Lessons of Empire

7/29/2019 Lessons of Empire

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/lessons-of-empire 1/4

world

Despite Ashcroft‘sreassurances, resist-

anceisbuilding. Eighty-nine cities have

passed resolutions condemning the Patxi-

ot Act, and a coalitionisstretching across

ideological lines to oppose it. Recently

theACLU drafted a letter to Congress

and found 67 organizations from the

conservativeGunOwners of America to

the liberalLaRazaeagertosign on. They

accuse Patriot11of “new and sweeping

law enforcementand intelligence gath-

ering powers, many of which are not

related to terrorism, that would severely

dilute, if not undermine, basic constitu-

tional rights.”

Three months after 9/11, Ashcroft

announced, “To those who scare peace-

loving people with phantoms of lost lib-

erty, my message is this, your tactics

only aid terrorists for they erode our

national unity and...give muni ti onto

American’s enemies.”Ashcroftiswrong

to portray any criticism of Bush admin-

istration civil liberties policiesas aiding

and abetting terrorism. Americais

over-due forasearching examination of the

powers the Bush administration has

seized and the powers itisseeking.

J ames Bovard is the author o then-th-coming Terrorism& Tyranny: How

Bush’s CrusadeisSabotaging Freedom,

Justice, and Peace

STARVINGARTISTS WANTED

TheAmerican

Conservativeseeks politicallyliterate illustratorsfor freelance work.

Send pegsamplestokhopkinsQamconmag.com

LessonsofEmpireBritain’scoloniesdrained the MotherCountry

By Correlli Barnett

I N HE R WAR WITH IRAQ , heri Ca has

acted much like imperial Britain more

than a century ago, when in a very dif-

ferent world she invaded the Sudan,

killed the Dervish leader at the 1898

Battle of Omdurman, and, thanks to

quick-lking artillery and machineguns,

slaughtered 11,000 of his ill-armed fol-

lowers on the field.Thisis,therefore,anappropriate moment to Compare the

United Statesas the imperial power

today to Britainas an empire passed.

During the mercantilist 18th century,

trade and territorial conquest advanced

together, first at the expense of Hollandand thenof France. This dual process

was exemplified by The Honorable East

India Company, which, though a com-

mercial enterprise,alsoruled the British

dominion in India. By the time of the

American Revolution,there had evolved

an Atlantic protectionist “common mar-

ket” under the UnionFlag,with comple-

mentary flows of commodities between

the North American colonies, the West

Indian sugar islands, and the Mother

Country. The profits from this British

Empire paid for the Royal Navy, whichin turn promoted and protected the

Empire’s expansion.

All this changed in the Victorian era

when Britain adopted free trade in place

of mercantilism, and markets under the

Flag lost their old preeminence.A t the

same time, evangelical religion created a

new imperial ruling class who believed

it their duty to civilize the native races,

especially in India, “the jewel in the

Crown”of Empire.Thepoisonoush t

fruit.of this attempt to impose Western

values was the so-called Indian Mutiny

in 1557, a violent uprising of the Indianarmy against its British officers and

British rule as a whole, which was

crushed by British troops with equalve

lence. Meanwhile, thanks to the Royal

Navy’sthen mastery of the seas, British

settlements had been planted in Aus-

W a nd New Zealand, more than 10,000

d e s romthe homeland.

By the186Os,fke-trade Britain eqjoyed

an apparently permanent hegemony

over world commerce and finance. But

only two decades later this dominance

cameunder threat from theriseof new

continental-scale rivals like America

and the German Empire. The response

in Britain was to revive the concept of

the British Empire. It was argued thatin

order to remain a pre-eminent world

power, Britain must weld her historic

rummage-bag of possessionsbut espe-

cially the Enghsh-speaking colonies ike

Australia and New Zealand-into a sin-

gle strategic and economic entity mas-

tenninded from London.

Butthsvision of a new oceanic super-power proved impossible to realize. The

colonists overseas were swiftlygrowinginto nations in themselves, increasingly

jealous of their independence.By the

Statute of Westminster in 1930, the

Dominionsof Canada, Australia, South

Africa, and New Zealand becamefullyindependent nations whose only formal

link with Britain and each other was a

monarchy in common.

Byths time too, the attempt to create

12 T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t i ve M a y 1 9 , 2 0 0 3 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG

ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED



acommon market had failed. There waslittle correlation between the global pat-

tern of British markets and investments,

and the “red on the map.” In 1938, for

instance, ndia,Britain’s grandest impe-

rial possession, took less than eight per-

cent of British exports.

