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On the Remnants and Arrogance of Empire
An essay commissioned by Peter Robinson on this week’s Ricochet Podcast.
After the devastation of two World Wars in less than a half century, the British Empire began to dismantle itself in the late 1940s. As commentator Mark Steyn has observed it then precipitated an event unheard of in human history – one dominant military power ceding power to another peaceably – not as the result of losing a war, but through sheer exhaustion. The British decided to tend to their knitting at home and left the new dominant power, the United States, to play the role of the world’s policeman.
The map of the Middle East signed by Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot. (British National Archives)
After almost 75 years we’re still at it. But we’re doing it in the world designed by our predecessors. The borders and political divisions we see are largely due to two events: The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 which divided much of the Middle East into spheres of influence between the British and the French and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that created the modern Turkish state. Both of these agreements, the former made at the height of the First World War and the latter after it, were made without regard to the people that were actually living there.
Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot were, as Tarek Osman calls them, “quintessential empire men.” They believed that they could run the Middle East in the best interests of England and France and all would be well. But if anything, all they did was manage to insert their countrymen into the long standing grievances of the region. If there were hatreds boiling over between Turks and Kurds, between Muslims and Jews, between Sunni and Shia, then they also created hatred among Arabs and the West. When the “West” became the target, America became the target, too. Not because we were directly involved with these forays into map making, but because we inherited the British Empire. Not her lands or her armed forces, but her attitude, that somehow if we decided how things were going to be, if we decided the nature of the relationships between countries, or worse, we decided who deserved a country in the first place, then all would be well. That is the arrogance of empire, something we have told ourselves time and time again throughout our history that that is exactly what we did not want to be.
This is an attitude that’s widely held among the American people and one that is held in such contempt by politicians and pundits alike. But it is actually something that resides very deep within us, as a part of our national DNA. We are the remnants of empire. We fought against it, we spilled our blood against it and gained our independence from it. And then we wanted to be left the hell alone.
For the longest time we were reluctant to involve ourselves in other people’s arguments. Although individuals turned themselves into mercenaries, we were determined as a nation to heed our first Commander-in-Chief’s admonishment to avoid entangling alliances. “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” asked George Washington. “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?” Thus we were late to both World Wars and yet, when we got there, did our best to finish the job. Because we knew what the end game was, we knew what was at stake, and we willingly paid the price.
One hundred and forty-seven years after Washington came Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Here was another man of Empire. In September of 1943 he was preparing America to take on the attitudes and ambitions of it. At a speech at Harvard he admonished isolationist America, “The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
“If this has been proved in the past,” he continued, “as it has been, it will become indisputable in the future. The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. Although we live in a period so tumultuous that little can be predicted, we may be quite sure that this process will be intensified with every forward step the United States make in wealth and in power.”
This sense of world responsibility did intensify. At least among the powered elite. The rest of the country wanted to get on with their lives. But this attitude that we were responsible for the rest of the world would eventually lead the WWII generation into Korea, and then their sons into the quagmire of Vietnam, and that was the beginning of a great divide that tore the country up and still stirs deep resentments. (A lot of the snide remarks, such as “President Bone Spurs,” have come from a lot of others who took advantage of the era’s deferment rules. Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton all did what they could to avoid going to Southeast Asia.) But all the while we tried to convince ourselves that we were acting in our national interest. We had to stop the Communists, both in China and the Soviet Union. We were living by the Domino Theory, that every country that fell to Communism would lead us closer to our own collapse.
But a funny thing happened. The Soviet Union would disappear and the Chinese would get in bed with American business. Saigon fell but the only thing the Vietnamese would take over is the apparel aisle of K-Mart and Target. Almost everything our betters told us would happen simply didn’t.
