June 29, 2013

Finest Hour 135, Summer 2007

Page 34

But Did Britain Fail?

What Britain’s Experience may teach us is that superpowers can only fail voluntarily.

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By David Freeman

Professor Freeman ([email protected]) is a regular contributor to Finest Hour and his last article was “Midwife to an Ungrateful Volcano: Churchill and the Making of Iraq” in FH 132, Autumn 2006. He teaches History at California State University, Fullerton.

Professor Dodge is broadly correct in his out-line of the history of Iraq, and his case is compelling for what may happen if promises of a better future for Iraqis are not kept. Our chief concern here—the role of Winston Churchill in the British Iraq Mandate—is limited, because his involvement, if not his policies, ended with the fall of the Lloyd George coalition in November 1922. The description of what happened from that point on is accurate. Yet it can be argued that Britain’s venture in Iraq was not a failure—for reasons which have little to do with prospects there today.

I disagree with the characterization of Britain’s initial goals for Iraq in the 1920s, and would challenge the suggestion that what is being attempted now is the same as what was attempted then. There are several important points that should be considered:

1. What was Britain trying to accomplish by establishing Iraq in 1922? First, to fulfill residual obligations from the war (which Professor Dodge does not mention; but see the accompanying correspondence between Churchill and Lloyd George, particularly the comments of the latter). Second, to establish a stable government broadly friendly to British interests, the most important of which was preserving the link to India. If the British had indeed been trying to build a nation founded on democratic self-determination, they would not have arrested and deported the leader of just such a movement and imposed the alien Hashemite monarchy. In other words, the British were simply trying to keep a lid on things, given their own diminishing resources. They did not consider Iraq a high priority. Churchill made it clear that he was prepared to order a unilateral withdrawal of British forces from the region if the desired low-cost settlement could not be achieved.

2. British policy was in fact successful in achieving its goal. Relying on support from air power, a relatively stable government friendly to British interests was maintained in Iraq for as long as Britain needed it. If not by Indian independence in 1947, then certainly following the Suez episode of 1956, Britain no longer had either the need or the inclination to sustain the Hashemite government. It had served its purpose, and the British could justly claim that thirty-five years was quite long enough to expect the Hashemites to have established themselves or face the consequences. The Hashemite monarchy established at the same time in neighboring Jordan, after all, survives to this day.

3. The 1920 Iraq uprising came as Britain was in the process of reducing its troop commitments. Professor Dodge correctly notes that it was a troop increase that ended the rebellion, but frames this in a negative context. Surely the troop “surge” is what gave Britain the opportunity to establish its low-cost solution? (The additional troops, by the way, came from India.)

4. Bonar Law’s statement about reducing commitments in Mesopotamia can be misinterpreted. The settlement worked out by Churchill—with the support of Bonar Law’s Conservatives, who made up the majority of Lloyd George’s Coalition government—enabled the reduction of British troops stationed in Iraq. This was already in place when Bonar Law made his remarks. He was simply pledging to carry out the policy.

5. League of Nations scrutiny of Britain’s policies was intended, but the United States never joined the League. The Mandate under which Britain governed Iraq was supervised by the League Council, made up of Britain, France and other imperial powers holding Mandates. In short: the Mandate holders were policing themselves.

Churchill’s solution met the obligations Britain had acquired during and after the First World War and continued to work for as long as it was needed, after which time it was abandoned. Realpolitik? Perhaps, but it worked, and that is the point at issue here. Most likely the only real similarity between the situation in Iraq then and now is the unchanged nature of the populace.