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SPEAKING
FREELY
Iraq, George Bush and Queen
Victoria
By Michael G Gallagher
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
Once
upon a time, a superpower became involved in a war in a
faraway land. The leaders of this mighty nation thought
the war would be easy, so they sent their young soldiers
off to war with hardly a second thought about the
consequences of their actions. The leaders of the
greatest power on earth were unpleasantly surprised when
the enemy proved tougher than expected. As their
supposed cakewalk of a war became a muddy slog, the
empire's leaders became uneasy over the mounting deaths
of their young soldiers - and their citizens' reactions
to those deaths.
No, this is not George W Bush
and Iraq in 2003. It's Great Britain fighting the Boer
War in South Africa in 1899.
In 1897, England
marked the 60th year of Queen Victoria's reign with
Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Over 150 ships of the
massive Royal Navy sailed in review off Spithead. Troops
from every corner of the empire paraded past cheering
crowds in a celebration of British might. The Viceroy of
India alone ruled over 300 million people.
But
there was one spot on the map that wasn't completely
British: South Africa. The British controlled the
coastal areas, but had no authority over the gold mines
and diamond fields in the interior of the country. Those
riches belonged to the Afrikaner-Boer republics of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Finally, after
giving in to a combination of simple greed and imperial
pride, the British decided to go to war.
What
happened next bears an eerie similarity to what is now
happening in Iraq; after thinking the war all but won by
the spring of 1900, the British found themselves facing
an increasingly fierce resistance from the well-armed
Boer guerillas who, being intimately familiar with the
local terrain and culture, found it very easy to vanish
into the rolling hills and grasslands of the South
African veldt.
World public opinion
backed the Boers, who were widely perceived as being the
victims of an outrageous British land grab. One American
magazine described Britain's African misadventure this
way: "A small boy with diamonds is no match for a large
burglar with experience." The French, who had seen their
African ambitions blocked by the British at Fashoda in
Egyptian Sudan on September 18, 1898, simply gloated. At
one point during the conflict, relations between London
and Paris had sunk so low that the British press was
openly speculating about a French attack on London. The
German emperor, Kaiser Wilhem II, demanded that his
country be allowed greater international influence - and
then launched a massive naval buildup to back up that
demand.
At home, British newspapers reported in
detail about charred army supply wagons and Boer
guerillas galloping off into the bush with the lumbering
British army in futile pursuit. Their readers, used to
nearly half a century of easy victories over poorly
armed and organized native tribes, were totally
unprepared for the steady stream of bad news and bodies
flowing out of South Africa. Queen Victoria's twilight
years should have been a little quieter.
But
modern Iraq isn't an exact twin of the Transvaal in
1899. The British went on to win their war, while the
issue in Iraq has yet to be decided. In the end, the
British had to commit 300,000 troops to crush the
stubborn Boer guerillas.
The issue of access to
natural resources is also more apparent than real. Gold
and diamonds are bright and shiny, but oil is by far the
more vital resource. If you don't think so, try putting
a handful of diamonds in your car's gas tank and see
what happens when you put the key in the ignition.
American access to Iraqi oil was never more than
half of the natural resource equation; the other half
was Saddam Hussein's access to Iraqi oil. Saddam had a
long and well-documented history of trying to build
weapons of mass destruction. He also had a long and
well-documented history of trying to deceive United
Nations weapons inspectors. No American administration,
especially the present one, and in the aftermath of
September 11, was going to allow Iraq to come out of the
UN sanctions with Saddam or any other Ba'athist still in
power in Baghdad.
Another difference lies in the
quality of the two resistance forces. The Boers were
fighting to defend prosperous (except for their African
underclass) and stable communities against a lunge at
their natural resources. The Ba'athists and the foreign
fighters ambushing the US army in the Sunni triangle are
nihilists. People who suicide bomb the Red Cross
headquarters in Baghdad are not trying to rebuild an
orderly, prosperous society; they are fighting to
prevent the establishment of a new one.
But
differences aside, another important similarity between
the Boer War and Iraq needs to be pointed out: both the
19th century British and the Bush administration were
confirmed unilateralists.
