[Mb-civic] In Modern Imperialism, US Needs to Walk Softly LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot15jul15,1,2736455.column?coll=
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MAX BOOT

In Modern Imperialism, U.S. Needs to Walk Softly
 Max Boot

 July 15, 2004

 With the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded and L. Paul Bremer III
back at home, it's time to ponder the future of American imperialism. Many,
of course, will huffily reply that U.S. imperialism has no future, and they
will point to all the troubles we've encountered in Iraq during the last
year as evidence. 

 But whatever happens in Iraq, there will continue to be strong demand for
U.S. interventions around the world. Failed states and rogue states
constitute the biggest threats to world peace in the foreseeable future, and
only the United States has the will and the resources to do anything about
them. Even many of those who detested the invasion of Iraq plead for the
U.S. to bring order to places like Darfur, a province in Sudan where
genocide is occurring. The U.S. cannot shrug off the burden of global
leadership, at least not without catastrophic cost to the entire world, but
it can exercise its power more wisely than it did in Iraq over the past
year. 

 One of Bremer's chief failings was that he tried to act the part of an
imperial proconsul. He and his spokesmen hogged the media spotlight, which
only exacerbated Iraqis' tendency to blame them for everything that went
wrong, from too many car bombings to not enough electricity. It was almost
as if Bremer were Lord Curzon, the notoriously vain viceroy of India from
1898 to 1905, who delighted in pomp and circumstance, such as the grandiose
festival he staged in 1903 to mark Edward VII's coronation as king of
Britain and emperor of India. For obvious reasons ‹ the rise of nationalism,
the fall of traditional European empires ‹ that approach doesn't work well
today. No one is going to crown George II emperor of Mesopotamia.

 Yet the infinitely adaptable British had different ways of ruling different
parts of their empire, and some of them are applicable today. There was, for
instance, Lord Cromer (born Evelyn Baring), who effectively ruled Egypt from
1883 to 1907 with the modest titles of British agent and consul general.

 The British came to dominate Egypt in 1879 when they, along with the
French, imposed financial controls to ensure that foreign bond-holders would
be repaid by a bankrupt government. (Shades of the International Monetary
Fund!) The British occupied the country on their own in 1882 after a
nationalist revolt. But they refrained from formally annexing it, which
would only have stirred up nationalist sentiment.

 The Ottoman rulers, styled as khedives, were kept in office while Cromer
pulled the strings from behind the scenes. This became known as the "veiled
protectorate," and it essentially continued even after Egypt was granted
full independence and proclaimed a constitutional monarchy in 1922. The
system worked until 1952, when a group of army officers led by Col. Gamal
Abdel Nasser deposed the king and seized power for themselves. The Nasserite
coup showed that the British approach had run its course, but it had allowed
Britain to dominate the biggest nation in the Middle East for more than 70
years. It wasn't a bad deal for Egypt, either, which enjoyed more freedom
and better government than it received from Nasser and his dictatorial
successors. 

 The U.S. 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. Formal empire isn't our destiny. But, while
fostering self-rule, the U.S. must also ensure that Iraq will not dissolve
into civil war or become a haven for terrorists or weapons proliferators.
This will require a long-term U.S. presence ‹ a presence that will be much
more palatable to Iraqis now that the U.S. has moved to its own form of a
"veiled protectorate," with an Iraqi president and prime minister playing
highly visible roles and the new U.S. envoy, John Negroponte, fading into
the background.

 The only wonder is that it took so long. In Afghanistan, the U.S. wisely
settled on the indirect approach from the start with the appointment of
Hamid Karzai as president. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad exercises a lot
of influence, but he does so quietly, without generating the backlash that
would occur if he proclaimed himself the administrator of Afghanistan.

 Another successful model of modern-day imperialism can be found in Bosnia
and Kosovo, which the U.S. and its allies run through an international
protectorate similar to the one that Britain and France imposed on Egypt in
1879. The blessing of the United Nations confers welcome legitimacy.

 Whether we like it or not, liberal imperialism is needed today to deal with
the most troubled regions of the planet. But if we are going to be effective
imperialists, we need to follow the Cromer, not the Curzon, model.







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