Today I’m going live at Noon NYC time to talk about just how damaging the Iran war has been to US attempts to meet the China challenge. There are a lot of misconceptions about what the Iran war means for China’s role in the Middle East ( almost nothing ) vs. what it means in the larger competition ( a whole lot ). The problem is not any advantage that China may be taking, but the complete waste of hegemonic advantage that the US has been engaged in over the past five months.

When I think about the way that the United States has been pissing away its advantage as a world leader, under Trump especially, and for decades under presidents of both parties, my mind always turns to the British Empire. The British did very similar things. They took international competition from arenas where they were winning, and channeled it into military realms where nobody wins. The British eventually bankrupted themselves through militarism. We’re doing the same thing. And it certainly didn’t start with Iran.

 

The Scramble For Africa & The War on Terror

The discussion of guilt for World War I usually strikes me as somewhat unsophisticated. Historians focus on the weeks and months leading up to the start of conflict in 1914. Even in that limited framework, the British catch a lot of blame for the war. If you zoom out to what was going on in the world in the decades before WWI, British guilt gets a lot clearer.

Like the US today, the British were dominant throughout the 19th century. They defined what it meant to be a world power. A lot of this influence was positive. Industrialization, Liberalism, and a generalized journey towards domestic social justice and reform were all positive elements of British hegemony. Their financial and legal dominance of the 19th century world system they built was assured. But they were also obsessed with empire. And empire became their downfall.

Nothing built the culture of imperial madness and hyper nationalism that brought about World War I like the Scramble for Africa. And the Scramble for Africa was a British project. They initiated it, and British business interests were the only actors who ever profited from it. The British public did not profit. All they got out of it was ephemeral prestige, that turned to ashes when the imperial culture the British built in Africa sent the world into two horrific wars.

As late as 1880, Europe had very little presence in Africa. Centuries of slave trade had done a lot of damage, but there wasn’t much European control. The French had Coastal Algeria and some related territories. The British controlled the tip of Africa. Various smaller European countries held a number of ports. With its 1882 conquest of Egypt, and its strategic Suez Canal, the British launched the scramble. By 1900, the entire continent had been carved up between European powers.

There was almost no economic value here. Individual British citizens like Cecil Rhodes created profitable resource based empires. But at the national level, the costs, even for the British, were vastly larger than the rewards of the vicious exploitation the African continent was subjected to.

It was a pointless, counter-productive demonstration of military might, to not much purpose. The Scramble for Africa also built deep resentments into the international system, and pushed the European state system away from economic cooperation, into a zero-sum imperial mentality. Germany in particular felt left out of the scramble that Britain had started and won. The crisis that finally started World War I was over colonial territory in Europe rather than Africa, but conflicts over African colonies had almost sparked the conflagration multiple times in the early 1900s.

The United States has spent my adult life engaged in a pointless, counter-productive demonstration of military might, to no purpose. The War on Terror has also built deep resentments in the international system, and pushed the world state system away from economic cooperation, into a zero-sum imperial mentality. China and Russia bear responsibility for their own decisions, as did the Germans in 1914, but it’s hard to see Xinjiang or Ukraine happening without Palestine or Iraq (or Libya, or Syria, or Afghanistan, or Yemen).

The world’s leading country sets the tone, and in the first decades of the 20th and 21st century, the Brits and the US opted for hyper militarism and bloodthirsty, pointless conquest.

Iran & The Boers

Britain’s Scramble for Africa closed out with a set piece demonstrating both great British power, and colossal British irresponsibility: the 2nd Boer War from 1899-1902. The Boers, European settlers of Southern Africa, occupied an odd position in the region. They were both oppressors and oppressed. Savagely brutal to the Africans, but often discriminated against by the British who had held a position in Southern Africa since the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 1800s. The First Boer war had been a humiliation for the British, allowing the Boers to set up a higher degree of independence than anybody else in Africa. The British were vengeful creatures, eager to get back at the Boers for trying to go their own way.

The US’s War on Terror closed out with a set piece demonstrating both great American power, and colossal American irresponsibility: The Iran war, 2026-2029.1 The Iranians occupied an odd position in the region. Their distinct culture preserved a degree of difference from the Arab majority in the region, sometimes leading to their oppression, sometimes leading to greater influence than other groups. In 1979, the Iranian revolution had been a humiliation for the US, allowing Iran to set up a higher degree of independence than anybody else in the Middle East. The Americans were vengeful creatures, eager to get back at the Iranians for trying to go their own way.

At the outset of the 2nd Boer War in 1899, the British thought they would be able to cheaply and easily correct their earlier humiliation. Sound familiar? Instead the conflict proved to be a debacle. It was instantly humiliating, and the initial attacks on the Boers were repulsed, at great cost to British soldiers and British prestige.

The British doubled down. They demonstrated their overwhelming dominance in ways that awed and horrified many contemporaries. Any illusions that the British empire had any rivals at the beginning of the 20th century evaporate when you see the resources they were able to bring to bear on the Boers. The British rushed half a million troops to Southern Africa, outnumbering the European populations of the two republics they were fighting, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.

The populations of those republics, white and black quickly diminished under Britain’s mass murdering fury. The British didn’t just rush extraordinary amounts of men and materiel to the region, they also committed innovative new war crimes. The Boer War popularized the term “concentration camp”. The British were eventually victorious.

They demonstrated that by wasting an extraordinary amount of money, and utilizing genocidal ferocity, it was possible to win an imperial war against a committed enemy. The lessons this taught were incorporated by all Britain’s imperial followers. Horror at British capabilities and actions also helped to drive all European and Asian powers further in the direction of hyper-militarization. This eventually yielded the horrific world wars that ended British power for all time.

Lessons for Iran

The obvious lesson for the United States from Britain’s Boer experience would have been to not do the Iran war. Unfortunately that ship has sailed. There are many commentators who believe that the US’s failure to unseat the Iranian government means that the conflict is over, we have to negotiate and move on.

That’d be nice.

Sadly, I think it’s possible scope for the US to come back, commit more resources, and come out with something that looks more like victory. Even before Trump attacked Iran, he was proposing jacking up US military spending by 50% from 1 trillion to 1.5 trillion a year. When it was initially proposed, many laughed at the number. How could we possibly spend that much money? Trump’s failure in Iran has answered that question.

We could probably spend the next three years developing the tools and genocidal technologies necessary to push Iran back into a more subservient position. With China cooperating to keep the oil price low to the extent that it has, and with a stepped up green transition, we could probably even keep oil & gas prices low enough to starve most of the Iranian population to death.

But why bother? The Boer war shows that genocidal commitment to hegemony yields less than nothing in the long run.

Why become more like Nazis when all it brings us is a higher likelihood that we’ll eventually lose like Nazis?

Please do join us for the live chat at noon, and if you want more comparisons between the British and US empires, I did a whole video series on the topic some years back…