From the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until the start of the Boer War,
one of the main concepts shaping British foreign policy
was the idea of "splendid Isolation". After all, England
was safe behind her invincible Royal Navy, she had led
the world in the Industrial Revolution, and she ruled
over the largest colonial empire. British officials
therefore asked the question: did Her Majesty's
government need the services of meddlesome and often
unreliable allies? The answer to this question was a
resounding no, and secure in the belief in their own
exceptionalism, the British floated serenely above most
of 19th century Europe's wars and diplomatic crises.
The shock of the Boer War destroyed the policy
of "splendid Isolation" overnight. British diplomats
discovered how truly alone their nation was in world
affairs. To their credit, they moved quickly to rectify
Britain's dangerous isolation. In 1902, London signed a
treaty of alliance with Japan, and in 1905 allied itself
with France against the growing power of Germany.
British officials even managed to swallow their distaste
for Imperial Russia and embrace Czar Nicholas II as an
ally in the Triple Entente against Berlin. The switch
from unilateralism to multilateralism had taken place
with the diplomatic version of breakneck speed
But unlike early 20th century Britain, America
under Bush may find it more difficult to go fishing for
prospective allies. Japan in 1902 was searching for
legitimacy as a great power, so concluding an alliance
with the strongest power around was a natural step for
her. Suspicion of Imperial Russia provided still more
glue for the alliance. Mending fences with France came
with relative ease as well. Both powers shared a growing
fear of German power. British fear of the growing number
of German battleships across the North Sea readily
combined with the French desire for revenge against
Germany for her defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War
to produce a quick end to the centuries-old rivalry
between the two powers.
The Bush people may have
trouble duplicating England's diplomatic turnaround for
one very important reason: nobody needs America as much
today as Britain and her new allies needed each other
during the early 1900s. India was asked to commit
troops, but said no. Its leaders knew that their country
didn't have to worry about American ire because
Washington needs New Delhi's support as a hedge against
possible Chinese expansionism. Pakistan's President
General Pervez Musharraf also felt comfortable about
saying no to the Americans. He knew that US officials
were unwilling to press him too hard about sending
troops to Iraq because they were afraid of fatally
antagonizing Pakistan's Muslim population. More
stimulation for Pakistani anti-Americanism would quickly
terminate that country's shaky support for the US
campaign against al-Qaeda along the Afghan-Pakistani
border.
Turkey, up until last week's terrorist
attacks, had been playing out its own charade with the
US. The government in Ankara knew full well that the
Turkish parliament's approval for sending troops to Iraq
would run afoul of vehement protests from all parts of
the Iraqi political spectrum. Privately, Turkish leaders
probably let out a long, loud sigh of relief when those
objections actually did materialize. Washington couldn't
complain. After all, the idea of deploying Turkish
troops in Iraq had been torpedoed by America's very own
Iraqi Governing Council. Other reasons that American
objections may have remained muted is that Turkey is the
only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, and that Turkey is the only Muslim state
to have a close, even cooperative relationship with
Israel. Since Turkey's mildly Islamic government must be
kept in the West's corner, American requests for Turkish
help in Iraq are likely to grow even more restrained in
the aftermath of last week's bombings in Istanbul.
Other powers, too, aren't exactly in need of
America's cooperation at this time. In France, the Bush
administration's announcement that it's going to hand
over political control in Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi
government by June 2004 has no doubt been greeted behind
the scenes by a loud chorus of "I told you so". Russia,
in the runup to Iraq II, had its sensitive post-imperial
toes stepped on by the Bush people, along with its
prospects for future Iraqi oil contracts. So there is
not likely to be much support, diplomatic or otherwise,
coming from the direction of Moscow for the foreseeable
future.
Bush and the men closest to him have all
wanted America to stand tall-and-alone in the
post-September 11 world. Unlike their British
counterparts of a century ago, the Bush people seem to
have confused their own need for martial display with
their nation's long-term interests. They may finally be
learning what happens when you actually get what you
pray for.
Michael G Gallagher has MA
and PhD degrees in international studies from the
University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. He is
currently based in South Korea.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
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