Admirably, Ferguson, in
contrast to most academic historians who remain within the boundaries
of ever narrowing specializations and write for diminishing audiences,
aspires to influence public culture and political discourse. He
is unapologetically presentist and believes that historical insight
can be applied to the pressing questions of the moment. The obvious
peril of such writing is that no one can reasonably be expected
to be an expert on all the topics in a book ranging across the
last 200 years of Anglo-American history. What can be expected
is basic factual accuracy, internally consistent use of the evidence
presented, broad consultation of others' work and due consideration
of differing interpretations on matters that are critical to the
argument. In these respects, Ferguson disappoints. When addressing
the actual histories of Latin America, Vietnam or the Middle East,
Ferguson simply ignores unambiguous facts and interpretations
that do not confirm his opinions.
For example, he claims
that "spasmodic [US] intervention in Central America and
the Caribbean" led to undemocratic governments in the Dominican
Republic, Honduras, Cuba and Nicaragua. Had US forces stayed longer,
or annexed the territories outright, as was the case with Puerto
Rico and the Virgin Islands, things "might have been better
for all these places." Such counterfactual arguments are
notoriously difficult to prove or disprove. Moreover, Ferguson
admits on the next page that as of 1939 the only democracy in
the region was Costa Rica, where there had never been a US military
intervention, a fact that would seem to contradict his original
assertion. The longest US military occupation in the region was
in Haiti: from 1915 to 1934, with several subsequent briefer interventions.
Does this explain why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere or why it suffered the viciously despotic regime of
the Duvaliers?
Taking the argument to
a more distant region, did the relatively lengthy occupation of
the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 result in a democratic regime?
Does anyone remember Ferdinand Marcos, for whose regime the term
"crony capitalism" was first coined, and his wife Imelda
of the myriad shoes? Their names do not appear in Colossus.
Ferguson is aware of these cases that undermine his argument,
but they are relegated without comment to a statistical appendix.
ECHO CHAMBER
Both advocates and opponents
of an American empire agree that its center of gravity, if not
quite the jewel in the crown, is the Middle East. We might, therefore,
expect that Ferguson would take particular care in discussing
this region. But just as the neo-conservative war party consulted
only those who would say what they wanted to hear, Ferguson is,
for the most part, trapped in an imperial echo chamber that muffles
the voices of those with a more substantial understanding of the
modern Middle East.
Ferguson diverges slightly
from a colonial historical perspective and hegemonic political
doctrine on two Middle East-related issues: the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict and US-Israeli relations. He violates a virtual taboo
in American discourse by indecorously observing that, "What
the Zionist extremists had once done to drive the British out
of Palestine [i.e., terrorism], Palestinian extremists now did
to the Israelis." In contrast to the oft-parroted notion
that the United States and Israel have a "special relationship,"
Ferguson emphasizes the "friction and ambivalence" in
US-Israeli relations. He believes that "the Israelis tenaciously
resisted American pressure to negotiate with the Palestinians"
in the 1980s.
Three factors may explain
these deviations from prevailing orthodoxy. First, Ferguson is
a bold, even if not an entirely original, thinker; he appears
to enjoy ruffling feathers. Second, like most Europeans, his views
on Israel and Palestine are somewhat more rooted in reality than
is the case for most Americans. Third, Ferguson doesn't know the
history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and US-Israeli relations
well.
Ferguson is very likely
correct that there will not be a significant diminution of terrorism
in the Middle East "so long as Israel seeks a purely military
solution to the problem." Conclusions about the urgency of
a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict might
follow from this observation. But going there would make Ferguson
a political pariah in the circles he is closest to and even risk
accusations of anti-Semitism from the Zionist ultras. Despite
such flashes of realism, Ferguson's historical understanding of
the Arab-Israeli conflict is seriously deficient.