When the Towers fell in September of 2001 we all knew what had to happen. The gut instincts was the same as it always had been. You bring war to us and you will regret it. And just like 1917 and 1941, the feeling was to go over there, kick some ass and then come home. Only that didn’t happen. We took a detour into Iraq. And then in to some 20 other nations on the continent of Africa. And then into Syria. And increasingly it became more and more apparent to a lot of Americans, that unlike past wars, those that were making the ultimate sacrifice were not the sons and daughters of those that were committing the troops to fight. And the small minority that did go were going as officers, mostly as JAG lawyers and not as grunts. (Shout out to Tom Cotton, who despite his Harvard JD, did his duty with an M-4, not a law book.)
One of the biggest complaints against President Trump is that he has never signed on to the consensus of American foreign policy, the consensus that all of the “experts” and “professionals” have made their reputations on. All of them claim their decisions are based on sound theories and that everything they do is well considered and part of a larger strategy and plan. But the average Americans knows about plans, too. Those are the things that never survive first contact with the enemy and the thing that makes God laugh when you share them out loud. The idea that they can plan the outcomes of other people’s desires is the arrogance of empire.
Colin Powell once noted in 2003 that we Americans “have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace.”
That’s precisely what we’ve always believed in. But here we are, 16 years after those words were spoken, told that to return home and seek our own lives in peace is out of the question.
Some have noted that members of our military are upset with the withdrawal. They are warriors and that is to be expected. But as they say in the Marine Corps, we are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction. Our warriors are willing to die for their country and that is admirable. But for those on the homefront it is also to be expected that we ask exactly why they’ve been asked to make that sacrifice.
With China increasingly dictating the terms of what we can do and what we can say, it’s harder to justify an unending presence in the Middle East. Yes, we need to defend Israel as the only true liberal democracy in the region. But we also have to let these people sort a lot of their own problems out. Because imposing our will and our solutions is, ultimately, not going to work any better than it did for the British or the French 100 years ago. We’re Americans. We don’t believe in empire.
Published in General
That’s also how I read the acting Secretary of Defense statement which is why I expressed my confusion earlier in this thread about what is going on.
While I agree with your point in this circumstance the underlying question is what is our strategic interest in having soldiers in a particular location? Being canaries or tripwires does not, in and of itself, make their stationing a bad policy decision. It can make sense to have soldiers as canaries or tripwires as ours were for two generations in Western Europe.
Hey Gumby, I am as far away from being a military strategist as anyone could be. It seems to me, though, that any invasion into Western Europe by Russia would have almost immediately turned into a thermonuclear war. Of, course, we have the same situation in Korea. I don’t think much of that situation either. I just think that having those few troops in Syria was more likely to entangle us then to stave off violence between Turkey and the YPG Kurds. It’s over now, so I pray for the best.
One third of the US Army, 20% of the Navy and Air Force, plus tens of millions of dollars in forward stored heavy armaments is a commitment. Not a trip wire.
I wish one of the powers that be at Ricochet would contact Claire Berlinski and ask her for her analysis of the Turkey situation. My understanding is that Erdogan was on the ropes and needed a hail mary to stay in power, and Trump gave it to him.
For much of that time only able to fight a delaying action in the event of a conventional Soviet assault. It was the U.S. position that such an assault would trigger nuclear retaliation. Same with our troops in South Korea.
So?
I was told there would be no more endless war. I was told we don’t belong there and we shouldn’t risk American lives. When I pointed out that said American lives were still at risk I was then told that this was a temporary relocation before ending the endless war. Now I’m to understand that the continued fighting in Iraq and Syria (and by default risking American lives) is a-ok? This has been the fastest I have ever witnessed goalposts moved in my life.
Syria is an expansion. We’re still not out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And yes, getting out of there might take even more time.
It’s like the Hotel California. We check in and never check out.
Try @claire
You’re not wrong. Perhaps you could spread that bit of wisdom to a whole lot of others who have far less ability to understand the nuance of foreign policy. Because based on what I’ve seen in this community there was definitely the sense that Trump’s 87D chess match was going perfectly. I suspect you know how absurd that notion is, but others don’t seem to be on board.