Yet the myth of Empire had seized

British minds. Queen Victoria’s Golden

and Diamond Jubilees n 1887and 1897

marked the beginning of a public-rela-

tions empire, and even the British elite

swallowed the fantasy. Through the

1920sand30s there was much mention

of The Empire in political discourse;

every Christmas the King spoke toiton

the wireless. nthi sway the British con-

vinced themselves that the existence of

the commonwealth made Britainafirst-

class world power. Yet the truthwas that

by the 1930s the Empire had becomea

net drain on British strength-one of the

most remarkable examples of strategic

overextension n history.

Britain herself,anisland state of only

45 million people, provided the bulk ofthe Empire’s ndustrial resources and of

its naval and military strength.As the

Mother Country, Britainalsoaccepteda

moral obligation to defend the Empire

in its global sprawl, while the Domin-

ions accepted no reciprocal obligation

towards Britain’s security in Europe.

Even in the face of dictators Britain

found t impossibletopersuade the Dom-

inionsto agree on common foreign and

defense policies, let alone oint military

contingency plans. There never wasanimperial NATO. Moreover, the ruling

elite’ssense of responsibility or the non-

European peoples of the Empire caused

Britain to cling on in places like India

even though t was no longer an econom-

ic asset and garrisoning t in peacetime

swallowed upathird of the British army.

The emergenceby1937of atriple men-

ace from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy,

and militaristic apan, presented Britain

with an insoluble dilemma. She neither

possessed, nor could afford to create,armed forces strong enough to parry

this threat. Nor, for that matter, could

her now obsolescent industrial base

produce the armaments. When Britain

began to re-arm in 1936, she had to

import large quantities of machine tools

and military kit from abroad, mostly

Europe and America.By 1938-39,these

imports were fast running her towardsa

balance-of-payments crisis.

In spring 1939,the British Chiefsof

Staff warned that Britain could onlyhope towinalong war, while the Trea-

surywarned that she could only afford a

short war. Evenif outright defeat could

be averted,runwas inevitable, and thus

it proved in World War 11 From April

1941onwards, Britain depended for her

war effort and indeed for national life

itself on American subsidiesunder Lend-

Lease. Then, in 1941-42,the facade of

Empire collapsed when the British colon-

iesinsoutheastAsia fell to the Japanese,

and Australia and New Zealand passed

under American protection. Nemesishad at last overtakenastrategy flawed

by the coupling of imperial self-delusion

with imperial overstretch.

necessity to Britain’svast oceanic trade,the American battle fleet constructed

after1900was-as Churchill said of the

German High Seas Fleet at the same

time-a “luxury leet,”developed purely

in order to project American power in

pursuit of Teddy Roosevelt’svisionof

America’s Manifest Destiny.

Thus while Britain acquired an empire

piecemeal argelyas the by-product of ahunt for markets, the overseas expan-

sion of the U.S. began as a project of

national ambition. Her colonies of Cuba,Puerto Rico, and the Philippines were of

minor economic value to her continental

economy, while being strategically rrel-

evant to her continental security.

It was that Methodist academic of a

president, Woodrow Wilson, who during

WorldWar I gave an extraordinarytwist

to the notion of Manifest Destiny by

proclaiming that America must now

create and uphold anew world order

based on American values. The Four-

teen Points were inspired not by calcula-

tionof America’s strategic or economicinterests, but by the ideology of Christ-

ian righteousness.Thiswas, after all, the

belief that had taken thePilgrimFathers

BRITAIN ACCEPTED A MO RAL OBLIGATION TO DEFEND THE EM PIRE, WHILE THE

DOMINIONS ACCEPTED NO RECIPROCAL OBLIGATION.

The power of the American onslaught

onI rqmight seem to demonstrate thatthe United States could never become

similarly overextended. Certainly, there

islittle in common between Britain and

theUS. in their developmentas imperi-

al powers. By the time of WorldWar I,

the United States had developed intoaself-contained economy of unrivaled

scale and power, the very opposite of

Britain’s island economy meshed into

world markets. And whereas the Royal

Navy had always been an inherent

to New England in 1620, which their

descendents took with them to theMidwest and beyond, and which today

shapes the worldview of George W.

Bush’s Washington.

Between the world wars, America’s

Manifest Destiny-whether of Woodrow

Wilson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s brand-

was temporarily eclipsed by non-inter-

ventionismas advocated by the Found-

ing Fathers. Yet, willy-nilly, the American

Empire in the Pacific rendered conti-

nental isolationism no longer possible.