The Arab states did not
sponsor Palestinian terrorism early on. As Israeli historians
Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris have demonstrated based on extensive
archival research, Jordan has almost always tried to prevent Palestinian
infiltration into Israel. Egypt did so until a massive Israeli
raid on the police headquarters of Gaza in February 1955. Many
consider this to be the event that initiated the countdown to
the 1956 Suez/Sinai war. After that war, Egypt again sought and
largely succeeded in preventing Palestinian infiltration into
Israel until the 1967 war. Syria began to promote Palestinian
attacks on Israel in the mid-1960s in response to Israel's construction
of a National Water Carrier, which diverted waters from the Sea
of Galilee without Syria's agreement. Israel initiated many provocative
retaliation raids on Jordan and Egypt, but rarely Syria, even
when there was no evidence of their responsibility for acts of
terror. Morris suggests that military figures like Moshe Dayan
and Ariel Sharon were looking for an opportunity to launch a second
war after 1948.[1]
"FRICTION AND AMBIVALENCE"
Ferguson's argument for
"friction and ambivalence" in US-Israeli relations is
partly based on President Dwight Eisenhower's demand that Israel
withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, which it occupied
in the 1956 war. Israel, Britain and France had colluded to attack
Egypt to reverse the nationalization of the Suez Canal, an imperial
adventure to which Ferguson uncharacteristically objects. However,
there was no US-Israeli "special relationship" at this
time. From the early 1950s until 1967, France was Israel's principal
ally and the source of its advanced tanks, aircraft and, in part,
nuclear expertise. The Eisenhower administration opposed the tripartite
aggression against Egypt because it believed that the maintenance
of French and British colonial empires was an obstacle to fighting
the Cold War in Africa and Asia. It supported Algerian independence
for the same reason. Israel's particular interests had to be subordinated
to this primary foreign and military policy objective.
Ferguson claims that Israel
failed to warn the US about the 1967 war. This assertion can only
be sustained by an obtusely literal reading of the diplomatic
record. Several Israeli emissaries visited Washington before the
war and warned that Israel might resort to arms. Most scholars
and diplomatic observers believe that Israel ultimately received
a green, or at least a yellow, light from the Johnson administration
to attack.[2]
The US-Israeli "special
relationship" emerged after the 1967 war, especially after
the promulgation of the Nixon Doctrine in 1969. By then, Israel
was the overwhelmingly dominant military power in the Middle East.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sought to integrate it into
US policy as a tool to contain and discipline Arab states considered
pro-Soviet: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Libya and the People's
Democratic Republic of Yemen. Moreover, despite their copious
anti-Zionist rhetoric, the Saudis had made it clear that they
would not use their oil to punish Washington for this policy.
DEFINE PRESSURE
Ferguson greatly exaggerates
the direct consequences of the brief and highly permeable Arab
oil embargo of October 1973 to March 1974. The oil shortage and
price spike of the mid-1970s were not primarily due to a shortage
of crude in the market. The embargo never reduced the flow of
oil by more than 15 percent; it was loosely enforced; and it lasted
only a few months. Much more significant in the long run was the
lack of sufficient refining capacity in the United States as a
result of inadequate capital investment by American-based corporations.
The price spike had more significant effects. But its main victims
were Third World countries that do not produce oil. They could
generally not compensate for the increased cost of fuel because
US and European agricultural price supports kept prices for agricultural
goods artificially low. Moreover, the price spike enhanced the
profits of the major multinational petroleum companies even more
than the revenues of the oil-producing states.
In order to secure Israel's
second pullback in the Sinai Peninsula following the 1973 Arab-Israeli
War, Kissinger signed a memorandum of agreement on September 1,
1975 that gave Israel veto power over any future US-PLO negotiations.
Kissinger would not have needed to do this had he been willing
to exert pressure on Israel to withdraw. But because he mistakenly
viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict primarily as a regional front
in the global Cold War, Kissinger did not believe it was proper
for Washington to pressure its regional asset to make concessions
to a Soviet ally. Even in Cold War terms, Kissinger misread the
situation. Egypt was no longer a Soviet asset. President Anwar
al-Sadat had proclaimed his readiness for peace with Israeli in
1971, expelled Soviet military advisors in 1972 and announced
the opening of Egypt's economy to the global market in 1974. He
was more than eager to reorient Egypt toward the West.
Although the Palestine
National Council recognized Israel and renounced terrorism in
November 1988, the US did not immediately begin a diplomatic dialogue
with the PLO. Secretary of State George Shultz violated the treaty
establishing the UN headquarters in New York by rejecting Yasser
Arafat's request for a visa to communicate the PLO's decision
in an address to the UN General Assembly. Only after Arafat jumped
through several additional hoops and a delegation of American
Jews visited him in Norway and pronounced
him kosher did the US-PLO dialogue begin. It ceased, with no visible
accomplishments, in June 1990, after Arafat refused to denounce
a military operation against Israel by the Palestine Liberation
Front, a minor albeit especially brutal PLO faction with no support
among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The United States
acquiesced to Israel's demand that the PLO be excluded from the
1991 Madrid conference and the subsequent bilateral Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations in Washington.
