Another Bizarre Essay from Brookings

Washington-based Brookings Institution has followed up the bizarre essay it published by British propagandist William Dalrymple with a much more complex distortion of history by Oxford Professor Margaret MacMillan.

Dalrymple expressed fears of an India-Pakistan war based on his astounding assertion that Afghanistan’s unending state of war is rooted in their rivalry and not, as anyone who knows history might think, in the proxy Cold War conflict the West financed by trading opium and heroin. That trade is now worth over $60 billion annually, and if there is war in South Asia after the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan, it will be in the service of its primary beneficiary, Britain, which needs chaotic conditions in an area that can absorb the proceeds without exciting the interest of American-German bank regulators.

MacMillan’s essay comparing the situation in 2014 with the one that in 1914 led into World War I is a more complex assault on truth in that it deliberately blurs what happened, hiding Britain's primary role in shaping the terrible realities of the modern world. Items:

1. There had been “an extraordinary period of general peace since 1815,” MacMillan writes of the century preceding WW I. She obviously thinks the “general peace” was undisturbed by the war of 1857 in India, the two “Opium Wars” in China, the numerous massacres during the European “scramble for Africa” (too one-sided to be called wars), and the genocide of Native Americans, the Maori in New Zealand and the Australian Aborigine. In an essay that notes globalization as a factor in generating international tensions it is deeply racist to ignore conflicts that killed well over a hundred million people. It is no defence that she is merely reflecting the mainstream perspective of European historians. 
2. MacMillan sees no difference between modern migration patterns and what happened in the century before WW I. Then “as now” she writes, “waves of immigrants were finding their way to foreign lands — Indians to the Caribbean and Africa, Japanese and Chinese to North America, and millions of Europeans to the New World and the Antipodes.” Those “waves of immigrants” included slaves from Africa and indentured Chinese and Indian workers – slaves in all but name – carried away from their homes mainly in British vessels.
3. In asserting that the conflicts since 1945 have been “relatively minor … with the number of casualties dwarfed by those sustained in the two world wars,” MacMillan is entirely wrong. Authoritative estimates place the toll of the “proxy wars” of the Cold War era at over a hundred million lives. Since 1990, the conflicts in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Somalia have killed additional scores of millions. In South Asia since Indian independence some ten million have been killed in armed conflicts caused by manipulative British policies.
4. Her comparison of the pre-WW I rivalry of Britain and Germany with the current US-China relationship will not bear examination. Britain in the early 20th Century was a savage imperial Power openly glorying in its subjugation and oppression of other nations; Germany was a challenger self-pitying in its lack of imperial “lebensraum” (elbow room). Their cynical drive for dominance was unrestrained by any moral considerations, even concern for their own people, millions of whom were killed and crippled in WW I. The post-Cold War, post-Mao history of Sino-American relations pits a democracy sometimes drunk with its own power against a deeply oppressive tyranny with unsettled borders; but neither is imperialist, and both support the economic and social development of other countries.
5. MacMillan’s description of the Middle East as “made up largely of countries that received their present borders as a consequence of World War I,” sanitizes a history of brutal manipulations by Britain and France. She does that consistently, in overall analysis and on specific issues. In noting “Bashar al-Assad regime’s use of poison gas” she asserts that it was “a weapon first deployed in the trench warfare of 1914, then outlawed because world opinion viewed it as barbaric.” Neither assertion is true. Britain used poison gas against the Kurds in Iraq before WW I – Winston Churchill saw it as useful test of the new weapon – and it was given up not because it was too barbaric but because it could not be controlled: a shift of the wind could blow the gas back into the ranks of those who loosed it.

The essay is too dishonest to be useful to anyone trying to understand what lessons WW I holds for policy makers today.

It pays no attention to the massively obvious lesson of the bloodiest period in world history: that the most lethal dangers lie in the delusions of elite groups capable of manipulating public opinion into supporting violence.

It should be a cause for general alarm that MacMillan’s essay is published by an institution with great influence on American policy.