It’s more than “nuanced.”
Not only does this mess run through the remnants of Empire, it also runs through Henry Kissinger’s office in the 1970s. The Shah of Iran had tried to use the Kurds against the Iraqis in the 1960s. A decade later, with Saddam Hussein in power and in the sphere of the Soviets, Kissinger, the Shah and the Israelis convinced Nixon to back a Kurdish insurgency. But they decided that a land-locked Kurdistan would not be economically viable so they wouldn’t go for a war of independence. Bill Colby at the CIA thought the whole thing was a mistake but Nixon went forward with it anyway.
Then the Islamic Revolution would come during the Carter years and it’s gone even farther down hill after that.
Expand on this, please. I was about to tiptoe up against a whole lot of CoC violations in response to this comment, but would like you to fill out the idea, just to make sure that what you typed out out sounded like the voice-in-the-head you wanted readers of this comment to hear.
@ejhill – I’ve been thinking about your premise re empires passing the baton peacefully, and about empires in general – and here’s my take and why I think it’s relevant to what’s going on in Syria for the US.
At the heart of it empires are about a relationship of structural inequality between two components, the metropole (?) and the colonies. The colonies exist and function for the metropole’s net benefit, never the other way round, and the (fluctuating) degree that this disadvantages the people in the colonies defines the (fluctuating) level of force the metropole has to use to keep the structure in place. This relationship is always based on economics and it never naturally occurs – it has to be consciously created and maintained.
The optics can be muddied by the fact that not every group in the metropole clearly benefits from empire, that empires generally use local satraps [call them allies] to project force [less expensive], that force [including conquest] can be economic as well as military, that the benefit to the metropole is not always products directly purchased or sold but can include things like control of/constraints on other satraps/competitors, that the colonial relationship does not have to take an overtly political form [eg British Raj] to functionally maintain that structural inequality, and that consequently the borders of empire are often fuzzily defined and frequently shifting.
The [Universal] Big Muddy is that empire always comes wrapped in justification by the metropole. This justification is believed by much of the metropole’s population, and this justification addresses everything but empire’s actual economic driver.
Empires end (usually wind down over decades, or even centuries) when any of the supports to this structure get out of balance: when the dominant metropole group or the satraps get too weak to maintain the structure, when the colonised groups get strong enough to up end the structure, or when the benefit the metropole gains from the relationship is perceived to be not worth the cost – ie the structure becomes useless to the metropole.
Given my assumptions (above) I’d say that what is happening in NE Syria is definitely an act of empire, involving borderlands, [at least two] satraps and a changing cost/benefit analysis. I don’t think it’s a symptom of a declining empire because it’s actually how empires always function. It may not sit well with the justification, but that’s a distant second. It may, or may not, be wise.
In your defense it’s not hard to run afoul of the CoC here at Amish Bible Camp. Now, I will answer what I think is your question as best I can. If I misunderstand what you’re asking please tell me and I’ll try to clarify again.
There was a post (last week?) where a number of the folks seemed to think that the words they wrote were crafted in the sand during high tide. With each new update on the mess in Syria their story changed, and the justifications for the results from Trump’s reckless incompetence shifted to fit whatever their minds needed to keep the narrative on track. It was a level of dishonesty (or perhaps utter lack of self awareness) that I hadn’t assumed I would find here. Some of it was practically performance art. And absolutely none of it even boarded on coherent. The rules of the game dictate that the buy-in continues to rise. Support for one bad idea means support for the next bad idea, and they build on top of one another like a Russian nesting doll of stupidity. It becomes a sunk cost at a certain point and one will do whatever is necessary in order to stay in the game. The alternative is too unspeakable.