M ay 1 9 , Z O O 3 T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t i v e 13LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG




With Old Glory flying in the Philippines

less than 400 miles from the Chinese

mainland, the United States was

brought face to face with militaristic

Japan by that country’s invasion of

China. For moral rather than strategic

reasonsFrankl i nRoosevelt took China’s

side, at first politically and then in 1941

by imposing an economic embargo on

Japan.Thisled in turn to the pre-emp-

tive Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor that

pitchforked America into the Second

World War. Victory in 1945 over Ger-many and Japan brought the United

States into direct confrontation with the

Soviet Empire, especially nEurope. Here

were ultimate consequences of Teddy

Roosevelt’s mperialist annexations that

he could hardly have foreseen. Yet victo-

ry also bestowed on America the eco-

nomic and strategic hegemony over the

whole Western world (now including a

Japan ruled by an American viceroy).

America was the only belligerent to

emerge from the war not ruined but

actually richer and industrially stronger.Thefirmbase of American hegemony

therefore lay in an economy of over-

whelming size and productiviw. To exer-

cise effective imperial control, however,

demands institutional mechanisms, and

these the United States proceeded to

set up: in the economic sphere, the

Organization for European Economic

Cooperation and the Marshall Plan; in

the financial sphere, the World Bank, the

International Monetary Fund, and the

BrettonWoodssystem of fixed exchangerates pegged to the dollar. The unprece-

dented and continuingstatusof the dol-

lar as an international reserve currency

has meant that America could keeprun-

ning enormous budget and balance-of-

payments deficits-as shestill does.

In the politico-strategic sphere, the

United States was the dominant found-

ingmember of the UnitedNationsin1945.

She believed that a consensus among

the great powers on the UN Security

Council (along with America’s then

monopoly of the atom bomb) would

provide security on the cheap, though

the slide into the Cold War with the Sovi-

et Union doomedth snotion. Instead, by

theNorthAtlantic Treaty of 1949 and the

creation of NATO in 1950, the United

States committed herself to the long-

term defense of Europe.

When President Truman launched the

United States into the Korean War in

1950,itmarked a fateful first step along

the road of far-offmilitary nterventionsreminiscent of Britain’sVictorian impe-

rial wars. Yet the British experience

offers no parallel to the sheer extent of

American strategic involvement around

the world by the 1960s n pursuit of con-

tainment of the Soviet Union. Alliances

and mutual security pacts committed

theU.S. to the protection of countries n

almost every continent at enormous

cost in a global spread of garrisons,airbases, and carrier fleets.

In 1965, came the most fateful imperi-

al foray of all, when President LyndonJohnson aunched American forces into

the Vietnam War. Why did he do it? Viet-

nam had nooil fields, industries, or key

raw materials-only rice fields. The

answer liesinAmerica’s central motiva-

tion in waging the Cold War: ideological

hatred of Communism. With rare excep-

tions (George Kennan, Henry Kissinger),

American policy-makers did not regard

the Soviet Unionassimply a rival power

bloc, butasan evil empire threatening

the free world. Such righteousness usti-fied the global commitments and mili-

taryadventure. British imperial rulers in

their time had been farmore pragmatic.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire in

1990 might seem to have proved Ameri-

ca’s cold warriors right. Yetthsvictory

only replaced a stable bipolar world

with onehighly confused and unstable.

In consequence, American imperial in-

volvement has expanded in Europe

with military interventions and now

standing garrisons in Bosnia andKoso-

vo; in the Middle East with the Gulf War

and itslegacy of military presence on

Arab soil in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere

that has inflamed the Islamic hatredso

cunningly exploited by Osama bin

Laden.

Thi s Islamic venom, focused through

al-Qaeda, provoked Washington to pro-

claim a new ideological world conflict-

a war on terrorism. Thus began a further

stageinAmerican imperial expansion:

the conquest of Afghanistan; commit-ment of special forces in Aden, Somalia,

the Philippines, and Indonesia; and now

the occupation of Iraq, a target more

easily identified and demolished by

America’smilitarymachine than the elu-

sive al-Qaeda network. Beyond raqloom

other members of “theaxjs of evil“ who

may soon become objects of the new

doctrine of pre-emptive attack. Does

this mean the United States is nearing

that breakpoint of empires gone before:

overstretchtothe point that the nation-

al economy cracks under the weight of

the imperial role?

Already$75billionhas been budgeted

for theIraqwar and collateral purposes.

The pricetagonpostwar reconstruction

has been put at some $50 billion. Five

years of military occupation will cost

another $43 billion. To these costs add

anannual defense budget of $380bil-

lion.Thisenormous extra loadisbeing

incurred at the time when the American

economy is faltering amid fears of a

global recession. There is deep uneaseas to whether Americacancontinueto

runahuge budget deficit atop a massive

trade deficit. Are we looking at a super-

Enron, supremely powerful but aboutto

implode? The graveyard of empires sug-

gestsasmuch.

