An ephemeral empire, built on sand
RELUCTANT OCCUPIERS: UNLIKE LONG-GONE BRITISH, AMERICANS YEARN FOR HOME:
By Niall Ferguson
Copyright (c) Niall Ferguson, 2004. Excerpted from ``Colossus: The Price of America's Empire,'' to be published by the Penguin Press, New York and London.
This is an excerpt, slightly modified, from Niall Ferguson's latest book, ``Colossus: The Price of America's Empire,'' to be published Monday. Ferguson is Herzog professor of history at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Anyone who doubts that there are at least some resemblances between the liberal empire of the United States today and that of the United Kingdom roughly a century ago should consider this quote: ``Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. . . . It is [not] the wish of [our] government to impose upon you alien institutions.'' No, that was not George Bush about Iraq; it was General Frederick Stanley Maude, the British commander who occupied Baghdad in 1917.
In both cases, Anglophone troops had been able to sweep from the south of the country to the capital in a matter of weeks. In both cases, their governments disclaimed any desire to rule Iraq directly and proceeded, after some prevarication, to install Iraqi governments with at least the appearance of popular legitimacy.
In both cases, imposing law and order proved much harder than achieving the initial military victory: British troops were being picked off by gunmen throughout 1919, and massive air power had to be used to quell a major insurrection in the summer of 1920, which left 450 British personnel dead. In both cases, there were times when it was tempting to pull out altogether. Finally, in both cases, the presence of substantial oil reserves was not a wholly irrelevant factor, though it was not the main reason for the occupation.
Yet there are differences. One of the key differences is that British rule was based on a long-term commitment. Whatever the formal arrangements -- and the British conceded in 1923 that their mandate would run for just four years rather than the 20 originally envisaged -- their intention was to stay in control of Iraq for the foreseeable future. Beyond that, there were enough Britons willing to spend substantial portions of their lives in Baghdad to make British influence an enduring reality there for 40 years. The British and American occupiers both promised they would soon hand over power to Iraqis and leave. The difference is that this time the occupiers mean it.
Why is the second English-speaking empire so much more impatient to come home than the first? It can't just be the pressure of elections, since the British had those, too. One key factor is the difficulty the American empire finds in recruiting the right sort of people to run it. America's higher educational institutions excel at producing very capable young men and women. But few, if any, of the graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Yale or Princeton aspire to spend their lives trying to turn a sun-scorched sand pit like Iraq into the prosperous capitalist democracy of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's imaginings.
America's brightest and best aspire not to govern Mesopotamia but to manage MTV; not to rule the Hejaz but to run a hedge fund. Unlike their British counterparts of a century ago, who left the elite British universities with an overtly imperial ethos, the letters ambitious young Americans would like to see after their names are CEO, not CBE (Companion of the British Empire).
It may be that the bolder products of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government are eager to advise the Iraqi Governing Council on its constitutional options. And a few of the country's star economists may yearn to do for Iraq what they did for post-Soviet Russia back in the early 1990s. But we may be fairly certain that their engagement will take the form of weeklong trips rather than long-term residence: consultancy, not colonization. As far as the Ivy League nation builders are concerned, you can set up an independent central bank, reform the tax code, liberalize prices and privatize the major utilities -- and be home in time for your first class reunion.
If, as so many commentators claim, America is embarking on a new age of empire, it is shaping up to be the most ephemeral empire in all history. Other empire builders have fantasized about ruling subject peoples for a thousand years. This would seem to be history's first thousand-day empire. It is not so much ``Empire lite'' as disposable dominion.
© 2004 Mercury News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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