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Tuesday 9 February 2010

When Bad History Meets Warmongering

Friday, 19th June 2009

I should probably be inured to articles arguing that even though europe endured "two twentieth-century apocalypses that left it depopulated and permanently traumatized" it is wrong for europeans to have drawn any conclusions, or learnt any lessons, from the First and Second World Wars. And yet, I'm afraid, I continue to be irritated by such pieces, not least because they invariably demand that europeans prove their moral seriousness by going to war more frequently, regardless of the cost or even the cause involved. Equally, it's startling quite how many people never met a war they couldn't embrace and champion.

Michael Oren, historian and prospective Israeli ambassador to Washington, seems to be one such chap. His latest rant - dressed up in learned clothes of course - in the New Republic is pegged to the unveiling (some time ago) of a couple of memorials to those soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice during the First World War. Apparently:

What should we make of this practice of immortalizing deserters? Morally speaking, it is a complicated matter. World War I was in many respects a dubious enterprise, and those who desert from unjust wars might correctly be regarded with sympathy. The issue grows murkier, however, when an admiration for deserters from particular wars bleeds into an admiration for desertion as a general practice. There is reason to worry that this is precisely what is happening--to fear that the monuments in Belgium and Britain are symptoms of European attitudes toward not just World War I soldiers but toward all soldiers, even those who fight in just causes. And, if that is true, one might well ask: Can a society that valorizes its deserters long survive?

Oren writes of the "de-glorifying" of the First World War as though that was a bad thing. But while war can inspire heroic and humbling feats, only moral simpletons can persist in thinking that there's something ennobling about it. That applies to even the "Good Wars." Soldiers merit our admiration and our pity and it is precisely because of the burdens we place upon them that we should be wary of deploying them without good cause.

None of this troubles Oren or, one supposes, the other members of the War Party. And so we're treated to lazy arguments that:

The revulsion to any war, irrespective of its merits, is especially evident today among the European left... But some conservative European politicians are also reluctant to employ military means - even in the service of obviously just efforts, such as keeping peace in the Middle East or standing up to the Taliban... In Afghanistan, European NATO members have consistently resisted U.S. requests for additional troops while restricting the scope of their soldiers' operations...The connection between courage and survival has been acknowledged since earliest antiquity, along with the dangers posed by desertion.

Nevermind the fact that your definition of a just cause is not necessarily my definition of one, this is simply ignorant nonsense. In the first place, in my lifetime British armed forces have been deployed the Falklands, Iraq (twice, three times if you include Operation Desert Fox), Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. there have been decent arguments in favour of each of these interventions, but in precisely none of them was British national survival an issue. Each was a war of choice. And of course other european countries contributed to several of them too.

As for Afghanistan, while it is true that some european forces are operating under limited terms of engagement, non-US NATO troops have endured their fair share - some might say more than their fair share - of casualties. At the time of writing 446 Americans have been killed in combat in Afghanistan, while 136 British soldiers have been killed in combat as have 100 Canadians, 22 Frenchmen 20 Danes, 19 Germans, 11 Romanians and 8 Poles. By the standards of past conflicts these are, of course, mercifully trivial numbers but as a percentage of their countries' respective populations (an admittedly crudely-hewn yardstick) it's obvious that the British, Canadians (a "european" nation in defence terms) and, most especially, the Danes have "sacrificed" more than the Americans in a cause that is less immediately or pressingly theirs. That should merit something better than sneering.

As for those First World War memorials to the executed? There are a number of things that may be said: the first is that they mark, in some sense, the passing of the Frist World War into history. The last survivors won't be with us for very much longer. Equally, though we still live with the consequences of1914, the memorials to those executed might be considered an attempt to draw a line under the conflict. More importantly, they do not reflect, as Oren seems to think they do, any kind of moral approval of the deserters' actions, rather they should be seen as a sympathetic response to the particuar horrors of the war - horrors that had little to do with its aims or justification and everything to do with the ghastly experience of actually fighting it. (Some of the executions were almost certainly miscarriages of justice, even by the standards of the time; others were not.) One might also observe that attitudes to desertion are different in times of concsription than they are with regard to an all-volunteer force. None of this troubles Oren who writes, dismissively, that the deserters were "shirking the burdens of national defence". Perhaps many of them were, but it takes a stony heart to revel in their execution 90 years on.

