The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (82 page)

about 5,500 niggers in this district (Gwelo) and our plan of campaign

will [be to] wipe them out, then move on towards Bulawayo wiping

out every nigger and every kraal (homestead) we can fi nd.”60 The

campaign against the Ndebele and the German assault on the Herero

did not move as far down this road as the Nazis did, but these incidents were a powerful harbinger of what would happen when the

ideological underpinnings of the new imperialism were taken to an

extreme. The human failings, if not sheer evil, of the Nazi leadership should never be dismissed in trying to explain their genocidal

outrages, but their intention to open an eastern frontier for German

settlement was not too far out of the mainstream of imperial thought.

Ultimately, their unwavering commitment to genocide was the result

of empire building descended into madness.

The criminal insanity of the Holocaust allowed the Allied powers

to deny this connection with the Nazi imperial agenda. Seeking to

demonstrate that the Third Reich was an aberration and not the product of modern western culture, they put the surviving Nazi leaders

on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against peace and

humanity. Article Six of the Charter of the International Military

Tribunal indicted them for conspiring to wage an aggressive war in

violation of international treaties, mass murder, slave labor, the plunder of public and private property, the wanton destruction of cities

and towns, and inhumanly persecuting civilian populations on the

basis of race and religion. This sent the Polish governor general Hans

Frank to the gallows for his declared intention to treat the country

“like a colony,” and Artur Seyss-Inquart and Alfred Rosenberg met

the same fate for their governorships of the Netherlands and occupied Soviet territory. The Reich plenipotentiary for labor allocation,

Fritz Sauckel, also hung for his role in enslaving millions of Europeans. More signifi cant, the Nuremberg trials forced the German people

to take collective responsibility for the Nazis’ crimes. For the fi rst

time, a metropolitan population answered directly for the actions of

the empire builders who operated in their name.

France under the Nazis 421

Although it is impossible to feel any sympathy for the Nazi leadership, it bears noting that the original architects of the new imperialism were responsible for the deaths of millions of their African

subjects. Certainly King Leopold and his proxies could have been

held

accountable for the brutal and ultimately exterminationist

forced labor policies in the Belgian Congo. Jarvis had equally genocidal intentions in declaring his intention to wipe out every “nigger”

and homestead in Gwelo district. The only reason these imperial

entrepreneurs would have escaped prosecution at Nuremberg was

that their victims had no national rights. The Allies charged the

Nazis with violating international law by forcing sovereign rulers

to abdicate, annexing territory, imposing their own law and courts,

conscripting defeated peoples, and, most serious, demanding excessive revenue and tribute, but they never suggested that building an

empire was a crime.

While Europeans may have denied any connection between the

new imperialism and the Holocaust, many educated Africans and

Asians were not fooled. Aimé Césaire in particular minced no words

in linking the western imperial project with Hitler’s crimes: “No one

colonizes innocently . . . no one colonizes with impunity . . . a nation

which colonizes, that civilization which justifi es colonization—and

therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is

morally diseased.”61 Césaire was equally harsh in declaring that the

French were just such a civilization and therefore deserved to be conquered by the Nazis.

France’s embarrassing defeat in 1940 further demonstrated that a

“modern” European people had a great deal in common with supposedly backward African and Asian subjects. The nation’s humiliating

descent into imperial subjecthood goes a long way toward explaining

why the French tried so hard to forget their four-year occupation by

the Germans. By defi nition, only primitive people were imperial subjects, much less collaborators. Yet the French did behave remarkably

like Africans and Asians in trying to come to terms with their occupation, and the Nazis’ success in dividing the French demonstrates that

any defeated people or nation can be turned into imperial subjects.

France’s social and political wars of the 1930s made the Germans’ task

easier, but it is easy to imagine King Edward VIII as Pétain and the

English fascist Oswald Mosley in Laval’s role if Hitler had conquered

Great Britain.

422 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

While the era of formal empire seemed to end with the Nazi demise

and the breakup of the western empires in Africa and Asia, imperial

logic still appeals to those who continue to believe that power and

coercion can be put to productive purposes. Although no great power

admits to seeking an empire in the modern era, military might and

smug ethnocentrism still lead to imperial projects. The disastrous

American occupation of Iraq testifi es to the tragic consequences of

this failure to understand the true history of empire.

Imperial Epitaph

In 1917, General Stanley Maude, who conquered Iraq for the British

Empire, reassured the people of Baghdad that his troops came not

“as conquerors or enemies but as liberators” from oppressive Turkish rule. In 2003, President George Bush promised the Iraqis that

the United States military would save them from a barbarous despot

who threatened global civilization. In a speech a month before the

invasion of Iraq, he solemnly declared, “Any future the Iraqi people

choose for themselves will be better than the nightmare world that

Saddam Hussein has chosen for them. . . . If we must use force, the

United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a

liberated Iraq.”1 In other words, the United States would use military

force to achieve humane ends.

