This simple solution—the employment of cheap foreign mercenary armies—is no new device. The organisation of vast native forces, armed with "civilised" weapons, drilled on "civilised" methods, and commanded by "civilised" officers, formed one of the most conspicuous features of the latest stages of the great Eastern Empires, and afterwards of the Roman Empire. It has proved one of the most perilous devices of parasitism, by which a metropolitan population entrusts the defence of its lives and possessions to the precarious fidelity of "conquered races," commanded by ambitious pro-consuls.

One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of Imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France, and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence.
[Imperialism, II.I, "Political Significance"]

My heart is filled with gladness when I see
Strong castles besieged, stockades broken and overwhelmed,
Many vassals struck down,
Horses of the dead and wounded roving at random.
And when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage
Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms,
For it is better to die than be vanquished and live
[Bertrand de Born]

The notion of imperialism as a strategy is actually rather less plausible than it might seem at first. The usual object is to acquire territory for one of two reasons: (a) acquiring it makes one's own country easier to defend, and (b) acquiring it makes one's own country harder to attack. So, for example, many Pakistani generals have conceived of "strategic depth" as a method of countering India's awesome natural advantages (al-Ahram, Dawn). In contrast to the "defensive" posture of strategic depth, there is the offensive posture of seizing a territory in order to deprive one's enemy of a base of operations. Nearly all military operations that actually work, are organized along these lines.

It is actually relatively unusual for countries to use strategic depth as a defensive plan. The most famous example of its successful use is Russia (in 1709, 1812, and 1941-42. The Russians, however, had vast reaches of politically unified territory as a result of motive (b), Ivan III's determination to destroy the remnants of the Golden Horde. Additional Russian expansion seems to have been motivated by a series of alliances and projects to excite the religious sentiments of Russian nobles and pious dilettantes.

Various adventurers in the US and UK undertook semi-private campaigns disguised as strategic attacks on Britain's enemies (e.g.). The war in South Africa began as a series of ill-conceived schemes to master the bottomless buried treasure of the Rand, and culminated in the application of main force. The gradual, insidious annexation of Uganda and Kenya were directed against Germany and France. The 19th century United States dabbled in imperialism as a means of securing military potential: possessed of tiny military might, with a navy barely worthy of the name, Washington saw a chain of tiny bases across the Pacific as less an expression of "manifest destiny," as a providential investment in future capital exports. Here, then, was a sort of strategic imperialism of another category: bases to enable, ensure, and preserve, global economic access.

Britain and the USA were, along with the other imperial powers of the day, pre-occupied with this third category of strategic imperialism: (c) defense of economic potential. While all imperial powers, from pre-history onwards, have pursued this category with vigor, the USA, England, and Holland¹ surpass all others in continuity and professional single-mindedness. Others dabbled in it; Japan, for two generations, prosecuted it with a zeal that certainly inspired awe; Germany has undertaken a financially shrewd foreign policy, that was repeatedly trumped by ideological ambitions within Europe; but the USA, England, and Holland are unusual in being almost single-minded about it.

In the previous installment, I alluded to Hobson's (ironically named) "Imperialism and the Lower Races." In his day, "lower race" carried the dual meaning of congenital inferiority, and sociological backwardness. I observed that the crux of the chapter dealt with the then-fashionable contention that the White Man's burden included that of developing the natural wealth of the tropical lands; this was a sanctimonious rationalization for international rape, and it's difficult to imagine that many Europeans failed to see through it. Well, that form of "eugenic" imperialism was closely aligned with the rationale for the category (c) "strategic" imperialism that remains with us today.

The "eugenic" version of this argument was that the pillage of the Congo or the dispossession of the Lakota served some lofty moral good: the fortifying of the high races. The "strategic" version would take a different view, appealing not to some valorization of "social efficiency" or lovely pink skin framed with blonde tresses, but to the hard-boiled fait accompli that national survival depended on screwing over foreigners. It wasn't pretty but it was inevitable, ran the argument. Defenders of modern imperialism are likely to argue that it is necessary because it sustains the unsustainable; it prolongs the doomed. Only, for the apologist of imperialism, it is entirely arbitrary how long the unsustainable can be sustained: it is a matter purely of will.

THE TECHNIQUE OF STRATEGIC IMPERIALISM

Today, the major powers act mostly in concert on most matters; that is actually the rule, not the exception. The French-bashing of two years ago was not really related to France at all; the subtext was that (a) the world was either under the supervision of the USA, or it was left unsupervised as the result of a spiteful disruptor (viz., ex-imperial detractors; and (b) US nationals who opposed the Iraq invasion were, in some existential (tautological) way, of the Devil's party—knowingly or not.² The real France scarcely entered into it. In the meantime, of course, there was the business of maintaining technocratic regimes in over sixty nations around the globe, regimes that kept the debt payments flowing (incidentally, a lot of the so-called debt forgiveness really reflects a superficial tinkering with future capital flows. Countries in a debt trap will eventually achieve "forgiveness" the hard way).

As to destroying the bases of potential enemy operations, this is usually done quietly. Bombing is not only too prone to public backlash, it is too clumsy and too easily thwarted. Even in the most successful of cases, an air strike destroyed terror cells that have exhausted their potential, not those that are coming into it. Conversely, they tend to win the approval of the general public: the state is acting forcefully in their behalf, which is normally welcomed.

Another, much more urgent enterprise is protection of monopoly rents through pliant leaders. In the seminars on foreign policy I've sat in on, or essays by famous "realists," this enterprise is expressed in another, cynical way: industrial society rests on the consumption of fossil fuels; alternative technologies are not going to help us; it may sound cynical, Dear Children, but we need main force to ensure that the natural resources remain cheap and abundant. You comfortable privileged folk may squirm at the thought, but only a sufficiently unsentimental view of strategic necessity will see the West through to a brighter future. Allende died for your iPod; Arbenz suffered for your smoothie; Mossadeqh expired for your [Ford] Expedition.

Such arguments present an awesome alliance of leftist notions about the irredeemable character of capitalism, with cynical appeals to self-preservation: life without modern industry is intolerable; modern industry, without present levels of resource depletion, is impossible; economic growth of peripheral countries is a fad, and the 3rd world will always be destitute; and resource depletion can go on as long as we don't get "windy" and lose our will to power. No wonder the right is so triumphant nowadays: the left counsels utter, sweeping, categorical despair, and the liberal must either betray the principle of fair dealings with foreigners, or else the social welfare state. Meanwhile, everywhere one looks one sees the gratuitous waste and perverse incentives of a monopoloid economy.

The dead hand of the economy is not the state, nor labor unions; it is the notion, everywhere unchallenged, that we cannot change course. Either we

...Roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life...

Far from being shrewd and hardnosed, the Niall Fergusons and Joe Liebermans and Dick Cheneys who have lectured us on the need to defend our way of life with deadly force, are chattering Sardanapaluses.

(Conclusion: Do we have a choice at all?)

2 William Blake, on John Milton:

...The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)