The French actually pardoned those executed as far back as the 1930s and, no matter what ignoramuses will argue, the French army has continued to fight in numerous conflicts since. (Being beaten is not the same thing, it should not need to be said, as not fighting even if I suspect Oren, like so many others of his ilk, pays no attention to the 100,000 Frenchmen killed in the Battle of France in 1940.)

So, in summation, Oren is wrong in both the general premise of his article and in its detail. In its way that's quite impressive. Ultimately, however, there's something grotesque in demanding that europe ignore the lessons of military carnage and seek fresh wars to fight, regardless of the reason for them. Happy is the land that has no need for heroes and I'm damned if I see what threats there are that should persuade the Spanish or the Greeks or the Czechs to willingly send their young men off to be killed. Nor do I consider it a sign of weakness that these countries haven't been searching for them. Equally, those countires tht are fighting in afghanistan deserve better than the unjustified and ignorant scorn Oren - and those like him - drip upon them.

Filed under: Afghanistan (125 more articles) , Britain (313 more articles) , First World War (5 more articles) , France (72 more articles) , War (75 more articles)

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Olaf Rye

June 19th, 2009 10:00pm Report this comment

Oh, I am afraid that I do not follow this argument about a collective historical trauma regarding war. Most of our population have never been in uniform and for the coddled classes to suggest that they know anything about war is ridiculous. What does the cocktail party mob sitting in major European cities know about war or even about soldiering ? This is an excuse for their moral cowardince.

We must also bear in mind some of the 'lessons' of the last great European wars. We stood idly by and allowed Hitler to re-arm, whilst much of the opposition to his programme was merely driven by a pro-Soviet stance. Few were like Churchill and saw both of these revolting figures and their equally revolting ideologies for what they were. The European shibboleth of 'peace at all costs' shows how little continental Europe has learned from the wars.

I often feel that the European nations have become effete and accord a priority to spending on a welfare state and creating an army of bureaucrats that attempt to erode the liberties that our men fought and died for in the wars. Moral cowardice and a refusal to fight is dreadful

Steve Horgan

June 19th, 2009 10:16pm Report this comment

War is terrible, but there are worse things than war. That judgement though is not easy to make and it must start from the knowledge of the horror of war much as the horrors that can proceed when nations stand aside from oppression and genocide.

Memorialising the executed should be taken in the context of far, far greater and continuing remembrance of the unambiguously valorous. It is also a measure of humanity given the modern acknowledgement nature of war and what it can do to a man's mind. Though the trenches were bad it was their scale that apalls us. It is easy to find corners of hell in any conflict.

Oren is wrong, and only our soldiers on the front line are truly in the right.

TomTom

June 19th, 2009 11:50pm Report this comment

"The French actually pardoned those executed as far back as the 1930s and, no matter what ignoramuses will argue, the French army has continued to fight in numerous conflicts since."

Hardly a splendid record especially 1940 having first abandoned its allies Czechoslovakia and Poland and welched on treaties it then tried to sell out great Britain in 1940 by getting the RAF over-committed to France. Thank God for Dowding and Lord Gort in resisting Churchill's francophilia

Ray

June 20th, 2009 9:16am Report this comment

"I'm damned if I see what threats there are that should persuade the Spanish or the Greeks or the Czechs to willingly send their young men off to be killed".

I seem to recall Neville Chamberlain said something vaguely similar at Munich in 1938.

But of course had the Allies stood firm, I'm sure modern historians would nowadays be outraged at how a misunderstood Pan-German patriot was toppled from power for daring to stand up to Anglo-French imperalism.

James Joyner

June 20th, 2009 12:33pm Report this comment

Alex,

I think Europeans are right to be cautious about wars and we Americans could be a bit moreso. The specific problem with Afghanistan is that NATO unanimously backed going to war and yet most NATO countries aren't pulling their load.

