A Goodreads user asked Tim Butcher:

Hi Tim, I really enjoyed The Trigger. My question is: What do you think would have happened (or not) if Princip hadn't pulled the trigger, or if he had missed his target? (Sorry, I know you're not a fantasy author, but nevertheless ...!)

Tim Butcher You asking the classic counterfactual question, one that probes the importance of the context of 1914 rather than the specifics of the assassination. In short, was WWI inevitable? Many historians, buoyed by 20:20 retrospective vision say, yes it would have. They argue the conditions (creaking empires armed to the teeth, clinging to an old imperial world order and anxious to establish once and for all which empire is top dog) made war inevitable.
I am not so sure. For decades after 1945 the conditions were there for global conflict. We call it the Cold War or its localised proxies, and the same acute rivalry, distrust and conceit of 1914 were there alive and well. But there was never a spark that took. The conditions were ripe but the opportunity never came about.
In 1914 the conditions were ripe and an opportunity came about when Princip fired his gun. Events bestow on Princip's two shots a sobering epitaph: the shots that led to more bloodshed than any in all time.
Historians love to frame events, to explain them, to deconstruct causal linkages. Sometimes historians need to remember a bit of humility and concede that sometimes x has an impact, on other occasions x does not.

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