William Dalrymple's Afghan Diary

Dear Diary,

I'm an "eminent historian" I'll have you know. Strobe Talbot said so in a letter introducing my essay for Brookings. Been getting a lot of mail about that. All good except for a narky note that said it was all nonsense, the Afghan War wasn't about the India-Pakistan rivalry at all but about the $60 billion drug trade out of Afghanistan.

You know, I was thinking perhaps I should have mentioned drugs, just to be on the safe side. But then again, once you mention something like that, there's no telling where it will lead ...

Before long someone will probably rake up the fact that we Brits originated the opium trade in the 18th Century and fought two “Opium Wars” in the 19th Century.

Then someone will surely mention how in the 20th Century, HSBC and Matheson and all the other Brit companies took the drug trade underground when the Americans insisted on banning it.

And inevitably, some busybody will mention that we were up to our chins in creating the Afghan war.

I'm not saying any of that's wrong, but do we have to talk about it all the time!

What good will it do to admit yes, we did create Pakistan and its ISI, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. And yes, London also jockeyed all of them into supporting the Mujaheddin who established the Afghan opium trade ... but hey, permanent interests, you know.

Anyway, I like the title: “A Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.”

I don't know if I really made the case that “hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan,” but even if I didn't there's enough razzle dazzle to distract everyone.

I like the paragraph that goes on about "the existential threat posed by India" to the Pakistan military taking "precedence over all other geopolitical and economic goals.”

Hope no one asks why there should be an existential threat when things are improving between the two countries and the atmospherics are quite friendly.

Also: “The fear of being squeezed in an Indian nutcracker is so great that it has led the ISI to take steps that put Pakistan's own internal security at risk ... For much of the last decade the ISI has sought to restore the Taliban to power so that it can oust Karzai and his Indian friends.”

Wonder if the Yanks really buy that...

Well, MI6 certainly will. They desperately need talk of an Indo-Pak war, or perhaps even a real war, to soften up Delhi’s resistance to Vodafone and BP. With China on the skids and a mega recession looming, what’s The City to do if India continues to hang tough!”

Well, Dear Diary, don't be too surprised if there is another blatant 26/11 type episode to get things back the way we like them!

Mao's Ghosts Walk Again in China

Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution in Washington has interpreted the decision of the Beijing regime to put fallen “Princeling” BoXilai on public trial as an “outstanding result” of political reform. He sees it as a gain for the rule of law in China that the top political leadership of the country did not settle the matter internally.

Bo was the influential Communist Party Chief of Chongqing, widely seen as one of the country’s top future leaders. Then his wife murdered a British money launderer and his police chief fled to an American consulate asking for asylum. Earlier this year his wife pleaded guilty to murder and was given a long prison sentence; now Bo is on public trial.

I think it is a mistake to see this as an advance for the rule of law. I doubt if those of us looking in from outside, or indeed, most Chinese, will take any comfort from the fact that “200,000 registered lawyers now have a voice and many of them are calling for improved rule of law and constitutionalism.”.

The public trial is necessary because international publicity made it impossible to hush up the matter and Bo has a “Leftist” following unlikely to accept his quiet disappearance.

So what to do with a demagogue whose popularity – not his criminal use of power – made the corrupt billionaires leading the Party uncomfortable?

Have a show trial.

Instead of Red Guards screaming invective and assaulting the victim, have “lawyers” go through the motions of prosecution, defense and conviction. Only the form has changed; the whole thing is a scripted drama for public edification.

Other ghosts of Mao’s time might also come alive.

China-born Cheng Li says there is “a heated discussion” going on among Chinese top brass “about the current risk of revolution in the country.” In that context, “conservative hardliners within the Communist Party leadership may ultimately decide to resist political reform at all costs.” That could make policy differences and personnel appointments “contentious” and even cause “factional infighting to spiral out of control.” Far from signaling a new political maturity of the Chinese leadership, the Bo trial may “polarize Chinese society and enhance the risk of socio-political unrest rather than build momentum for legitimacy enhancing reforms.”

For China's neighbors none of this is good news. It is very likely that a major political crisis in China could lead the endangered leaders to create a diversionary foreign crisis; that could easily spill into regional war.