FTR, I will say that clearly EJ has given this issue significantly more thought in one simple post on a nominally center-right website than our president has given to it in a lifetime. And that is what scares me and should scare the rest of you. Nobody has been able to make the intellectual case for the president’s Syria policy because it is not rooted in anything that even approaches a complete thought. But many have tried, and I respect those efforts. But for some others around here (and in other places I suspect) there is no interest in any kind of case being argued. They were on board already because they care more about the avatar of the president than the actual policies or consequences. I find that to be the same sort of shallow, slavish mentality that gave us eight years of Obama and has fueled the rise of people like Bernie. Personally I don’t view that as a good thing. But perhaps I’m wrong? It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.
@bossmongo, what have you got to say about those two paragraphs of ad hominem arrogance?
Okay, tracking.
My rejoinder would be that an appalling lack of analysis and planning on all sides, and I’m especially disappointed in military leadership. First, I feel that no one had or briefed to POTUS a viable course of action that had an achievable endstate. The military always likes to pre-position or sustain BOG (boots-on-the-ground) because it always makes life easier if you come up with a requirement to do something. But, if there is no realistic task/purpose involved, I concur with POTUS that there is no reason to have troops at risk.
An example of how terrible POTUS’ analytical powers are that is being bandied about is that the troops that were moved had to abandon/destroy a lot of their equipment. No. That’s a military failure, not a POTUS failure; granted, POTUS is the Commander-in-Chief, and thus is responsible for everything those under his command do or fail to do. But, if the cats and dogs in Syria didn’t go into the mission with an efficient and effective bugout plan, that’s an epic fail.
A couple months ago, when POTUS was contemplating pulling out of Afghanistan, I listened to an interview with McChrystal. McChrystal didn’t think we should leave. Okay, why? What are we going to achieve? What’s the endstate? How do we work ourselves out of a job? His answer can be summed up as: we need to be there and continue to muddle through.
Not good enough.
Somehow you think you’ve caught someone in a contradiction. You haven’t.
The goal for most of us should be to get our folks out of the Middle East. Those posts haven’t moved. The point is that when Trump engages in hyperbole “Let’s get those boys home!” and then someone comes along and says “But they didn’t come home, they are just shifting around!” it is those folks who can’t seem to get it straight. Because the minute before they were saying “In a surprise and unprecedentedly stupid move, Trump withdraws from Syria!”
And if Trump did simply say “You know what? Screw it. Bring every last one of them home to the United States. Today!” you’d have a hissy fit about that, too.
And, and….we stab it with our steely knives (the military) and we just can’t kill the beast (radical Islamic terrorism).
Alread did. She pointed me at crisisgroup.org. She of course is against Trump’s action AND Turkey.
I would say irony is dead.
I wouldn’t. If there was a real, actual plan and it was made clear to the American people what was happening I’d do what I do with other things I don’t agree with. I’d say “I don’t agree, but I’m not in charge” and move on. It’s the nonstop desire to make this seem like it was thought through that irks me. So many people have such low expectations for our leaders and then they wonder why they get lousy leadership. I happen to think those things are related. Maybe you don’t agree. That’s perfectly fine.
As to the contradictions that I’ve seen, you are free to ignore them if they are of no interest to you. But they are there. Some of them are subtle, some of them are…not so subtle. Again, that may not interest you. You have your own metrics by which you measure what you care about and what you don’t. I have no reason to believe that others should adhere to my standard nor I to theirs. But acting as if these things don’t exist is somewhat silly. You know that people have complicated relationships with their opinions, so why is it difficult to believe that those sort of tangled webs of thought would spill out into a forum such as this one? It would be unusual if that didn’t happen.
Steve Martin in Roxanne: Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don’t get that here.
I have said it again and again – Trump is an instinctual, not a cerebral, leader. He’s 180° removed from your typical wonk that’s drawn to Washington. The problem with DC (and the Western world in general) is the sheer abundance of these types of “deep thinkers” who don’t know how to react once their grand plans meet R&R – resistance and reality. They either dig in deeper determined to make it work and show the world how brilliant they are, or just as worse, they grind everything down to a halt while they come up with the next master plan. Meanwhile, the people who want to screw up the deep thinkers tend to be more more nimble and react quicker.
