The Case for Empire

 

A friend laments the horrors of war. He thinks that surely mankind can do better than this.

Steven Pinker has shown that over the course of history, wars have indeed become more rare and human lives less violent. In a hunter gatherer society, war is a constant, more or less against everybody. As government spreads, violence declines—that is pretty much the reason for a government. So city states are less violent than tribes, and nation states are less violent than city states. 

And empires are less violent than nations. Empires oddly get a bum rap. They are the height of human civilization. They are the highest level of social organization achieved.

Europe was prosperous and at relative peace for the duration of the Roman Empire—the Pax Romana. The period of peace permitted rapid development in technology, infrastructure, philosophy, and the arts. Things got a lot uglier for centuries after it fell; the “Dark Ages.”

There was a similar and broader Pax Britannica between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. During this period Britain was so dominant it could act as the world’s policeman. There were certainly breaches of the peace: the American Civil War, the Taiping Rebellion. This was generally in places where the British chose not to intervene. But the point and mandate of the British Empire, and other European empires of the time, was to preserve and protect trade, build infrastructure, and improve general prosperity. At the same time, Britain aggressively advanced human rights, intervening to end the slave trade and such practices as human sacrifice and widow burning. And the period of relative peace and prosperity allowed great advances again in culture, technology, infrastructure, philosophy, and the arts.

In broad historic terms, in Yeats’s words

All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

It was a great tragedy that the British Empire, and the other European empires, collapsed during and as a result of the First World War. We suffered through the Second World War and the Cold War; although it is hard to argue against a hypothetical, one can easily imagine that things could have gone better since 1920 in the arts, which seem increasingly moribund; and for all we know better in technology, in quality of life, and in general prosperity. There were a lot of new inventions in the steampunk 19th century: the steam engine, the railroad, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, the telegraph, the camera, the submarine, the movie camera.... For all the smartphones and apps and lasers, are there really as many and as diverse ones now?

We are doing better than we might due to relative US dominance. Domestically, as a large and peaceful entity, the US has been able to foster the civilizational best in the arts, the culture, technology, and in human thought since the middle of the 20th century. Although without a formal empire, it has been strong enough to act at times as the world’s policeman, reducing strife elsewhere.

What exactly is the argument against empire? Simply that the people in charge at the top will not have the same skin colour or ethnic background as yourself? That is racism. What matters is that they are competent,  honest, and fair to all.

The danger is a hegemon or Empire that is rapacious, oppressive, or immoral. Not all empires are equal. We would not want the Japanese Empire, which dealt ruthlessly with subject populations. We would not want the Carthaginian Empire, which practiced child sacrifice. We would not want the Nazis to dominate the world. We would not want Kim Jong Un, or the CCP, or the Iranian mullahs.

That being so, probably the most honourable strategy for anyone who is genuinely and sincerely concerned with human welfare, as well as a general decline in war and violence in the world, is to support Donald Trump in his current push for greater US power. The US is the one nation in the best position to quickly become a world hegemon. It is also—let’s be honest--a nation unusually unlikely, given its history as the homeland of liberal democracy, to become oppressive or discriminatory or rapacious in this role. 

So if you are genuinely a lover of all mankind, and against war and violence, you should back Trump in his demands for Greenland, in his bombing of Iran, in his taking of Maduro, and indeed if he wants to annex Canada. 

It is our best hope for our grandchildren.

The Recessional

 It is heartbreaking how far the United Kingdom has fallen. The independence of Ireland was a blow. The fall of Singapore was a blow. The withdrawal from India was a huge blow. Suez was a TKO. Hong Kong is gone. But that was not the end of it. Now, the mighty Royal Navy is not even capable of sending a frigate to defend their base in Cyprus. Greece has sent two frigates; Spain is sending one. France is sending an aircraft carrier. The UK has nothing: a helpless mendicant. Global humiliation.

There seems a good chance that Northern Ireland will vote in a few years to rejoin Ireland. Demographics demands it, and economics makes it irresistible. There is a lively separatist movement in Scotland. And the native population of England is being replaced by immigrants. 

Will anything be left in fifty years?

It is pitiable.

Perhaps once you have had a mighty empire, it is not possible to just subside back into comfortable significance. A dynamic has been set up, a growing avalanche of morale that cannot be satisfied by mere respectability, but demands self-sabotage. 

Spain, after all, went from global dominance to being a European backwater for a couple of centuries. Western Rome did not retreat back into Italy and become a nation-state. It vaporized, and Italy formed into city-states. Babylon, Assyria, Carthage, the Mayans, Akkad, the Khmers, the Incas; when they left, they did not leave large or deep footprints.

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Is the Attack on Iran Just?

Is America’s and Israel’s attack on Iran a just war?

According to Catholic teaching, to be justifiable a war must 

1. Be in a just cause 

2. Be a last resort 

3. Have a good probability of success 

4. Target an evil worse than war itself 

5. Be waged by legitimate government authority.

Let’s check them off one by one.

Be in a just cause.

Nominally, the war is waged to take out Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity before they develop a nuclear weapon, making them invulnerable. This seems to me just because defensive. Iran has declared its intent to destroy Israel. They have sponsored ongoing attacks by proxy forces—in effect, they are already conducting aggressive war.

