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The book George Bush should
read
With the US being urged to intervene in Liberia, a largely forgotten tome written 40 years ago by two Cambridge dons provides a timely warning for the president, says distinguished historian Paul Kennedy Friday July 4, 2003 Now that summer is settling over Washington DC and the annual congressional recess draws near, the time has come for America's governing elites to pick up those books, new and old, they have made notes all year to read. That being so, it is not unfair to speculate which works the president of the United States - the most powerful person in the world - might read at Crawford, Texas, or Kennebunkport, Maine, in the weeks to come. Last summer, it will be recalled, President Bush said he was reading Professor Elliot Cohen's Supreme Command, which argued that the most illustrious civilian wartime leaders (Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, Ben-Gurion) often achieved their greatest triumphs when they rejected the cautious recommendations of their generals. This year the president, who majored in history at Yale, might also be expected to read works about past policy-makers that would inform his own strategies. Some CEOs ask their staffers for titles of interesting summertime books. Other bosses may receive volumes from promotional editors and agents. Perhaps the best are those sent along by friends. Let us imagine, then, that Prime Minister Tony Blair was trying in his thoughtful way to continue his delicate efforts to influence White House policies and head off the more extreme manifestations of American unilateralism: What work of history might best assist that aim? There will be many candidates, and I can already anticipate readers of this article rushing in to suggest Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps, or David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, or Forrest Pogue's extraordinary multi-volume biography, George C Marshall: Organizer of Victory. But since the donor in this case is the prime minister of Britain, himself steeped in his island's history, at home and overseas, I suggest a gift of one of the most significant works ever written about the expansion and maintenance of international power. My nomination is a study published way back in 1961 by two Cambridge professors, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, titled Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. A little arcane, you might think? Not at all. It should be compulsory reading not only for the president, but especially for cabinet members Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, and their think-tank advisers who are running America's quasi-imperial policies today. The British "carve-up" of Africa was often portrayed by its radical critics as a form of crude jingoism, mixed with a desire to control strategic raw minerals and foreign markets - rather like the radical attacks upon US policies in Iraq today. But in Robinson's and Gallagher's work, based upon an exhaustive study of the confidential records of the British "official mind" - that is, cabinet ministers and other officials - a different story emerges. These were not people hungry for empire in Africa (the more cynical among us would say they had already had enough in India and the Far East, not to mention the dominions). They worried about their forces being over-extended. They were constantly challenged by double or treble crises - West Africa, the Near East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. And there was another burgeoning crisis: All the time, their generals and admirals were complaining about "mission creep" and inadequate forces. Yet it was always so difficult to draw the line. The biggest problem the mid-to-late Victorians faced was what Robinson and Gallagher neatly termed "ever-newer frontiers of insecurity." After having occupied Egypt in 1882, the British felt the threat of instability in the Sudan, which in turn had to be subdued - which raised the prospect of foreign forces seizing the headwaters of the Nile, which in consequence drove the British to occupy Uganda. The defence of British India called for control of the political affairs in Burma, Tibet, Afghanistan, Persia and the Persian Gulf. After 40 years of watching this process of perimeter expansion, the worldly-wise Lord Balfour (once prime minister and foreign secretary) observed around 1918 that some day British garrisons would have to occupy the southern suburbs of Moscow to prevent a possible threat to the Himalayas. These politicians were, to use another phrase, "reluctant imperialists," always promising that they were only going into a new land to ensure stability and decency, after which they would withdraw. But in they went, none the less. In a week when both the Financial Times and the New York Times are encouraging the US to take the lead in stabilising Liberia, when reports come in of further deterioration in Afghanistan, and when attacks continue in Iraq, this is a study that bears close reading. Of course, the two cases of a superpower being drawn into distant conflict are not identical. As the New York Times emphasises, a much-needed intervention into Liberia, even if American-led, would be under UN security council authority and with a multinational force (with considerable African contingents). This is not unlike the position nowadays in Afghanistan. It is obviously different from that in Iraq, at least structurally, since it is the US government, not the UN, which exercises the obvious authority - or lack thereof. And it is not the same as British imperialism, though some contemporary intellectuals like to think it is, or might become so. Still, the evident differences between Britain around 1900 and America around 2000 would not have flustered Robinson and Gallagher. They were chronicling a world power, Great Britain, that 100 years ago juggled all kinds of influence: colonies, dominions, protectorates, mandates, foreign-basing rights, special treaties. Those decision-makers realised that the best policy in Iraq for Britain in 1919 might not work in West Africa or Palestine or Central Asia or the Caribbean (as surely is the case with the US today). There was no imperial template for controlling events overseas - just the insertion of power. What most impressed the two Cambridge historians was how difficult it was to get out of an overseas operation once in it. Therefore, if President Bush hasn't enough time to read all of Africa and the Victorians, he and his team might at least read Chapter V, wittily titled Gladstone's Bondage in Egypt. The British under Prime Minister William Gladstone genuinely thought they were in that country for a short while after 1882, to restore order, suppress the Muslim fundamentalists, train a local army, assist economic development and then withdraw. The withdrawal, announced Gladstone, should be "as early as possible". It actually took place about 70 years later. And while no one is suggesting that is the length of time the US will be implanted in the Middle East, the evidence of an external great power becoming "bondaged" in different parts of the globe grows week by week. Clearly, there is no easy answer here. To withdraw all American overseas commitments and deployments immediately, as the isolationists suggest, would plummet various countries into chaos and give no hope to the likes of Liberia. But the constant pressure for mission creep and new interventions has got to be troubling, even to today's neo-conservative expansionists. It also must be the main charge and responsibility that lies across the president's desk, because it is he who has to decide America's strategic and humanitarian priorities. It is he who has to avoid the bondage of empire and find selective ways of maintaining US interests and supporting global stability without running the risk of overstretch that eventually eroded the Victorians' power and resolve. And, since it is difficult to see how all these current crises can be resolved without serious combined work by the international community, it is the president who has to lead us to a reconciliation with, and strengthening of, the United Nations. Without that we have little prospect of achieving a fair world order. · Paul Kennedy is the Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University and the author or editor of 16 books, including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. (c) 2003, Tribune Media Services International. The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