This is where Trump is attractive to so many voters. He and the electorate share these base instincts and broader beliefs. (It helps to explain why there were 9M+ crossover votes between Obama and Trump. There is no single reason why anyone gets elected. If you get 60 million votes then there’s 60 million reasons.) But if you look at all of these schemes to “fix” someone else’s problems through our military one thing is abundantly clear: It’s a helluva lot easier to get in than it is to get out.
This is reason #1 why I have a hard time stomaching George W. Bush these days. Because the one thing his grand plan did not have was an end goal. When you sent your best to die or to become maimed physically and/or mentally you owe them and their families a reason and a goal worthy of the sacrifice. One of the reasons people get romantic about the Second World War is that nation was united in a single cause. “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,” intoned FDR in 1941, “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” And everyone knew what that looked like.
We went through Vietnam and seems like we didn’t learn a damned thing.
Except in our case there is almost ZERO economic benefit. You can make a better case for us to be in Africa to counter the predatory nature of the ChiComs than you can for us to be in Syria.
I guess they don’t teach the “sunk cost fallacy” at the Army War College.
The thing that made World War 2 remembered as such a success was the cold war. There was a pretty terrible fate waiting for Germany if there had not been a cold war. The Germans didn’t like Americans/British or Russians. They knew they would get better treatment with American/British than with Russians, but it still wasn’t a matter of liking Americans/British. Since the threat of the Russians is currently gone, they are reverting to form by disliking Americans and Brits especially as the memories of the Cold War fade and new problems occur (Brexit, e.g.). If you have ever have a chance, talk to American service members stationed in Germany between war’s end and the Berlin Air Lift. It was dangerous. After the airlift is what people remember. You can also see it in American films made for the military on Youtube for service members being deployed to Germany prior to the airlift.
It’s also the reason comparisons between Japan/Germany and Iraq or Afghanistan are ridiculous. We are the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan as seen by most Iraqis and Afghans. We are infidels. China isn’t seen as a threat at the moment in either one.
They’re worth reading (and have highly useful conflict maps), but their composition and output clearly reflect a center-left EU/UN bias. You might also want to check out Jamestown Foundation (whose bias to keep in mind, assuming they haven’t changed in the past few years, is that they have rose-colored goggles toward any faction or goal that hurts Putin’s interests).
Trump said 10 months ago that withdrawal from Syria was going to happen. Then after 10 months he moved a few soldiers.
Let us parse the sentence, however. Mostly because it will be fun…
Let us start with:
I don’t think anyone has a desire. What we are responding to (at least I am) is the larger picture.
If Trump said 10 months ago that he was withdrawing from Syria, that only tells us that this wasn’t (or shouldn’t be) a surprise. It doesn’t necessarily tell us that it was thought through. I call myself a Trump Skeptic, or to use Rob’s phrase, I’m Trump Tolerant. My knee jerk reaction is neither scorn nor praise, but rather to do a bit of research. So, I’m unwilling to say that Trump didn’t think through this. I think he probably heard all the briefings, and realizing as so many of us have that the situation is intractable, that there is no political groundwork to be laid, no solution, said “To heck with it…move those guys. I’m tired of listening to the constant circular logic, the whack-a-mole options. Move the damn troops.” And for my part, I don’t know that it was the right course of action. But I think what you are really respoinding to here is people responding to the (to trun your words around a bit):
Every headline is “A surprise decision that no one saw coming and caught everyone flat footed and causes the end of the world as we know it!” Which is the headline for everything Trump does and says. So most of us just say “Yeah, whatever!”
And finally:
Don’t be irked. This is just a game. All of this arm chair quarterbacking we do. None of us have the data we need to make real decisions. But we like the game so we play it, as if we do. In the end, politics are done to us, not by us. I suppose that fact should irk you, for sure.
On that we agree.