Boris

June 22nd, 2009 12:59pm Report this comment

Well, this is a part of the problem, isn't it? Europe is gradually sinking demographically, it remains a featherweight in the global diplomacy and without the American shield would be completely at menace of Russia, Iran, China - hell, even Quaddafi! But for Mr. Massie there are no threats that justify - no, not only sending young Europeans to be killed, but even to prepare them properly to defend their continent (or country, for that matter). Take Spain. 180 thousand men in uniform at the nation of 47 million. Greece - the same amount of soldiers, 12 million people. Czechs - 50 thousand for 10 and a half million. Compare that with Israel's 180 thousand on active duty and a million battle-ready reservists. Apart of Britain, Europe doesn't wish not only to fight, but even to learn how it is done.

Jellicoe

June 22nd, 2009 7:40pm Report this comment

Ray, how, exactly, does the Afghan or Iraqi "threat" compare to the situation in 1938? Last I checked, the Taliban and Baath Party weren't sending legions in to take over the Czech Republic or Greece. (To the extent that refugees from these countries are demographically changing part of Europe, well-- seems like our involvement in the Afghan-Iraqi Wars is attracting far more refugees here than staying out would.) I don't always agree with Alex here, but he's right on the money. His point is that these are wars of choice and have to be entered into intelligently, and your neocon view of painting every enemy as a Hitler/Stalin (and every argument against war as appeasement) is exactly what's bankrupting Britain and the USA today.

And Boris-- what American "shield" are you referring to, protecting Europe's supposedly declining demographic sphere? The USA is now about $12 trillion in debt and rapidly rising-- it's at the mercy of Chinese bankers. Britain's own crushing national debt is on an even worse scale per capita. A massive military and defensive "shield" is meaningful only if you can actually afford and maintain it, otherwise it's just running a military on an unsustainable bank loan. As soon as US debt surpasses GDP (probably in about 5 years, with a similar danger facing Britain), no investor in his right mind is going to continue financing US defence expenditures anymore.

For the European countries with smaller militaries, they seem to be just realistic about the actual costs of maintaining a vast army.

And the claim of those nasty invading Russians is just laughable-- you cite Europe's "troubling demographics" but then fail to consider that Russia has the worst demographics in Eurasia. Their population is basically shrinking away from cheap vodka and untreatable tuberculosis, while their military continues to be chewed up in Chechnya. This is hardly something to celebrate, it's a sad situation for any country, but the Russians have neither the interest nor the ability to launch troops against Europe. Their population is plummeting (with millions more migrating to western Europe) and they're barely holding their own in Chechnya and Dagestan. Europe's own demographics aren't spectacular but they're more than holding their own on the Continent. If nothing else, immigration from Russia, the Ukraine and (increasingly) the Americas is making up much of the gap in workers, and if their populations fluctuate a bit, who cares? Britain and Australia are moving toward a South Asian (and heavily Muslim) population within 20 years, the USA increasingly Latino, whilst the rest of Europe opts away from North Africa/Turkey in favor of immigration from the newer of EU accession states or the Americas. Seems like they're doing just fine, relatively speaking.

The problem with the neocon hammerers is that every problem looks like a nail-- every war is WWII all over again and every bit of caution is mere appeasement. Most of the world's wars aren't anything like World War II-- they're much murkier (and even then, the blunders of WWI made WWII possible in the first place), and most of them probably aren't worth fighting.

Moreover, those countries which do get ensnared in these wars-- which increasingly seems to be the policy of neoconservative-led Britain, the USA and Australia-- not only lose them in many cases (and Iraq and Afghanistan will most likely become British defeats that we'll rue permanently afterward), but bankrupt themselves economically, while changing themselves demographically. (The "invade the world, then invite the world" sequence that always seems to take place.) Most of Europe is anti-neocon for this reason-- maintaining enough of a deterrence at home to discourage outright invaders, while avoiding the expenses of ridiculous and unnecessary wars like Iraq that only push the invading countries deep into debt. China will probably be the top power in about 20 years, but so what? They're becoming the world's top power without firing a shot, since so much of the West is busily demolishing its finances through its leaders' own blunders. They don't need to start a war to be the world's leading nation.