Consequently,
in 1993, when an Israeli government became serious about trying
to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, it conducted secret
talks in the Norwegian capital of Oslo behind the back of the
Clinton administration. The United States played no role in reaching
the 1993 Oslo accords other than ratifying them after the fact.
This narrative does not indicate significant "American pressure
to negotiate with the Palestinians." Of course, it depends
on what the definition of "pressure" is.
"DYSFUNCTION"
AND TERRORISM
Whatever
his disagreements with neo-conservatives over the word "empire,"
Niall Ferguson is solidly within the neo-conservative consensus
on one point: the Middle East -- all of it -- has "a dysfunctional
culture in which rival religions and natural resources supply
much of the content of political conflict, but the form is the
really distinctive thing. That form is of course terrorism."
This uniquely dangerous nexus between Middle Eastern political
culture and terrorism makes the Middle East the most urgent locale
for imperial intervention. As Ferguson told the Atlantic Monthly,
the ultimate goal of such intervention is to "globalize liberalism"
and "make the world suitably Anglicized."[3]
Max Boot
of the Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the American foreign
policy commentator closest to Ferguson's views, concurs. Writing
in the neo-conservative house organ shortly after the September
11 attacks, Boot averred, "Afghanistan and other troubled
lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration
once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith
helmets." An American empire (albeit one duly covered by
UN fig leaves) was necessary, Boot argued, to "not only wipe
out the vipers but also destroy their nest and do our best to
prevent new nests from being built there again."[4]
Such arguments, usually expressed less stridently, eventually
proved crucial to winning initial public support for Bush's Iraq
war.
Again, facts
are not allowed to intrude on Ferguson's discussion of terrorism.
Twenty pages after pronouncing on the distinctiveness of the Middle
East, Ferguson mentions that there was some terrorism in Europe
in the 1970s.Europe
does not (cannot) have a dysfunctional culture, so those days
are thankfully behind us. The State Department would disagree.
It considered the continuing threat of terrorism in Ireland substantial
enough that in 2003 it renewed its designation of the Real IRA
as a foreign terrorist organization.
The IRA/Real IRA, the ETA
Basque separatists, the FARC in Columbia, Sendero Luminoso in
Peru and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka continue to carry out acts
of terror. The Tamil Tigers began using suicide bombs in 1987,
seven years before the Palestinians. They have killed over 90,000
people since beginning operations in 1983. Algeria excluded, this
is on the order of five to ten times more than the total number
of victims of terrorism emanating from the Middle East since 1948,
including the September 11 attacks.
Contrary to Ferguson's
assertions, neither the Abu Nidal organization nor the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine identified primarily with
Islam, and neither of them emerged in the 1980s. The PFLP was
established in 1967 as a Marxist-Leninist organization. According
to the US Department of State's Patterns of Global Terrorism,
2003, "The PFLP does not view the Palestinian struggle
as a religious one, seeing it instead as a broader revolution
against Western imperialism." Abu Nidal split from Yasser
Arafat's Fatah in 1974; no Islamic motives were involved.
Like those who saw no difference
between al-Qaeda and Iraq, Ferguson seems to consider all terrorists
to be the same and dismisses all of their grievances equally.
The factual record and its complexities are subordinated to his
demonization of Middle Eastern culture. For Ferguson and other
neo-conservative Middle East "experts," that demonization
-- reminiscent of the attitudes of British colonial functionaries
-- functioned as the self-evident justification for the invasion
and occupation of Iraq.
ALL IN THE ACCOUNTING
The British occupations
of Egypt in 1882 and Sudan in 1898 are Ferguson's models for what
the US ought to do in Iraq: act unilaterally and announce that
troops will soon be evacuated, but keep them there indefinitely.
However, Ferguson's version of Egyptian and Sudanese history is
about as reliable as Secretary of State Colin Powell's account
of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction delivered
to the UN Security Council in February 2003.
Col. Ahmad `Urabi did not
simply overthrow the Egyptian ruler, Khedive Tawfiq, in 1882,
as Ferguson begins the story. Tawfiq had been installed in 1879
by the European powers in order to ensure the payment of Egypt's
foreign debt. He refused to allow the newly established cabinet
or the reconstituted Advisory Council of Representatives to exercise
any restraint over his powers, especially in financial matters,
and he rejected the principle of accountability of cabinet ministers
to the Council.