The American soldiers who invaded Iraq were not neoconquistadors, and they did not consider themselves empire builders. Their

leaders told them that they were there to rescue the population from

a brutal dictator, and unlike Richard Meinertzhagen, who justifi ed his

execution of the Nandi
orkoiyot
Koitalel arap Samloei with a similar

excuse, most respected the sanctity of human life. The vast majority were deeply disturbed by their role in the deaths of the ninetytwo hundred civilians inadvertently killed by American and coalition

forces during the fi rst two years of the invasion and occupation.2

This heavy toll gave common Iraqis a decidedly different view

of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Watching American soldiers patrol the

streets of his capital, a resident of Baghdad lamented: “They’re walking over my heart. I feel like they’re crushing my heart.” To him it

423

424 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

mattered little that the Americans were Iraq’s self-declared saviors.

“They came to liberate us. Liberate us from what? . . . We have [our

own] traditions, morals, and customs.”3 Echoing Daniel Wambua

Nguta’s dismissal of the humanitarian ethos of the British Empire, an

Iraqi doctor declared that there was only one positive change resulting from the American occupation of his country: “The free talking.

Only only only.”4

In dismissing this common perspective and justifying their decision to invade a sovereign state without a formal declaration of war,

President Bush and his advisors claimed the right to use force against

unfriendly nations that possessed weapons of mass destruction and

harbored terrorist groups. In articulating what became known as the

Bush Doctrine, a September 2002 White House policy statement

declared: “To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively. . . . In an age

where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s

most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle

while dangers gather.”5

Although American offi cials assured the world that they did

not seek an empire, the Bush Doctrine was a classic excuse for one.

Acknowledging the popular hatred of imperial institutions in the nonwestern world, the president emphatically declared: “We have no territorial ambitions, we don’t seek an empire. Our nation is committed

to freedom for ourselves and for others.”6 This was an unremarkable

guarantee, for not even the most committed neoconservatives in the

White House or Pentagon actually suggested that the United States

should conquer and govern Iraq permanently. Overt empire building was incompatible with decades of established American foreign

policy, and it would have incurred nearly universal condemnation

from around the globe. Rather, the Bush Doctrine was a declaration

of America’s intention to use the tools of empire to fi ght the “war

on terror” and deal with enemy regimes that might give terrorists

weapons of mass destruction. It was an attempt to use force to achieve

nonmilitary aims.

The architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom were primarily advocates of hard power. They drew moral support from Niall Ferguson

and the other revisionist members of his self-described “neoimperialist gang.” These scholars and public intellectuals argued passionately that it was both ethical and feasible for the United States to

Conclusion 425

impose what Deepak Lal called an “international moral order” by

using force against rogue regimes. Falling back on imperial romanticism and nostalgia for their historical precedents, they imagined the

twentieth-century western empires as the benevolent guarantors of

global stability and prosperity.7 In doing so, they sought to destigmatize imperial methods.

In this sense, the Bush administration assumed that it was still

possible to employ the informal imperial tactics that earlier American

administrations had used to replace uncooperative regimes in Central America. Just as U.S. expeditionary forces installed compliant client governments in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and the small

Caribbean island nations after a relatively short and inexpensive

interval of direct American rule, the president’s advisors reasoned

they could do the same in the twenty-fi rst-century Middle East.

Instead, the Bush administration followed in the footsteps of William

Gladstone, whose dispatch of troops to secure the Suez Canal and bolster a cooperative Egyptian client regime in 1882 committed Britain

to ruling Egypt as a protectorate for the next four decades. Bush offi cials may not have been aware of the ominous Egyptian precedent,

but the imperial boosters in academia and the media should not have

missed this classic case of an entangling occupation.

While it was true that the United States did not seek a formal

empire in the Middle East, the Iraq invasion’s methods and goals were

implicitly imperial. This did not mean that the Americans sought

taxes or labor from common Iraqis. Rather, Iraq’s vast petroleum

reserves fi gured prominently in the Bush administration’s planning.

Although the president’s advisors made little mention of Iraqi oil in

making the case for a preemptive war, they assumed that it would pay

for the invasion and occupation once they rebuilt the nation’s wells,

pipelines, and refi neries. Estimating that they could increase Iraqi

exports to eight million to ten million barrels per day, Bush offi cials

aimed to drive down global energy prices and dilute the infl uence of

oil-exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia and Russia by fl ooding the

world with oil. It also went without saying that American companies

would push aside rival French, Russian, and Chinese companies to

play the leading role in helping the “liberated” Iraqis produce and

market their oil.8

As with the new imperialism, Bush offi cials masked the inherent

self-interest of Operation Iraqi Freedom with humanitarian rhetoric.

426 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

The benefi ts of western civilization once again justifi ed an aggressive

military enterprise, and the neoimperialist gang asserted that these

“gifts” could be imposed from above and largely at gunpoint. Calling

for an “imperial operation” in Iraq in a
New York Times
editorial two

months before the invasion, Michael Ignatieff argued that the United

States had a moral obligation to spread free markets, human rights,

and democracy.9 The inevitability of civilian casualties was largely

absent from this legitimizing rhetoric.

The hard power advocates and imperial apologists who made the

case for Operation Iraqi Freedom gave little thought to common Iraqis

who died in the crossfi re of the invasion, and they dismissed the “collateral damage” of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a necessary sacrifi ce

for a greater good. Ignatieff asserted that “regime change” was the

only way to deal with a tyrant who invaded his neighbors, practiced

ethnic cleansing, and starved his citizens to build palaces and weapons.

“The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is