Comell i Barnett, CBE, i s a Fel l ow of

ClzurchiU CoUege, Cambridgeand theauthor of The Verdict of Peace: Britain

Between Her Yesterday and the Future.

~ ~

y T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t l v e M a y 1 9 , 2003 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG




T e

[m o n e z u m a ’ s r e v e n g e

South Gate: Mexico Comes to CaliforniaHow anall-A mericantownbecame a barrio.

By Roger D. McGrath

WHI LE WE ARE ENGAGED overseas in

amission to recreate countries in our

own image and likeness, many of our

own cities are being transformed into

the image and likeness of Mexican vil-

lages. Nowhere is this more apparent

than California The city of South Gate,a

dozen miles southeast of LosAngeles,is

a prime example. Until the 1920s the

area thatistoday South Gate was home

to dairies-many of them operated by

Danish immigrant families -and veg-etable and fruitfarms.Then subdivision

began, and housing tracts and industrial

parks started to replace fields and barns.

In 1923, withapopulation of 2,500, the

city of South Gate was incorporated,and

avolunteer fire department was organ-

ized. Firestone Tire and Rubber Compa-

ny built its factory ona40-acre former

bean field, and a chemical plant and

foundry were established. Jobs were

plentiful and housing was relatively

inexpensive. The local economy boomed.

The market crash of ’29 slowed devel-

opment, but new industries continued

to be established, includingaGeneral

Motors plant that employed 4,000 work-

ers assembling Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles,

and Buicks. The populationwasmostly

blue collar: many of the new arrivals dur-

ing the 1930s were Dust Bowl migrants

who brought with them “hillbilly”music,

Protestant fundamentalism, andaraw-

boned toughness. The coming of World

War I 1 initiatedasecond boom, which

continued in the postwar yearsuntil the

population reached some 55,000 by

1964. The next year South Gate began to

change. In August 1965, theWatts riots

erupted.Wattswas virtually 100 percent

black, and South Gate, immediately to

the east of Watts,was nearly 100 percent

white. Although the rioters were mostly

conlined to black areas of south-central

LosAngeles and did not cross the line

into South Gate, younger whites inSouth Gate staked to look elsewhere to

buy their first houses.Asthe white pop

dation of South Gate began to decline,

the Mexican population, which earlier

had established a foothold, began to

increase.

Bythe mid-l970s, with illegal immi-

gration unchecked, Mexicans were asubstantial minority of South Gate’s

population.Bythe 1980s they were the

majority. Today, South Gate is 93 per-

cent Hispanic.Of thetown’s 90,000His-

panics, 1,100 are from South America,

1,300 rom Cuba or Puerto Rico, 6,200

from Central America, and the rest from

Mexico. Exactly how many are illegal

aliens or children of illegal aliensisdiffi-

cult to assess, but two-thirds is proba-

bly a conservative estimate. Nearly half

of South Gate’s population was born

outside of the United States, and 80 per-

cent of the town’s residents speak Span-

ishathome.

South Gate High School is99 percent

Hispanic. Of almost 3,400 students there

are only 15 blacks and 17 whites.A quar-

ter of the students speak ittle or no Eng-

lish, and 85 percent of the students re-

ceive free meals at the school.Testscores

are abysmal. Onastate testing scale of 1

to 10, the high school scoresa2.

Many, if not most, of Los Angeles

County’s cities may soon resemble

South Gate. From 1980-1990 he number

of Hispanics residing in the countyincreased by 62 percent while the num-

ber of whites decreased by nine percent,

andasimilar pattern continued through

the next decade. The change in demo-

graphics has broughtachange in poli-

tics. As South Gate resident Julia Bar-

raza s&d, “It’s ikeI never left Mexico.”

One reason is Albert Robles.A for-

mer aide toaMexican-Ameriqan state

legislator, Robles moved to South Gate

when the demographics turned to his

favor and was elected to the city council

in 1992. At that time the job was part-

time, and council members were paid

$600amonth.A few years later, while

still servingas acouncilman, he was

elected to the local water board at a

compensation of $23,000ayear.In1997,

he won the race for city treasurer and

began collecting an annual salary of

$69,000. Meanwhile, Robles had seen to

itthat his friends and business associ-

ates were awarded city contracts worth

M a y i g , 2 0 0 3 The American Conservat ive 15LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG


Lessons of Empire

Documents

Transcript of Lessons of Empire