United States, this has been true of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The same may be said one day of Iran if U.S. President Donald Trump's deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with a strike group of warships and bombers to the Persian Gulf leads to violent confrontations. The objective of the exercise, in the words of national security adviser John Bolton, is to "send a message" to Iran. Czar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who happened to be cousins, sent similar messages to each other in the summer of 1914 through the mobilization of their armies. That show of force did not prevent war. It started it....