Unofficially, the war is also waged to give the Iranian people an opportunity for freedom from an oppressive government.

Be a last resort.

Trump made a show of trying to negotiate an end to the missile and nuclear programs in recent weeks. The Americans claim the Iranians would not concede much.

This might have been window dressing, or a misdirection, but it does not matter. The Americans have negotiated for years, trying to get Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons. The Iranians just kept breaking the deals.

According to the Israelis, the Iranians were within weeks of having a bomb. According to the Americans, the Iranians actually boasted they already had enough enriched uranium to make eleven bombs.

So there was no longer any time left for diplomacy. It was indeed, if these reports are true, a last resort.

Have a good probability of success.

The proof of the pudding is this: the Americans and Israelis have so far indeed been spectacularly successful, in taking out the Iranian leadership, taking out the Iranian air force, taking out the Iranian navy, in just five days of sorties. Success seems in sight.

Target an evil worse than war itself.

The casualty list from this action so far is reportedly about one thousand Iranians. This must be tallied up against Iran’s record of killing about fifty thousand of their own civilians over the last month or so, the tolls from their sponsorship of terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East over the years, and the possible casualties from an eventual nuclear exchange with Israel.

Be waged by legitimate government authority. 

Obviously, Trump and Netanyahu are legitimate government authorities. Doubly legitimate in that they were democratically elected, an so have a popular mandate.

There Is a War

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The Need for an American Empire

 

The refusal by Britain to allow the US to use their air bases in the UK for the current attack on Iran, the similar refusal by the Gulf States, and the controversy over turning Diego Garcia over to Mauritius, makes a strong case for Trump that the US needs to own Greenland. As this shows us, in a crunch, simply having bases there is not enough.

Iran in Flames

 

Because I am among those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, I endorse the current Israeli and American attack on Iran. I question the morality of those who do not.

Whatever happens now, the ability of Israel to kill the Supreme Leader and 40 high officials in a first strike in broad daylight is decisive. Together with the arrest of Maduro in Venezuela, this must give any world leader pause who wants to pick a fight with the USA. It won’t be his faceless soldiers who die for him, as in older days—he will directly face the consequences. 

This has to be good news. War may now be close to unthinkable.

Given this apparent capability, from now on, the US calls the shots—perhaps without casualties on the American side. 

At least so long as nobody else has this capability. Russia proved it did not in its invasion of the Ukraine—instead of a surgical strike, it turned into brutal trench warfare. Could China do better?

Even if they could, this ability to target the top does not naturally lead to aggressive war. It would not be very useful for taking territory. It would not enable China, for example, to take Taiwan. It is obviously most effective against dictators. It won’t work agains a democracy.

As to what happens next, the Iranian drone and missile attacks on civilian targets in the Gulf states, on Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, are signs of collapse. They make no strategic sense; Iran at the moment does not need more enemies. It looks like desperation, the desperation of the suicide bomber. It is a regime in its death throes, thrashing about. They need to use those missiles somewhere quickly, or lose the chance. It is better to go out with a bang than a whimper. 

I do not assume this will provoke the participation of the Saudi or UAE air forces in the current conflict. But if it does, I believe they are formidable. I have lived in the Gulf. Every young man there dreams of becoming a pilot. And they may want to become involved, now that they have been attacked, for the sake of national honour. These are proud nations.

I do not expect the current Iranian regime of mullahs to survive this.

Brave New World

 

Where I came in...

I was early into the computer revolution—1979. I was developing software soon after. I felt then that people did not recognize the significance of the desktop computer. It seemed to me this was a technological advance comparable to the invention of movable type—an improvement in the dissemination of knowledge that led to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Exploration, European dominance of the globe, the invention of empirical science, the general recognition of human rights, the collapse of feudalism, and democracy.

Then came the Internet and the World Wide Web. This was even bigger. Now I thought we were seeing an innovation comparable to the invention of writing. An improvement in the dissemination of knowledge that brought mankind out of the Stone Age into civilization.

But we were not done. Now we have, apparently, AI, something I did not think was possible. This seems comparable in its impact to the development of language itself. Which more or less marks the rise of the human as a being above the animals.

And these three new advances are happening within one lifetime. The first three took hundreds of thousands of years.

It is no surprise that the world seems to be in tumult. How could it not be? This is the most significant period in the history of the human race.

Here’s the good news: the average human life became hugely better with the discovery of language. Human life became incomparably better with the development of writing. Human life became incomparably better with the development of printing. We can assume that these innovations in turn will make life inconceivably better.

So it seems reasonable for Elon Musk to predict a time in the near future when we will all be wealthy, by current standards, perhaps without needing to work at all. The computer revolution and the internet revolution have already made many things that used to be expensive free or almost free; consider how many costly things your smartphone has replaced. 

If so, the spectre of pension funds running out of money is not real. We will have the ability to give everyone a pension, at any age. The government deficits we worry about may be buried in rapid GDP growth.

This means, in turn, that the recent drive by governments throughout the developed world towards mass immigration is gravely short-sighted. We will soon not need more people to do the work at lower skill levels, and will not need their taxes to fund government or pensions. The only factor limiting growth will be labour, but resources. While it may not be difficult to support a larger population, the disruption to the local culture and civil order would not be worth it.