US President Barack Obama has vowed to avenge the murder of J. Christopher Stevens, America’s former ambassador to Libya. How he proposes to do thisis unclear – historical precedent is oflittle use.
In 1864, the Emperor of Abyssinia tookhostage the British consul, togetherwith some missionaries, in the country'sthen-capital, Magdala. Three years later, with Emperor Tewodros still refusing torelease them, the British dispatched an expeditionary force of 13,000 troops, 26,000 campfollowers, and 44 elephants.
In his book
The Blue Nile, Alan Moorehead describedthe expedition thus: “It proceeds first tolast with the decorum and heavy inevitabilityof a Victorian state banquet, complete with ponderousspeeches.” Yet it was a fearsomeundertaking. After a three-month journey through the mountains, the Britishreached Magdala, released the hostages, and burned the capital to the ground.Emperor Tewodros committed suicide, the British withdrew,and their commander, Lieutenant-General SirRobert Napier, was made Baron Napier ofMagdala.
Today's great powers have relied on similar methods, alsoheavy with rhetoric, against puny opponents,but with far less convincing results. The United States put 500,000 troops into Vietnamin the 1960’s, butwithdrew before North Vietnam overran the South in 1975. TheRussians began pulling their 100,000 troops from Afghanistan in 1987, after nineyears of fighting had failed to subdue thecountry.
Now, 25 years and $500 billion later, roughly 100,000 NATOtroops, mainly American, are about to leave Afghanistan, with the Taliban stillcontrolling much of it. Meanwhile, the UShas withdrawn 150,000 troops from Iraq, afternine years of frustration.
The evidence is clear: bigcountries can lose small wars. So, if massive use of force fails, how isa big country, believing that its interests or moral duty compel it to intervene in the affairs of a smallone, to do so successfully?
Gillo Pontecorvo’s brilliant 1966 film
The Battle ofAlgiers spelled out the dilemma for theoccupying colonial power. The FLN (NationalLiberation Front) uprising against French rule in Algeriastarted in 1954 with assassinations ofpolicemen. The French at first responded with orthodoxmeasures – more police, curfews, martial law, etc. – but the insurgency spread amidgrowing atrocities by both sides.
In 1957, the French sent in paratroopers.Their commander in the film, Colonel Mathieu(based on General Jacques Massu), explained the logic of the situation from theFrench point of view. The way to crack the insurgency was not to antagonize the people with oppressive, but“useless” measures; it was to take out the FLN’s command structure. Eliminatethat and the result would be a leaderless mass.
This required the use of tortureto identify and locate the leaders, followed by their capture or assassination. Torture was illegal, but, as theColonel explained, “If you want Franceto stay, you must accept the consequences.”
Colonel Mathieu is the unsunghero of current counter-insurgency orthodoxy,which requires a minimum military presence in the target country, mainly ofintelligence agencies like the CIA and “special forces.” Through “rendition,” a captured suspect can be handed over to a friendly government to betortured, and, on the basis of the information thus gathered, “kill lists” canbe compiled.
The killing of Osama bin Laden last year required an actualhit squad to verify its success, butnormally assassinations can be left to drones – unmanned aircraft, mainly usedfor surveillance, but which can be armed with computer-guidedmissiles. Not surprisingly, the USis the leading developer and user of drones, with a fleet of 7,500. An estimated3,000 drone killings have taken place, mostly in Pakistan,but also in Yemen and Somalia.
The other half of thecounter-insurgency strategy is to win the “hearts and minds” ofpopulations that are susceptible to terrorist propaganda.The Americans did this in Vietnamby pouring in consumer goods and building up infrastructure. They are doing thesame in Iraq and Afghanistan.The civilian side of “nation building,” it is reckoned,will be made easier by the absence of a heavy-handed foreign military presence.
Trying to win hearts and minds is certainly an improvementover bombing or shooting up the local population. But the new way of conducting“asymmetrical warfare” does raiseuncomfortable ethical and legal issues.
TheUnited Nations Convention on Torture explicitly forbids“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” so their use must bedenied. Also, assassination by dronesinevitably leads to the killing of innocent civilians – the very crime thatdefines terrorism.
Even putting aside moral and legal questions – which oneshould never do – it is doubtful whether the strategy of torture and assassination can achieve its pacifying purpose. It repeats the mistake made in1957 by Massu, who assumed that he faced a cohesiveorganization with a single command structure. Relative calm was restored to Algiers for a couple ofyears after his arrival, but then the insurgency broke out again with redoubledstrength, and the French had to leave the country in 1962.
Today, the international community similarly misconceives the nature of the “war” that it isfighting. There is no single worldwide terrorist organization with a singlehead. Insofar as Al Qaeda still exists at all, it is a Hydra that sprouts new heads as fast as the old ones are cutoff. Trying to win “hearts and minds” with Western goods simply corrupts, andthus discredits, the governments established by those intervening. It happenedin Vietnam, and it ishappening now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We are being driven slowly but ineluctablyto the realization that the people whom we are fighting will, to a significantextent, inherit the shattered countries thatwe leave behind. They are fighting, after all, for their peoples’ right to(mis)manage their affairs in their own way. Blame the French Revolution forhaving bequeathed to us the idea thatself-government is always better than good government.
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