By 1881, dissatisfaction
with the khedive's deference to European bondholders' interests
led to the formation of a National Party, which combined elements
from the army, members of the Advisory Council of Representatives,
which Tawfiq had dissolved, and Muslim, Christian and Jewish intellectuals.
`Urabi was the leader of a group of Arabic-speaking Egyptian officers
who objected to the reservation of the highest ranks for Turkish
speakers and opposed Tawfiq's cuts in the military budget to raise
funds to pay European creditors. `Urabi and his allies raised
the slogan: "Egypt for the Egyptians." Khedive Tawfiq
was forced to appear to acquiesce by appointing `Urabi minister
of war.
Behind the back of his
government, Tawfiq called in the British and French, who sailed
their fleets past Alexandria in June 1882. In response, the people
of the city rioted, killing about 50 foreigners. Knowing
that Tawfiq was collaborating with the British, `Urabi declared
him a traitor and took control of the government. The British
fleet bombarded Alexandria in July, after `Urabi refused to remove
the cannons in its harbor. In August, a British army invaded Egypt,
where its successors remained until 1956.
Ferguson's story of the
British occupation of Sudan is even more fantastic. Britain did
not intervene "to overthrow bad government." It occupied
Sudan to preserve its hold on the upper Nile Valley, which is
vital to Egypt's economic security. Cecil Rhodes had long agitated
for such a move so that the entire "Cape to Cairo" route
could be painted British red lest its continuity be disrupted
by a swath of French blue. The Sudanese Mahdi, who began a revolt
against Turco-Egyptian rule in 1881, was not a "Wahhabist
zealot." He was a leader of the Sammaniya Sufi order, to
which many of his followers adhered. Sufism (Islamic mysticism)
is fiercely denounced in Wahhabi doctrine. Then again, if all
Middle Eastern Muslims have a dysfunctional culture, it couldn't
matter too much precisely what they believe.
NOT ACCIDENTAL IMPERIALISM
Just as he dismisses American
exceptionalism, Ferguson disregards the British historiographical
tradition that downplays economic considerations in the decision
of an avowedly anti-imperialist British government to invade Egypt:
"What the oil in Iraq is today, so the Suez Canal was then."
He commends the injunction of Britain's first proconsul in Egypt,
Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer (of the Barings Bank family,
whose economic position in Egypt was comparable to that of Halliburton
in contemporary Iraq), that the British ought not to "enquire
too closely what these people...themselves think is in their own
interests." Rather, Cromer thought, Egyptian policy issues
should be decided "by the light of Western knowledge and
experience." Using such Western knowledge, the proconsul
reorganized Egypt's finances "much like a modern structural
adjustment program. The results were a fiscal triumph."
There was only one small
problem. Egypt's per capita gross domestic product stagnated from
1913 to 1950: "Though Egypt got richer as a country, the
average Egyptian did not." Nonetheless, according to Ferguson,
"Cromer and his successors got both the policies and the
institutions right." The "average Egyptian" might
beg to differ, just as many "beneficiaries" of structural
adjustment programs today see things differently than the International
Monetary Fund.
The most substantial problem
in Ferguson's account of Britain's rule in Egypt is the paucity
of references to Egyptian nationalism and factual errors when
he does discuss it. His hero, Lord Cromer, was ousted as His Majesty's
Agent and Consul General in Egypt in 1907 after British officers
mistakenly shot dead the wife of a village imam while they were
on a hunting trip. The ensuing upsurge of nationalist sentiment
prompted Cromer's departure. The British did not elect to proclaim
Egypt independent in 1922; they were compelled to do so because
of the 1919 nationalist uprising. Mass demonstrations forced the
British to renegotiate the terms of their occupation of Egypt
in 1936. The military coup of July 23, 1952 brought a Revolutionary
Command Council to power with a popular mandate to end the British
occupation, which the British agreed to do in a treaty signed
in 1954. But it was not until the fiasco of the 1956 Suez war
that Britain finally abandoned its imperial ambitions in Egypt.
"EMPIRE" AND
DESTINY
Ferguson wants the United
States to learn from nineteenth-century Britain about how to run
a liberal empire and, presumably, how best to "stay the course"
in Iraq. But what exactly is the lesson for the United States
from his historical comparisons? That if Washington persists in
ordering American soldiers to occupy foreign countries, they are
likely to face protracted resistance and ultimately be expelled
without thanks? That even if the macro-economic balance sheet
looks better than when US forces arrived, failure to measurably
improve the standard of living of the occupied will win Americans
their lasting enmity? Perhaps most strangely for Ferguson's argument,
Egypt, his chosen colonial success story, has been, since the
1930s, the incubator of a decidedly anti-liberal Islamist movement.
Islamists assassinated Sadat in 1981. The ensuing Egyptian state
repression expanded the ranks of the transnational jihadi movement
and brought Osama bin Laden's alleged top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
into the ranks of al-Qaeda. Was this because Britain did not "stay
the course"?
A more comprehensive perspective
would consider seriously the significance of the major anti-imperial
movements in Egypt and India at the end of World War I followed
by rebellions against French imperialism in Syria and Morocco.
Since then, the peoples of the world -- for better or worse --
have tended to take seriously the principle of the right of nations
to self-determination first enunciated by both liberals and Marxists.
The age of empire is over. Any attempted restoration will be bloody
and is very likely to fail. The physical destruction and human
carnage resulting from US or US-backed military interventions
in places like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador
and Angola don't figure in Ferguson's imperial balance sheet.
Ferguson's vision for the
domestic future of the United States is not particularly attractive
either. He excoriates Europeans for their laziness and dismisses
the capacity of the European Union to serve as a global countervailing
force to the United States. The US is stronger economically and
militarily, not because its economy is more productive or because
Americans save more, but because Americans work more. Ferguson
considers this a good thing. Europeans have universal health insurance,
cheap or free higher education, good urban and inter-urban transport,
functional and even beautiful inner cities, and a smaller gap
between the rich and the poor. Americans work more, drive Hummers,
participate less in their political system and have become insecure
because US foreign policy is detested throughout the world.[5] Vive la différence!
Urging the American public
not to "go wobbly" like the Europeans have done, Max
Boot recently reminded his readers that Americans die in wartime.[6] As a percentage of total forces in
combat, US casualties in the 2003-2004 Iraq war have been low
compared to, say, the war of 1812 or World War II. Ferguson, likewise,
told the Atlantic Monthly that a "premature evacuation"
of Iraq is "all too likely." American aversion to the
costs of war is one reason, he argues, why the colossus has "feet
of clay."[7]
While the Bush administration
remains committed to occupying Iraq, former acolytes of "empire"
are softening their language. Boot follows Ferguson in describing
Cromer's rule over Egypt as a success because, unlike Paul Bremer,
he stayed out of public view and allowed the Egyptians to think
they were running the country. "The US today doesn't need
the same level of control in Iraq that the British had in Egypt,
and it needs to be much more serious about promoting democracy
than the British were," Boot concludes. "Formal empire
isn't our destiny."[8]
However, ruling Iraq from
behind the scenes, from a US super-embassy headed by John Negroponte,
might be. Aspiring imperialists, unembarrassed by the Iraq experience,
have formed yet another advocacy group, the third incarnation
of the Committee on the Present Danger, to press ahead with the
"war on terrorism," just as the Project for the New
American Century led the intellectual charge for a war on Iraq.
The CPD views Iraq as the major front in the "war on terrorism,"
oblivious to the widely recognized reality that the US military
presence in Iraq has increased terrorism and undermined US national
security.
As this present unfolds,
two possible futures for Colossus are imaginable: either
it may someday be seen as a document of a moment when a segment
of the Anglo-American political elite and their court scribes
lost their minds, or it will become a foundational text for unapologetic
hawks in a future debate over "who lost Iraq." Either
way, it doesn't make very good history.
[1]
See Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990) and Benny Morris, Israel's
Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation
and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
[2]
Charles D. Smith, in Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
(New York: St. Martins, 2004), tends toward the "green light"
theory. Smith, p. 277. Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967
and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 145-147, 153 falls between a "green"
and a "yellow light." William Quandt, Peace Process:
American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 23-48 argues
explicitly for a yellow light, but understands that Israel would
consider this a "green light." Richard Parker, a career
US diplomat who served at the time of the war, is one of the few
serious observers who believe that the United States did not give
Israel at least a limited go-ahead for war. See Parker, The Politics
of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1993), pp. 114-116.
[3]
Atlantic Monthly (online), May 27, 2004.
[4]
The Weekly Standard,
October 15, 2001.
[5]
Ferguson waxes rhapsodic about the dual role of the Hummer in sustaining
American consumerism and enabling military conquest, and bestows
accolades on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for being
the first owner of a commercial Hummer. Colossus, pp. 267-268.
[6]
Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2004.
[7]
Atlantic Monthly (online), May 27, 2004.
[8]
Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2004.
